What's the difference between Kickstart 1.2 and 1.3?

[Harrison]

I just had a quick look on ebay for you and there are a few A500's on there in good condition. Some even still at 99p without a single bid. Use "Amiga 500" as the search to find the best ones. Using "A500" doesn't return the best results and even showed one joker trying to sell a very yellow A500 with no cables, PSU or box for £70!

[Cortona]

Thanks. Yes, that A500 1.2 did have 1MB and it looked to be in very good condition, which is why I was tempted. But if later games need 1.3, I'll wait until I can get a 1.3 base unit. As you say, they crop up all the time, and I'll keep checking Amibay. I could swap out the ROM but I don't own a soldering iron!

I did see a nice A500 package - boxed, leads, disks etc., not yellowed. If only I had room for it all! My wife might eventually forgive me if I only get a base unit.

[Harrison]

You don't need a soldering iron to swap the kickstart roms in any Amiga model. They are socketed, so all you need to do is open the Amiga's case, take the metal shielding off from the top of the motherboard, use a flat head screwdriver to carefully remove the existing kickstart rom, and then push the replacement rom into position.

A very easy upgrade to do.

You can even connect up something called a rom switcher that would allow you to have more than one rom installed, and switchable at bootup. 3.1 and 1.3 rom combination is a popular one, for running never Workbench, but with compatibility for older games. Our member Amigamaniac manufacters rom switchers if this interested you.

I would howver just hold out until you find a good condition A500 with ks1.3 roms. It is much easier, and probably cheaper than buying one with the wrong rom and then trying to located a 1.3 rom to replace it.

[woody.cool]

One major difference between 1.2 and 1.3 ...... AutoConfig is broken for mass storage/media: 1.2 cannot boot from HDD or CD (e.g. with A570) but 1.3 can, as Commodore fixed the bug in the AutoConfig part of Kickstart