amigaroms.comAmiga ROMs - Where to Download Amiga Kickstart ROM

Amiga ROMs Introduction to Amiga Kickstart ROM Amiga Kickstart ROMs are required in order to boot any Amiga computer. In addition to essential boot functions, Amiga Kickstart contains large parts of the Amiga Operating system (AmigaOS). All Amiga computers (except A1000) are shipped with a built-in ROM chip. Since Amiga ROM-files are copyrighted, one is not allowed to use any version of the Amiga Kickstart ROM unless one; Owns an Amiga computer equipted with the corresponding ROM version. Purchases the ROM, either as hardware chip or as a software file. Getting ROMs for Amiga emulation A common reason for obtaining the Amiga ROMs is emulation. The most popular Amiga emulator is WinUAE, which due to copyright reasons doesn't include (but requires) the Amiga Kickstart ROM files. A fast and easy way to get Amiga ROMs is buying the Amiga Forever emulation and support package. It contains all Amiga Kickstart ROMs from version 1.x to 3.x, including CDTV and CD32 extended ROMs. Amiga Forever makes emulation extremely easy by providing a one-click gaming interface, ready-to-run Amiga hard disks and more than 100 pre-installed Amiga games. Upon purchase Amiga Forever and the ROM-files becomes immediately available for download. A more difficult way to transfer the Kickstart ROM from Amiga to PC is using software such as Amiga Explorer . For this you will need a null-modem serial cable, or make the transfer over TCP/IP. This method is only recommended for experienced Amiga users. Models and Kickstart versions The table below illustrates the Amiga computer models and the corresponding Kickstart ROM versions. v1.1 v1.2 v1.3 v2.04 v2.05 v3.0 v3.1 Amiga 1000 ¹ Amiga 500 Amiga 2000 Amiga 3000 Amiga CDTV ² Amiga 500+ Amiga 600 Amiga 600HD Amiga 1200 Amiga 4000 Amiga 4000T Amiga CD32 ³ ¹ Kickstart 1.1 was not stored in ROM, but loaded from floppy disk. ² Enhanced Kickstart with CD Boot, a CD player and card slot for saving game data. ³ Enhanced Kickstart with CD-filesystem, NV-RAM and the AKIKO chip. Screenshots Below are screenshots from the most common Kickstart versions. Click the thumbnails for full size images. ROM 1.1 ROM 1.2 ROM 1.3 ROM 2.04 ROM 2.05 ROM 3.0 ROM 3.1 Remember this disk? Yep, it's the classic Amiga 500 boot screen. Thanks to the Amiga emulator WinUAE you can relive the good old days on your PC computer. ROM trivia Amiga games are sometimes incorrectly defined as ROMs, but they are actually read/writable disk images (except CD32 games of course). The term ROM is only correct for console/arcade games which have been dumped from cartridges or CDs. Download Kickstart ROMs The only legal way to obtain Amiga ROMs (unless you transfer them from your own Amiga) is to buy and download the Amiga Forever package. Kickstart version history v1.1, released 1985 Seperate Kickstarts for PAL (50Hz) and NTSC (60 Hz) Amiga computers. v1.2, released 1986 Kickstart now automatically detects NTSC and PAL mode. The text "v1.2" was added to next to the disk on kickstart screen. v1.3, released 1988 It was now possible to boot from hard disk. Recoverable ramdrive.device (RAD:) was introduced. v2.04, released 1991 Enhanced GUI with a fresh 3D-look. Bootmenu for disabling/enabling devices. Improved filesystem. v2.05, released 1992 Support for >40 MB hard drives and HD-floppy disks. Also support for PCMCIA-slots and internal IDE-interface. v3.0, released 1992 Support for AGA-chipset and greatly improved boot menu for disabling/enabling CPU caches. v3.1, released 1994 Many bugfixes. Improved RTG-handling and support for the CD32 Akiko chip. © 2009-2020 AmigaRoms.com - A guide to finding Amiga Kickstart ROMs In other languages: [ English ] [ Deutsch ] [ Español ] [ Polski ] [ Svenska ] [ Soumi ]...