#Amiga 3000 ROMs
12 messages in this thread
Can anyone tell me whether or not I should purchase the new 2.04 ROMs for
my Amiga 3000 ? I just got the new 2.04 OS on disk from C= and it seems to
be working out ok. If I get the new ROMs will they preclude my using OS
1.3.3, or will it have no affect on using it?
Thanks,
Fred
My STRONGEST recommendation is to not even worry about ROMs in the 3000.
Kickstart loads fast enough as it is and you have the ability to upgrade to
any newer version of Kickstart. Once you put the 2.04 roms in the machine
it will NOT attempt to load the kickstart from the disk. Also note that it
does run faster out of ram than ROM. This can be eliminated by copying the
rom's into RAM and remapping the MMU.
John A. Toebes, VIII – via Whap!
John –
Does the 3000 copy kickstart-on-HD into Chip or Fast ram?
. . . . . JimDoc
The special booting routine on A3000's that boot kickstart from disk works
something like this:
machine powers up… looks for kickstart in rom, if not found, it allocates
a block of FAST ram and protects it… then looks for Kickstart on disk,
and loads it in to that block and reboots the machine (sending a message to
the screnn saying something like: rebooting wb 2.x.
My A3000 has 2 meg of chip & 4 meg of fast ram… (no 2.0 rom)… after
booting up, my system shows something like 1.9 meg Chip ram & 3 meg fast
ram available…
I'll do an avail command & copy it in to the next message so that you can
see what I mean…
– Whapp!ng from the North Coast Michael
A3000 w/2 meg Chip & 4 meg Fast ram w/Kickstart from disk:
1.SYSTEM:> avail
Type Available In-Use Maximum Largest
chip 1851104 245024 2096128 1833520
fast 2880632 789384 3670016 2793592
total 4731736 1034408 5766144 2793592
When I did this 'avail' I had whap! running, a couple of commodities
running, and a couple of other windows open.
– Whapp!ng from the North Coast Michael
Jim, It goes into Fast ram (assuming you have 512k of fast ram).
-sja
There are no *A3000* roms, yet. As far as the 1.3.3: It will nolonger be
available unless you use setcpu or something. As I happen to like the 2.0
and 1.3 availability on my A3000, I will *NOT* be getting it for my 3000.
I hope future 2.x will be available on disk, but I'll cross that
data-stream when it comes.
JohnB 76256,3436 – via Whap!
Actually, there *ARE* roms in every A3000. The 1.3/2.0 superkickstart
mechanism is implemented in a very early alpha of 2.0. If you hold down
both mouse buttons when it boots and then click in the upper left hand
corner of the screen (hidden close gadget) you will end up in that early
alpha (which incidently is virtually useless for many reasons). With the
final 2.04 there wasn't really enough room in the roms for the feature (nor
a lot of incentive on C='s part to keep it there) and it didn't stay. I
for one will continue to use the SuperKickstart from disk although I
haven't had to boot 1.3 in over a year now.
John A. Toebes, VIII – via Whap!
John,
I'm curious…why stick with SuperKickStart rather than the ROM?
While I realize that it may be necessary for a developer to jump back to an
older OS once in a while…and knowing you do quite a bit of development
work…if you haven't found the need to drop back in over a year…do you
really expect to in the future?
Don
Drop BACK? Who ever said anything about dropping back to a previous
version of 2.0? 🙂 🙂 🙂 What I am looking for is moving forward with
newer kickstart versions. Also don't forget that the superkickstart in ram
runs FASTER than a pure rom based machine (unless you use CPU to copy the
roms into ram and remap them – which is virtually what SuperKickstart
does).
John A. Toebes, VIII – via Whap!
You can get 150nsec EPROMS, which close in on the difference in
speed.Remember the MB ram may be 80 nsec, but that is the access time.
Cycle time is probably in the 150 nsec range. Support of Static Column ram
burst mode would make it faster. In the PP&S 040 you have to disable burst
because of some 'bug', so it is very near even for me. now Commodore will
probably want to ship the cheapest ROMS, so the machine will probably be
setup with 250 nsec ROMs and the motherboard jumpers set to the 280 nsec
position.
-Greg
John,
One would presume that even with 2.04 ROMs in a 3000…newer OS
versions could be kicked into RAM much the same way current 2000 developers
do it.
My only thought on dropping back was to duplicate a user's
environment when they reported a bug….presuming you couldn't repeate the
bug using the current OS.
Anyway…I was just curious why someone would insist on not putting
the ROMs in their machine. Kind of the same arguments that went around
when it was thought that 1000's would lose the daughter card in favor of
ROMs.
Don