User avatar
luvwagn

Posted Sun Mar 05, 2023 10:28 am

Virtually no one does that hack to install their 256kb kick rom, there are easier ways via various adapters, or a parceiro//, etc

It is interesting because with some tweaks you could also gain use of the wcs as 256kb of slow mem. But a parceiro// is so much better

User avatar
m0c
Utrecht, Netherlands

Posted Tue Mar 28, 2023 8:19 pm

An A1000 with a piggybacked rev 6 or rev A mainboard can indeed be modified fairly easy to contain its Kickstart in ROM. Max size is limited to 256KB, which means support for up to KS1.3. It's been 35 years since I performed the hack myself, so I can't recall every detail. This is what I remember:

  • Removing the piggyback daughterboard
  • (Un)cutting a few jumpers (or "straps") on the mainboard
  • Desoldering a few PALs from the daughterboard and installing them directly onto the mainboard
  • Removing the 2 obsolete bootstrap ROMs from their respective sockets
  • Soldering 2 extra DIP sockets at the empty positions on the mainboard
  • Programming Kickstart (1.3) into 4 EPROMs 27C512
  • Inserting the EPROMs into the 4 empty sockets
It was quite a popular mod back then and I was over the moon with the result. It allowed me to autoboot my A1000 from an A590! Yet I will be restoring my trusty ol' A1000 back to its original state from 1985 soon.





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