Kickstart ROMs (Amiga)
There are many versions both official and unofficial of the BIOS used in the Amiga line of computers.
The BIOS that is read in at the start of boot is called Kickstart on the Amiga.
Each console came out with a different version, and there were many updates over time. This along with the ability to use older or newer Kickstart ROMs on models that originally didn't have them makes the scene a little confusing.
A guide to all official ROM releases are here and here, and below is a quick breakdown of which ROM the systems typically came with, the most community recommended Kickstart to use.
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Pretty much every Kickstart can be used on every console with the right modifications, so I will only list the actual release version and recommended version.
Model | Release | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
A1000 | 0.4 - 1.3 | 1.3 |
A2000 | 1.2 - 2.04 | 1.3 |
A3000 | 1.3 - 3.1 | 1.3 |
A500 | 1.2 - 1.3 | 1.3 |
A500+ | 2.0 - 2.05 | 1.3 |
A600 | 2.0 - 2.05 | 1.3 |
A1200 | 3.0 - 3.1 | 3.1 |
A4000 | 3.0 - 3.1 | 3.1 |
Notably the A500+ released with 2.04 which caused lots of issues with games like Treasure Island Dizzy, so many people went back to 1.3.
It is the most recommended Kickstart for the A500/A500+ for compatibility.
As you can see, primarily for compatibility purposes, the 1.3 version is unanimously recommended on anything older than A1200.
It is not the most feature rich, cannot handle larger RAM or auto-detect memory and similar features.
It does however support booting from Hard Drive so if you upgrade the A500/A500+ with an IDE68k or other add-on to allow IDE hard drives, it supports booting them and still maintaining compatibility.
As you can see from the table above, pretty much every console pre-A1200 is recommended to use Kickstart 1.3.
This is highly due to compatibility issues with games that don't like newer Kickstarts.
However, if you do not care too much about the compatibility of some games and instead want more features, then Kickstart 3.1 is the only other recommended official Kickstart.
This is why you will see many people running a dual ROM switch between 1.3 and 3.1.
If you want to run games off WHLoad on the Hard Drive, you will need 3.1 for example.
A general rule of thumb is if you are fully upgrading a machine to be as fast, powerful and functional as possible, you will want to run the new Amiga OS 3.2.2 (or newer when new releases come out) with the Kickstart 3.2.2 ROM both from Hyperion.
This release has huge updates over the older ROMs, but in early machines it requires a lot of RAM and CPU upgrades to even be usable.
