What's the difference between Kickstart 1.2 and 1.3?

[Cortona]

As you may know, I'm keeping my eyes open for an A500 base unit. I've seen another very clean one for less than a tenner, but it has a Kickstart 1.2 ROM.

In terms of games and demos, is there any practical difference between an A500 with 1.2 and 1.3 ROMs? Come to think of it, will my Workbench 1.3 disks work with Kickstart 1.2? I specifically want an A500 to load all my old games, utils and demos that just won't work on an A1200 under any circumstances.

[Harrison]

Quite a few games will work fine, and in fact Workbench 1.3 will work on a Kickstart 1.2 based A500. I have an early A500 with KS1.2 and it came with Workbench 1.2 and 1.3 in the box when it was new!

However later games will probably not all work as 1.3 A500's were the standard for gaming. Some games released from 1987 onwards might therefore not work. However I don't know the percentage. You could always get hold of a Kickstart 1.3 rom and swap them over if you did get a 1.2 A500.

Another thing to make sure of is that you have a 512KB trapdoor expansion in the A500 you eventually get. These are very hard to find on their own, but every A500 I've ever obtains has so far had the trapdoor expansion fitted. Most later A500 games required Kickstart 1.3 and 1MB of ram.

If I were you I would keep looking until you find a good condition A500 with KS1.3 and 1MB ram. hey appear all the time. Or have you considered an A600. I had an A600 as my main Amiga for a couple of years and got pretty much every Amiga game to work on it. Older games run using a ReLoKick 1.3 floppy disk.

[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