Up to Kickstart v2.0 (V36) only 512-byte blocks were supported. Kickstart modules of AmigaOS 4 are stored on the boot disk partition. Later releases of AmigaOS (3.5 and 3.9) were also software only and did not include matching ROM upgrades instead requiring Kickstart 3.1, with ROM-file based Kickstart components replacing those in ROM. Workbench 2.1 ran on all Kickstart ROMs of the 2.0x family. The CDTV's original firmware ROMs must be upgraded in order to install a Kickstart version later than 1.3.ĪmigaOS 2.1 was a pure software update and did not require matching Kickstart ROM chips. The Commodore CDTV featured additional firmware ROMs which are not technically part of the Amiga Kickstart. An A3000 configured to use disk-based Kickstart images had the benefit of being able to boot various versions of AmigaOS without additional tools, simply by selecting the appropriate Kickstart image at boot time.

This early A3000 supported both ROM based Kickstarts and disk-based Kickstarts, although not simultaneously. Either Kickstart 1.3 or 2.0 could be extracted to a partition specifically named WB_1.3 or WB_2.x, respectively, and put in DEVS:kickstart, an absolute system location from where the A3000 system will find it at bootstrap and copy its image into RAM. The Amiga CD32 featured a 1 MB ROM (Kickstart 3.1) with additional firmware and an integrated file system for CD-ROM.Įarly A3000 models were, like the A1000, also shipped with Kickstart on floppy disk, and used a 1.4 BETA ROM as bootstrap. Later releases used 512 KB ROM chips containing additional and improved functionality. Kickstart was stored in 256 KB ROM chips for releases prior to AmigaOS 2.0. Many Amiga 1000 computers were modified to take these chips. Later Amiga models had Kickstart embedded in a ROM chip, thus improving boot times. Some A1000 software titles (notably Dragon's Lair) provided an alternative code-base in order to use the extra 256 KB for data.

The first Amiga model, the A1000, required that Kickstart 1.x be loaded from floppy disk into a 256 KB section of RAM called the writable control store (WCS). Version summary Kickstart versionĪmiga 500, Amiga 2000, Commodore CDTV, Amiga 3000Īmiga 500+, Amiga 600, Amiga 2000, Amiga 3000, Commodore CDTV-CRĪmiga 500, Amiga 600, Amiga 2000, Amiga 1200 For example, there were several Kickstart revisions designated as version 2.0. Confusingly, Commodore also used internal revision numbers for Kickstart chips. For most AmigaOS updates the Kickstart version number was matched to the Workbench version number. The default boot screen displayed under Kickstart 1.3Ĭommodore's AmigaOS was formed of both the Kickstart firmware and a software component provided on disk (with the software portion often termed as Workbench).

Amiga workbench 1.3 rom