Softkick boot floppy for A500

Solo761

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Hello all, while waiting for arrival of kipper's A500 8MB board I tried few ideas to get A500 to boot from IDE (CF in this case). First I tried modding kickstart 1.3 with scsi.device with kick13scsipatch.lha pack from aminet. It worked, but in reality Workbench 1.3 is not exactly useful :) and that's only WB to boot with kickstart 1.3. One solution would be to simply buy kickstart 3.1 ROM and swao them, but I wanted to have kick1.3 compatibility. Next solution would be to get 3.1 ROM and kickstart switcher, third one to somehow softkick A500 to kick3.1.


So, after few days I managed to get this working and I present to you Kickstart 3.1 boot floppy!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/75853299/SoftMKickBoot_v1.2.zip

It uses mkick1.9 (available on aminet and archive included on floppy for copyright reasons) to softkick 1.x A500 to kickstart 3.1.

For this to work you need A500/A600/A2000 kickstart 3.1 file (version 40.063) which is not included on floppy as it's copyrighted. It needs to be named kick40063.A600 and put in floppy root. MD5 hash of correct kickstart file is e40a5dfb3d017ba8779faba30cbd1c8e.

After preparing, transfer it from ADF to floppy or use floppy emulator (tested on Gotek and HxC). It will "eat" 512kB from your memory so don't be surprised if you boot it on A500 with 512 kB chip and 512 kB slow and notice you only have 512 kB chipram. That's normal :). After you power cycle, or hard reset, it'll be back to kick1.3 and full RAM.

I've tested it in WinUAE (A500, kick1.3, 512kB chip, 512kB slow, and some other combinations, some work, some don't) and on real A500 with 512/512 and it works. Another user from here (sweetlilmre, thanks for testing) has tested it on A500 and kipper's board and it also worked for him (he also did HxC test). So it should work in theory for others too :).

This is mainly for use with Kipper's 8MB board, to get access to HDD and WHDLoad games stored there. You can try it with 512/512 A500, but it won't be that much use as it will cut your available memory to half. But I if you want to see purple kickstart screen, or a bit of WorkBench 3.1 it's OK.
 
Hi,

I'll be testing the new script tonight along with a 512kB trapdoor extension (lets see if we can get that 512kB back :) )
As per the details in kipper2k's sale thread, the specific ROM matches "Kickstart v3.1 rev 40.63 (1993)(Commodore)(A500-A600-A2000).rom" in the TOSEC collection.


-(e)
 
Hi,

Can't seem to get this to work with a 512KB trapdoor extension (with the extension enabled or disabled which is weird).
I have the previous script though, would that make a difference?
I will try the newer script and the next available opportunity.

-(e)
 
Nah, this newer script wont' work either. New stuff in it is just to try and detect if HDD (DH0) is present. If it isn't it'll skip "try to boot from HDD" part. The rest is the same.

On my setup it's even more quirky. At first i boots fine and loads kick31, but if I turn A500 off and then on (not just reset) I'll get error after kick3.1 is loaded into memory. Everything should work, I don't see any reason it doesn't, but it simply won't. I have to leave it off for few hours to be able to load it again. I guess something somewhere stays stored/loaded and conflicts with loading. When capacitors discharge it finally "forgets" it and I can load it again.

In your case I guess it's trying to load it into memory address it's not compatible with (for some reason). I've made few versions where I specified where to load it, chip ram, expansion memory (kipper's board is considered expansion memory) or fast memory. This simplest version leaves that to mkick to decide. I can UL them if you want.

If that doesn't work I can specify exact memory location where to load kickstart file so that may help too. If you load sysinfo and click memory button, it lists how much memory is available and in what address range. That's how I tried making combination that works in my case.

If you wan't I can write how to change all of this for yourself, it's just one line in text file that needs to be changed. I do it in WinUAE and then transfer to gotek.
 
Nah, this newer script wont' work either. New stuff in it is just to try and detect if HDD (DH0) is present. If it isn't it'll skip "try to boot from HDD" part. The rest is the same.

On my setup it's even more quirky. At first i boots fine and loads kick31, but if I turn A500 off and then on (not just reset) I'll get error after kick3.1 is loaded into memory. Everything should work, I don't see any reason it doesn't, but it simply won't. I have to leave it off for few hours to be able to load it again. I guess something somewhere stays stored/loaded and conflicts with loading. When capacitors discharge it finally "forgets" it and I can load it again.

In your case I guess it's trying to load it into memory address it's not compatible with (for some reason). I've made few versions where I specified where to load it, chip ram, expansion memory (kipper's board is considered expansion memory) or fast memory. This simplest version leaves that to mkick to decide. I can UL them if you want.

If that doesn't work I can specify exact memory location where to load kickstart file so that may help too. If you load sysinfo and click memory button, it lists how much memory is available and in what address range. That's how I tried making combination that works in my case.

If you wan't I can write how to change all of this for yourself, it's just one line in text file that needs to be changed. I do it in WinUAE and then transfer to gotek.

Hello my friend. I've been trying to make this work for a whole day but nothing. I have and Amiga A500 with Kipper 8mb board and 1,5MB memory with piggiback in gary chip.. If you want check kipper thread. I have many pictures. It tries to load 3.1 and then it crashes with retry or cancel/debug message. Not guru. No message for wrong rom file. Can you help me? Maybe I will remove the 1,5MB upgrade and leave plain 1.3 a500 with kipper upgrade if necessary. In my pictures there is one with memory addresses if this helps..
Thanks in advance!!!
 
I've noticed mkick is really picky about memory configurations in A500. I've given up on this, unfortunately it's to unreliable. You can try with this version

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/75853299/mkickboot_exp.rar

It has start up parameter to force it to use expansion memory, and this one uses chip memory

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/75853299/mkickboot_chip.rar

If problem is memory location it tries to use this might help

My friend everything works fine. I found out the problem. 1st with only 512 chip memory and kipper board works fine. When I put 512 memory expansion all hell goes loose... Random errors during loading rom and kickstarting. BUT.... When I did the mod that you cut one jumper and connect another so that the memory does not show 512 chip and 512 fast but 1mb chip and the 8mb kipper everything goes as planned. Soft kicking is fine and stable and after loading workbench 3.1 from cf it shows 1mb chip and 8mb fast memory. Not 512 chip and 8,5 fast. So you can use whdload fine. (Whdload requires 1mb chip)... Thanks again for your awesome floppy disk!!!!!


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Wouldn't it be easier to buy the 3.1 kickstart and boot into 1.3 using relokick? Incidently I have a 500+ (kick2.04), with a 512mb trapdoor, and it boots kippers card O.K.
 
Yes. But this boot disk is to use workbench 3.1 with soft kicking into 3.1 without additional hardware. And it works just fine
zyvu7uda.jpg




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Well that's good news but, I personally would sooner swap out the kickstart and boot from HD than booting from a floppy just to use WB3.1. Incidentally any kickstart higher than 1.3 can boot WB3.1
 
I was able to get the floppy image working on Win UAE, both versions of the ADF after adding my kickstart rom.

I can't get it to work on the Gotek in my A2000 though.

Should it work with an A2000?

I have kickstart 1.3 and motherboard Rev 2.0

The error I get is :
"corrupted kickstart header file: missing KSHD chunk !"
mkcik failed returncode 10
1>
 
I was able to get the floppy image working on Win UAE, both versions of the ADF after adding my kickstart rom.

I can't get it to work on the Gotek in my A2000 though.

Should it work with an A2000?

I have kickstart 1.3 and motherboard Rev 2.0

The error I get is :
"corrupted kickstart header file: missing KSHD chunk !"
mkcik failed returncode 10
1>

I tried different kick starts until succeed. Do you want me to send you the adf image?


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Tried it with WinUAE 2.81 and it works OK. It really depends on the kickstartfile you use. For me it only works with a genuine 3.1 image, so if you're having problems it's most likely the kickstart file.

BTW I tested it with the newer beta versions of WinUAE 29 b24 and it wont work unless you tick the 'C00000 is Fast RAM' in the Adv.Chipset panel and use 1mb chip only.

Edit: (WinUAE 29 b24) Got it to work with 512 chip + 512 fast by ticking 'A1000 Agnus' in the Adv.Chipset panel
 
Last edited:
Tried it with WinUAE 2.81 and it works OK. It really depends on the kickstartfile you use. For me it only works with a genuine 3.1 image, so if you're having problems it's most likely the kickstart file.

BTW I tested it with the newer beta versions of WinUAE 29 b24 and it wont work unless you tick the 'C00000 is Fast RAM' in the Adv.Chipset panel.
For me it works fine in winuae as well. It's the physical amiga 2000 that gives me the error
 
It works for me, yes! Thanks a bunch.

It takes a little time to get booted, but that's really only an issue for trouble shooting a new hard drive image. After the hard drive is setup correctly it's really quite nice.

Is it possible to do the same for an a600 with a 2.05 rom to boot into 3.1? Or maybe even put it on the a600 hd
 
I believe yes. If you put the command in the first line of startup-sequence then it will soft kick it and reboot. In the second time startup-sequence loads it won't rekick it and continue with booting Workbench 3.1


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But you will have to use different program. No that one because it is for workbench 1.3 You will have to use one for Workbench 2 and above. Maybe Relokick. Will check and post back to you!!!


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But the same exact kickstart file. (It is for a500 and a600hd)


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