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#1 |
Registered User
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Winnipeg / Canada
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I've decided to restore my brothers old, forgotten Amiga 3000 that has been sitting in the basement for quite some time. The machine itself seems to work well, but it'll take some effort to turn it into a truly functional system. However, I'm new to the world of Amiga (playing games on it doesn't really count here), so I need some help. Hopefully someone can answer my questions here:
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#2 | |||
Thalion Webshrine
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Oxford
Posts: 14,653
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Almost any SCSI CD-ROM will work HOWEVER you need a specific wiring for the cable that goes from the 25-pin header to the centronics connector. Sometimes known as "MAC SCSI" cable.
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I am guessing but there is a "DataFlyer_IDE.DMS" image. Quote:
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As you say, some A3000's dont have REAL Kickstart 3.1 chips, they have 1.4 chips (yes 1.4) and they soft kick from a file on the hard drive. You reformat and you may never get your Amiga to do anything for a long time ![]() The first thing to do is work out if you REALLY have a KS1.4 machine. Hold down both mouse buttons after you switch on the A3000, if you have ks1.4 you will be prompted to choose the operating system version to use. You can either bootstrap Kickstart 2.x and Kickstart 1.3 from hard disk or from floppy disk. Try 1.3 you never know you may have a Kickstart 1.3 partition you never knew aboutThe next thing you MUST do is make some Floppy "Super Kickstart Disks" Once you are happy that your Super Kickstart floppy disks are working (Make both 1.3 and 3.1 versions to make sure they work) THEN you can think about re-formatting your hard drive. You do need the special A3000 versions of both ROMS. 3.1 should be on your drive, but most A3000's with 1.4 I've come across dont have the 1.3 ROM. Trawl the net and you can find it. You should really get a handle on where the kickstart images live on the Amiga hard drive too before re-formatting (Devs:kickstart). I recommend transferring everything to the PC, or even better buy a new SCSI hard drive and use that, keeping the old one as a back up. Last edited by alexh; 09 April 2006 at 12:08. |
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#3 | ||||
Registered User
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Location: Winnipeg / Canada
Posts: 50
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#4 | |||||
Thalion Webshrine
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To be sure I need to get a look at your s:startup-sequence and s:user-startup scripts and the Devs:kickstart to be sure. If you are we can easily fix it (get an A3000 ROM image) and you'll get back 512k of RAM too! If this is correct it's almost certainly makes for an unstable system. Quote:
![]() Last edited by alexh; 10 April 2006 at 00:37. |
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#5 | |||
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I managed to find a few other sets of Kickstart chips... one set being 390629-02/390630-02. According to this list, these are the 1.4 chips out of an Amiga 3000. The container they are in is sealed with Commodore tape, so whoever replaced the chips must have been "official" or something. Quote:
Aside from losing out on 512k of RAM, is there any real downside to loading kickstart off the harddrive as opposed to having actual 3.1 chips? Quote:
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#6 | ||||
Thalion Webshrine
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Location: Oxford
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http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/wb_b14.html Looks like you have 2x sets of KS1.4! Quote:
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You have a very old A3000 though. Chances are you have very old chips in your A3000. Although very cheap, the A3640 accelerator (which would offer a 4x speed over your 16MHz 030) probably wouldnt work without you replacing at least the Buster chip as well as your Kickstart ROMS ![]() Probably not worth trying! |
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#7 |
Thalion Webshrine
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Oxford
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I am curious to know which SuperKickstart image you have.
Can you check in Devs: for a file called kickstart? Report back it's size and if possible CRC? |
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#8 |
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The file is 526572 bytes, and has a CRC32 of 16c0f9bf.
There is also a file named "kickstart21" in Devs: ... I think it's safe to assume this is 2.1 |
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#9 |
Thalion Webshrine
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Location: Oxford
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There never was a Kickstart 2.1... curiouser and curiouser!
526572 IS a valid size for a 2.04/3.1 A3000 Super kickstart image. Checking CRC's back later. My A3000 KS3.1 is 526,572 bytes with a CRC32 of 285DD816. My A3000 KS2.04 is 526,848 bytes with a CRC32 of 4FABB146. I dont think this line of thinking has helped much ![]() Have you tried selecting 1.3 after holding down both mouse buttons on bootup and see if it works? Last edited by alexh; 11 April 2006 at 09:11. |
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#10 |
Zone Friend
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OH WELL.
You guys trying to say Commodore did really ship BETA ROMs with the A3000? Didn't know that nor did I expect it. I'm really curious to know about PC BIOS manufacturers which would dare ship a BETA BIOS in their motherboards! ![]() ![]() |
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#11 | |||
Registered User
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Location: Germany
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#12 |
Thalion Webshrine
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I wonder if someone somewhere has created a CRC32 list of all the Amiga Kickstart ROM's (TOSEC or someone) then we can work out which SuperKickstart ROM you have in DEVS:
Anyone know? |
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#13 |
Thalion Webshrine
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Oxford
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TOSEC dont have any details of SuperKickstart ROM images in their database.
D'oh! |
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#14 |
Banned
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: London / Sydney
Age: 47
Posts: 20,420
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Hey alexh,
Not sure if this helps? Guess you're really only after SuperKickstart ROMs though... Edit: Actually, I may have others although I cannot remember exactly which ones. Need to trawl through some CDs that I have. Last edited by DamienD; 11 April 2006 at 20:17. |
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#15 |
Thalion Webshrine
Join Date: Jan 2004
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Non of these are SuperKickstart ROMs and TOSEC dont have them in their database. Starting a thread in TOSEC here http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=237480
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#16 | |
Zone Friend
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I was talking about ORIGINAL motherboards shipped AS-IS with beta BIOSes, not the option to update it via the manufacturer's/vendor's web site. I haven't seen any (common?) manufacturer doing this (yet). I was making this comparison as an Amiga boot ROM can - in some way - be regarded as a sort of PC bios. |
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#17 |
Thalion Webshrine
Join Date: Jan 2004
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Oi, no hijacking Ze_ro's Topic
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#18 | |
A-Collector, repairments
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#19 | |
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Slowly I get the impression that you make yourself look like a fool. Of course no manifacturer tells his customers that he ships beta software with his hardware. But early software versions always contain bugs. That's why the A1000 was shipped with WORM and Kickstart disks and that's why the A3000 was shipped with Superkickstart disks. That's business practice. It's a calculated risk. You have to ship your product before other companies ship their products. So you ship with firmware which has been tested but still has many known bugs. There is just not enough time to correct them all before the initial release. So you make your firmare updatable (flash-rom was not known or too expensive in the 80ies, so the Kickstart was loaded from floppy disk) and once the bugs (or some of them) are corrected, you let the user update it. It does not matter which device you look at, it gets even worse nowadays. Every advert of a DVB-T or SAT receiver mentions that the firmware is updatable. Software development is not so important any more. They ship with early versions of the software and once bug reports arrive, they make updates available. It's too expensive to do all the beta tests themselves. I really don't understand why you are so surprised about it. |
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#20 | |
Thalion Webshrine
Join Date: Jan 2004
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![]() When you have v1.4a15 Kickstart ROM in your Amiga 3000 it doesnt boot like a regular Amiga (with perhaps the exception of the A1000). On powerup it looks for a SuperKickstart file (either on the hard disk or a floppy disk) this KS file is loaded into memory and used from there. I have 3 versions of SuperKickstart files a 1.3 version, a 2.04 version and a 3.1 version. However Ze_ro has a different file to me. This is probably because we have different revisions of the same type of SuperKickstart files, e.g. I think he has v3.1 r40.68 and I have v3.1 r40.70 However we cannot quite tell the differences between them from the files themselves. Shame TOSEC hasnt looked into this area... Last edited by alexh; 11 April 2006 at 23:03. |
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