Requirements

... to run installed programs:

• CPU 68000 (68010+ is recommended because some installs require the VBR for the 'quit by a key' feature)
• Kickstart 2.0 (version 37)
• a minimum of 1.0 MiB RAM (sometimes more, it depends on the installed program)

Kickstart Emulation

Some installs use a so called kickemu to have a complete AmigaOS environment for the installed program. For that kickemu an original kickstart image is required. This image can be extracted from a real Amiga with tools like GrabKick or similar which can be found on aminet (make sure to have a correct setup for your disks (MaxTransfer, Mask) or the created image may be broken). The supported image version depends on the installed program. You should find an information about which image must be used in the supplied ReadMe file. The image for kickstart versions 1.2 and 1.3 can only extracted from a appropriate A500, for version 3.1 it can be extracted from a A500/A600/A2000, A1200 or A4000 which must be equipped with a Kick3.1 ROM. If the image cannot be found by WHDLoad or the image is of the wrong version or altered in any way, WHDLoad will quit with an appropriate error message. Additionally a relocation file with the extension .RTB matching the kickstart image must be present. This relocation file can be found on aminet in the archive util/boot/skick346.lha. Both files, the kickstart image and the relocation file must be located in the directory Devs:Kickstarts/ and must have the correct name. Starting WHDLoad version 17.0 the files can also be located in the directory WHDCOMMON:. The table below shows the names of the files depending on the kickstart version.

optional packages:

• Kickstart 3.1 (version 40), it fixes some problems in earlier releases, it also provides some new features which are used by WHDLoad when available like MemoryPools giving better performance if many files are used by the installed program
• to use XPK-compressed data files the XPK-libraries must be installed, these can be found on aminet, all data files can be compressed using XPK, WHDLoad will decompress these during loading, XPK decompression requires extra memory and should therefore be used carefully in environments with low free memory, files written by WHDLoad are always uncompressed
• for the automatic language selection used in some installs the lowlevel.library is used, this library is part of Workbench 3.1 but can also be installed on previous OS releases as an extension, if the lowlevel.library is absent the installs will default to english language
• if installed WHDLoad will use reqtools.library to display any requesters, reqtools can be configured to for example to control where the requesters will appear, it can be downloaded from aminet

... to write new Slaves / install programs

• recommended is a 68030+ with MMU to use all features of WHDLoad (a fat machine is always a good choice to develop software ;-))
• know how about machinecode, assembler, amiga hardware ...
• an assembler (should be able to optimize)
• some other tools will be useful (hexedit, disasm, ...)
• some more MiB's RAM
• access to different machines for testing reasons (68000 - 68060, OCS, AGA, GfxCard)
• a hardware or software freezer like AR3, HRTmon, TK
• an NMI button to interrupt a running program or to enter a software-monitor/freezer