Newbie: Hard Drive

I found an old A1200 in the attic, and decided to relive all those memories again: Lemmings, Formula 1 Grand Prix; anyway, I found that I had taken the the 540Mb HD out and used it in an old PC.

I want to put it back, but can't remember how to do it!!

Bear in mind that the thing only has the internal floppy to work on, and the only access I have to the internet is via this PC, which won't,  I believe, write an amiga floppy. I have a huge box (we are talking at least a thousand here) of floppies (mostly coverdisks from all of the UK Amiga Magazines) and I am sure that somewhere, there will be the software to remount the HD and get it running again? Or is it on those now strange sounding things: Locale, Storage?

Any ideas, please?

[Kronos]

There should be a program called HDToolBox on one of those
AmigaOS-3.0 or 3.1 disks (the ones named locale ...).

I think the disk "Install" would be the best guess, some
very early versions of the A1200 came without HDToolBox
(those sold without an HD), so you might have to searc a bit deeper.

Thanks for the speedy reply.

Nope, there isn't a disk in the original lot named "Install". The A1200 came without an HD, so I bought the 540Mb to stick in it. I remember it did work at one point, but I just can't remember how I got it to go: Anyone any idea how I get HD toolbox from the Internet onto an AmigaDOS disk via this PC?

Greatful for help, I really can't remember half of this stuff & I really would like to get the Amiga going again..

[4pLaY]

I think youre better of trying to find an Amiga user near you that can help you or have someone sell/give you a AmigaOS3.0/1 disks! as soon as you have the disks installing AmigaOS on to the hd is quite easy.

[vortexau]

ranger121 asked:

Anyone any idea how I get HD toolbox from the Internet onto an AmigaDOS disk via this PC?

IF HD toolbox is available for download ....
you could buy a Catweasel, fit it to the PC and then plug in an Amiga external FD.

The same Catweasel could later on be on-sold, or installed in an AmigaOne.

[Trooper]

Hi, And welcome ranger121,
 

ranger121 wrote:
I found an old A1200 in the attic, and decided to relive all those memories again: Lemmings, Formula 1 Grand Prix; anyway, I found that I had taken the the 540Mb HD out and used it in an old PC.

I want to put it back, but can't remember how to do it!!

Bear in mind that the thing only has the internal floppy to work on, and the only access I have to the internet is via this PC, which won't,  I believe, write an amiga floppy. I have a huge box (we are talking at least a thousand here) of floppies (mostly coverdisks from all of the UK Amiga Magazines) and I am sure that somewhere, there will be the software to remount the HD and get it running again? Or is it on those now strange sounding things: Locale, Storage?

Any ideas, please?

There is a vast resource of programs, games and pretty much everything you can think of available for the amiga. The site is called Aminet, If you do a search for install disk like This Link, There are a couple of programs that will allow you to install a hard drive in your amiga. The one called hdinst.lha is suppose to be a direct replacement for the commodore one.

Anyway, If you download this via your PC then extract, Uncompress this file with WinAce or WinRAR then copy it to a newly formated floppy disk (The disk must be 720K, Choose via the capacity option) via windows.
You may need to copy the contents twice, ie same contents in 2 differently named folders on the floppy disk.

Then boot your amiga with your workbench disk making sure you have your hard disk connected to your amiga :-D . Then insert the disk called storage and open the draw called devs and then the folder called dos drivers. Look for an icon called PC0 double click this icon and swap the disks as prompted. Once done, Insert the disk you got from the PC and copy the second folder over to the ram disk top corner of the workbench screen, The first  folder maybe corrupt, thats the idea of creating two folders. Go to the folder you just copied and run the program. As for the next step, Would anyone else like to contribute (guys, girls) as i think i have babbled enough.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Trooper

[Hardboy]

Isn´t it possible to amiga-format the harddrive in the PC? Eventually in UAE?

[Trooper]

Hi,

Hardboy wrote:
Isn´t it possible to amiga-format the harddrive in the PC? Eventually in UAE?

I`m not sure, It might be possible, If the original poster already has UAE installed.

Regards

Trooper

[Varthall]

The simplest solution would be to install the workbench (the part of the AmigaOs not stored in the ROMs) from the Install disk. I've one sitting near my desk, I can send it to you as a lha compressed file, just send me a message.
You'll have to check that you still have all  the wb disks:
Workbench, Extras, Locale, Storage and Fonts.

I'll give you instructions how to decompress the lha file on Amiga and put it on a disk, using CrossDos to read the files from a pc 720k disk.

Varthall

All efforts really appreciated, guys.

I'll ask for the Install disk and give it a go.

To answer athe question, yes I do have all the original disks that came with the Amiga, but as it didn't have a HD installed originally, then there was obviously no HD prep disk.

I have enough problems with this damn PC without complicating stuff with an Amiga partition though  :-D

Think I'll keep the two separate.. :-)

Thanks to everybody's suggestions:

It lives.

Now, what am I going to do with it?

Oh, how do I connect it to the internet?

[N7VQM]

Well, to start with, you obviously need a modem.  A stock 1200 can probably handle a 28.8Kbaud modem OK.  To fully utilize a 56Kbps modem, you'll need a clockport serial card.  Visit Idividual Computers and look for the SilverSurfer in the Products section.  If you happen to have broadband internet access, there maybe clockport ethernet adapters.

Once you have the modem (or ethernet card) in hand, a TCP/IP stack package is the next order of business.  The only option I know of right now for Classic AmigaOS is a program called GENESIS.   As far as using this product, someone else will have to fill the breach.  I use MiamiDeluxe.

The next item on the list is to procure a web browser.  Here, you have some options:  Aweb, IBroswse and Voyager.

Aweb recently went open source so if you have a buddy with a compiler, you can download the source and make it.  I bought Aweb-II while I was still in the Marine Corps for my general usage.  It has some javascript support and doesn't require Magic User Interface (MUI).  Aweb-II v3.4SE is supplied with AmigaOS3.9.

IBrowse was the first browser I used.  It uses MUI so you have to get and install MUI from Aminet or somewhere before you can use it.  I used version 1.2 and had problems with it but v2.3 is the current release.  From what I read, IBrowse has the best Javascript support among Amiga browsers.

Voyager is the other browser.  I used this program once.  However, many people have reported good results with later releases.  As far as I know, this one also requires MUI.

There are a million and one other things in there but those are the basics.

Many thanks for that..

Let's see.. I have a copy of MUI from a coverdisk, so I'll install that.

I also have broadband access, so I'll need to be able to connect the Amiga to the Ethernet Hub as part of the network. Ideas? Or will the suggested progs do that?

I also discovered a squirrel PCMCIA adapter amongst the old boxes, and I have an old SCSI CD-ROM drive (so old it has a caddy). I presume I'll need an external box.. be going down to a computer fair tomorrow to see what I can pick up.

[Varthall]

N7VQM wrote:
Well, to start with, you obviously need a modem.  A stock 1200 can probably handle a 28.8Kbaud modem OK.  To fully utilize a 56Kbps modem, you'll need a clockport serial card.

Also a faster processor will do the job. With a 030/50 I can reach transfer rates of over 5k/sec with my ISDN TA.

 If you happen to have broadband internet access, there maybe clockport ethernet adapters.

I think that for A1200 only pcmcia ethernet cards exist.

Aweb recently went open source so if you have a buddy with a compiler, you can download the source and make it.

There's no need to compile them, executables are available here. With a basic 1200 you can only do some basic surfing, nothing more. Also, AWeb is the only browser working on machines with 2 megs of ram.