ScuzzBlog: Diaries June 2019
Entry 5th June 2019: Post 01: Amiga 3000 - Dual ROM
Amiga 3000 - Dual ROM
Recent query on one of the Amiga sites raised the issue of the dual
booting ROM on the Amiga 3000. The guy pointed out that his Amiga
3000 gave the option of either 1.3 or 2.x. Truth is it was neither
it was actually 1.4... yes 1.4. Due to an issue with the ROM being
ready at the launch of the 3000 the machine faked it and gave a
choice of either 1.3 or 2.x. but boots into 2.04.
I was always sceptical as to how many machines this actually applied
to and then recalled how my A3000UX has the ROM tower but I had never
really checked my best loved A3000. So today I opened the case and
had a look. [ see comment below about ROM towers ]
The image isn't that brilliant but you can just see that there is
no ROM tower. Seems to be only the one ROM also. The computer hasn't
got an option for dual boot as the choice is greyed out. So all I
do is cancel and she boots into 3.1. Clear as mud.
Unfortunately, or otherwise the computer boots into a very flickering
display and so making photography of still images almost impossible.
The computer has two hard drives and doesn't actually use the 2.04 ROM.
Instead it is Workbench 40.42 and Kickstart 40.68 so basically 3.1.
There is a Boot Volume on the computer with Devs/kickstart and 'S'
Startup-Sequence.
I do have an image of the ROM tower linked below together with another
motherboard which I assume is the 2.x plus variant though could be
something quite different.
Some quotes of interest .... From the very wonderful Greg Donner
Jeff Grimmett explains how to see OS 1.4 with a soft-kicked Amiga 3000:
Shutdown the Amiga.
Hold down both mouse buttons when you power on.
You will get an OS 1.3 / OS 2.0 selection menu. Select neither!
Instead, move your cursor to where the window's close gadget should
be (upper left) and click it.
You might have to fumble around, but eventually the computer will
react and boot into 1.4. You will, of course, get error messages
as the OS 2.x partitions will be used for startup, and they require
newer Kickstarts, but you'll see some rather interesting GUI
concepts. :-)
Christian Stich notes that the use of a ROM tower in the Amiga 3000 was
independent of the ROM used (1.4, 2.04, or 3.1). He adds that his Amiga
3000 Rev. 8.9 (for all intents and purposes equal to a Rev. 9.3) came
with the 1.4 boot ROMs, but now has 3.1 ROMs as he installed a 68040.
The ROM tower was used on early Amiga 3000 motherboards to change from
a ROM layout to an EPROM layout (there might have been very few ROMs
with ROM layout, but most of the ROMs—including his 1.4 ROMs—used the
EPROM layout).
Amiga 3000 - Dual ROM
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