🚀 go-pugleaf

[Line eater: Do you know why nobody ever responds to my postings?  I don't...]

This may sound like a dumb question but bear with me.

How do you kickstart an A1000 off something other than its internal floppy
drive?  The reason I ask is that a hard disk interface made by Comspec
for the A1000 actually kickstarted off the hard disk, so it must be possible.

I don't have such an interface and they are not made any more, but a friend
who has used one reports that it attached to an otherwise unmodified A1000.
Thus there must be a "hook" somewhere in the A1000's boot ROM which allows
an external box to take control and dump in the kickstart data before it gets
read off floppy.  Maybe some prehistoric "cartridge port" scheme?

I'm running a homebrew hard disk interface anyway, so if it's just a matter of
"place a ROM at this address and have such and such a signature in it", I would
happily build whatever hardware required to make it work.

I'm aware that a commented disassembly of the A1000 boot ROM exists
and has been published, but I've never seen it.  Could someone who has this
book, or (I barely dare hope) someone at Commodore or Comspec who knows the
trick enlighten me?  I've already cooked up an autoboot scheme; I'd *love*
to be able to start up my machine without any floppy disk access at all.
I don't want to put in a ROM adapter just yet.

Barring the above, is it possible to somehow disable the boot ROMs in the A1000
immediately after reset (via the OVL* line perhaps) and have the 68000 actually
bootstrap out of external ROM?

Markus Wandel
mwandel@tiger.waterloo.edu
(519) 884-9547