kickstart roms explained

[chrisNova777]

http://wiki.classicamiga.com/Kickstart_Roms_Explained

The very first Amiga released in 1985, the Amiga A1000, came with Kickstart version 1.0, but this Amiga didn't have this on rom chips, instead booted the code into memory from a Kickstart floppy disk. You needed to do this every time you rebooted the system and then swap the disk for one with the actual software you wished to run, such as the Workbench OS disk or a game. This did have the advantage of allowing newer kickstart versions to be easily used on the system by obtaining the latest version. But having to load it from floppy disk every time was tiresome after a while.

After the A1000 came the A2000, and this was the first to have the kickstart files loaded onto rom chips. This meant that you didn't first need to boot up a kickstart disk, but could instead stick a software disk into the drive and switch on the system to boot directly into the software, making life much easier. The A2000 first came with Kickstart 1.2, and was later updated with Kickstart 1.3.

The same was true of the A2000's little brother, the A500. This also first came with the kickstart 1.2 version and later the 1.3 version.

Kickstart 1.3 is the most compatible version of the rom out of all versions as most games were written for this version of the A500.

After the A500 came the A3000. This was similar to the A1000 in that it also didn't have actual kickstart roms, but this time the Kickstart was loaded from the internal Harddrive. This was by far the best design as it meant different kickstart versions could be swapped very easily with a software update. The A3000 was the first Amiga is use an updated version of the Amiga's custom chipset, called the Enhanced Chip Set (or ECS for short) and this came with kickstart 2.04, which was a huge upgrade over the older 1.X versions, and with it Workbench 2, which also improved the Amiga OS greatly.

In general most games that ran on an A500 with kickstart 1.3 would also work on a system with kickstart 2.04 roms. But some older titles didn't work due to changes in the custom chip set and the kickstart roms.

After the A3000 came the A500 Plus. This looked the same as the A500 but had the same enhanced ECS chipset as the A3000, but with the kickstart 2.04 roms now loaded from rom chips. This replaced the original A500 and was as popular.

Next the A600 replaced the A500 Plus. Nearly identical in hardware with the same ECS chipset, and a slightly updated kickstart 2.05 which added support for IDE harddrives and PCMCIA cards. The kickstart 2.04 and 2.05 versions are nearly identical so anything running on one should run on the other.

After this the biggest change in Amiga development happened. The Advanced Graphics Architecture chipset, or AGA for short. This was a huge update for the Amiga and added a lot of new features included 256 colour graphics and a much improved Workbench 3.0 OS and Kickstart 3.0 roms.

The A4000 was the first AGA Amiga to include the kickstart 3.0 roms and many older Kickstart 2 and 1.3 games would not work on the new chipset and kickstart roms.

After this the A4000's little brother, the A1200 was released, using the same kickstart and AGA chipset and sharing the same compatibility issues. But the benefits of the new AGA chipset and kickstart 3 roms greatly out weighed the compatibility issues.

Finally we have Kickstart 3.1. This was a big update to kickstart 3.0 code which fixed many bugs in the original 3.0 roms, but in use not much was actually noticeably different. The newer A1200's and A4000's made had these roms as standard but the older 3.0 based AGA Amigas needed to be upgraded. The 3.1 roms were also included as standard in the CD32. And the 3.1 roms still remain the newest version available.