Let's Switch! (KS 102 W - KS 104 W)

Hello user of the World Wide Web do you need a switch sometimes?

Here it comes the solution! A kickswitch! :)

This model is a KS102W-KS104W from CableTronics, here it is!

The cool thing of this little board, is that it doesn't require any switch, thanks to the connection to "Pin 8" of the ODD CIA it switches rom clicking the left mouse button on power ON! 

I had the luck to get one in a "new old stock", sitted unused for years to arrive in my hands in the end of 2022! Crazy stuff...

I wanted a kickswitch to be able to use the original 1.3 kickstart to achieve maximum compatibility, and I succeded, but it was NOT plug and play!

Heres why...

When I bought it I tought that the eeprom chip that comes on it was a 1.3 kick, so I opened my Amiga 500+ that I use with the A590 Hard Drive Plus, a machine that I wanna keep as stock as possible, nothing fancy, and proceeded on removing the OG 2.04 kick in my machine, plugging the board (leaving the first row of socket's pin empty cause it's a plus machine) and installed the rom previously on the Amiga, on the KickSwitch...

NO GO

Black screen, errors, colours and flashes, nothing good! Not even the 2.04 kick was working (most of the times)

I tought, ok the eeprom is fried, let me look in my drawer for a 1.3 chip...

NO GO

my drawer don't have any of these chips :( I tought I had at least one, untrue. 

So I tought, maybe some sicilian ebayer has one... I hopped on fleabay and set nearest option... And surprise! 8 km from my cave there was a guy selling two 1.3 chips, one from Sharp, the other one, directly from Commodore! Both for 15 Euros Pieces of eight!

In less than half an hour I was back home with these chips!

I was sure that I had finally fixed this stalemate, plugged the 1.3 Commodore's chip where the eeprom where... AND

NO GO

I was very convinced that the problem were that it were something wrong, broken, in the board itself...

BUT NO

THE EEPROM has different pinouts!!! holy maccheroni!

It was working... the thing is that it is a 2.04 rom, not a 1.3 as I tought!

So the solution was to install the 1.3 kick in the empty socket of the board and leaving the eeprom where it originally was in the kickswitch!

Abracadabra, done!

Now I can choose 1.3 if I click the mouse while booting or I can boot 2.04 as usual!

SO IT'S FOR 2.04 ONLY?

You may be right, but I managed with some internet's magic to find the pinout of the eeprom and some help from "Il tecnico risponde" a journalism column from the italian "Amiga Magazine", issue 63!

If you wanna check it in Italian, take this AMAZING LINK

If you don't wanna, I comed to help ;)

Here you can find the pinout of the eeprom, with this you could write the eeprom with the kickstart you want, even 3.2.1 and be able to switch between the regular rom installed on the left side of the board and the flashed eeprom on the right!

You could even create an adapter to enable the use of regular chips!

Are you happy? :)

I am!

If you are too, drop a comment, I always answer!

Thanks for reading

And remember to insert your diskettes face up.