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Offline AdaTopic starter

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boot disks for emulators
« on: November 23, 2003, 11:42:13 PM »
Hi! :)

I have both A-max and PC-task on adf disk images and I want to know if it's possible to find boot disks in adf format too, in order to make the emulators work. I don't know if it´s possible, as I remember A-max using a strange disk format. But maybe a MS-DOS disk image could be easy to obtain, but will WinUAE accept it?

Thanks! :)
 

Offline bloodline

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Re: boot disks for emulators
« Reply #1 on: November 23, 2003, 11:59:41 PM »
Quote

Ada wrote:
Hi! :)

I have both A-max and PC-task on adf disk images and I want to know if it's possible to find boot disks in adf format too, in order to make the emulators work. I don't know if it´s possible, as I remember A-max using a strange disk format. But maybe a MS-DOS disk image could be easy to obtain, but will WinUAE accept it?

Thanks! :)


I tried making a PC boot disk ADF for PC-TASK, but it didn't work :-(

Offline Thomas

Re: boot disks for emulators
« Reply #2 on: November 24, 2003, 10:32:02 AM »
It works. Here is the procedure:

1. create a MS-DOS boot disk on your PC. Use a DD disk (720K) to be safe.
2. create an image file from the disk. Use a program like WinImage for that. The image must be exactly 720KB in size, no header and no compression.
3. start WinUAE and boot AmigaOS.
4. press F12, go to the floppies tab and create a custom floppy.
5. write the MS-DOS image to the floppy. Use a program like TSGui for that.
6. start PCTask and boot from the custom floppy ADF.

Bye,
Thomas

Offline AdaTopic starter

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Re: boot disks for emulators
« Reply #3 on: December 11, 2003, 06:03:21 PM »
Thanks and sorry for the late post! :)

I tried what you said but it didn't work, I've done several tries but none of them worked.

1. Ok, I got an MS-DOS 3.11 image (I remember it worked on a real Amiga) and saved it in .IMA format with WinImage (TSGui didn't accept the .dsk format)

2. I created a custom disk with WinUAE (it created a 2.056kb disk, is it ok?)

3. I used TSGui to copy the .IMA file (previously saved onto a .adf file by using ADF viewer on Windows) and it warned me that the final floppy would be smaller than the original custom amiga floppy. I accepted and began to make the disk.

But finally PC-task didn't boot with that disk. I think I followed every step you told me, where am I wrong?

Thanks again! :)

Juanma
 

Offline Thomas

Re: boot disks for emulators
« Reply #4 on: December 12, 2003, 10:05:50 AM »

You need to write the image to PC0, not DF0. Mount PC0 before 3.

And you don't need to write the IMA to an ADF. Just add the Windows directory the IMA is in to WinUAE's harddrives list (or add the whole drive and save it permanently, so you always can easily exchange data).

Bye,
Thomas

Offline AdaTopic starter

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Re: boot disks for emulators
« Reply #5 on: December 13, 2003, 03:37:06 PM »
Thanks! :)

I used "mount pc0: from msdos.ima¨but got his error:

"device 'pc0:' not found in file ´msdos.ima' "

I've noticed that winuae indicates that the custom disk I created is 'write protected', and I can't change that :(

The AmigaDOS manual hasn't been very helpful for me, as I can't understand very well what is explained about the 'mount' command :(

What am I doing wrong, please?

Thanks again,

Juanma
 

Offline Thomas

Re: boot disks for emulators
« Reply #6 on: December 13, 2003, 05:54:29 PM »

Just enter

mount PC0:

or double click the icon in Storage/DosDrivers. Then use TSgui to write the IMA to PC0.

Bye,
Thomas

Offline AdaTopic starter

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Re: boot disks for emulators
« Reply #7 on: December 13, 2003, 06:43:22 PM »
 

Offline Thomas

Re: boot disks for emulators
« Reply #8 on: December 14, 2003, 01:42:48 AM »

You wrote:
Quote

3. I used TSGui to copy the .IMA file (previously saved onto a .adf file by using ADF viewer on Windows) and it warned me that the final floppy would be smaller than the original custom amiga floppy. I accepted and began to make the disk.


This sounds totally correct to me. Just choose PC0 instead of DF0 (or PC1 instead of DF1, just where this big 2MB ADF is in) as destination in TSGui. Then the warning should disappear and the floppy should be usable afterwards.

The difference between DF0 and PC0 is that DF0 has 2 heads, 80 tracks per head and 11 blocks per track (= 880 KB) while PC0 has 2 heads, 80 tracks per head and 9 blocks per track (= 720 KB).

Well, I've just found this file on my homepage: http://home.t-online.de/home/thomas-rapp/download/dosboot.zip
I don't remember what's in there, but the name suggests, it is just what you need: a bootable DOS ADF for PCTask.

Bye,
Thomas

Offline AdaTopic starter

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Re: boot disks for emulators
« Reply #9 on: December 14, 2003, 03:49:10 PM »
Hi!

Thanks for the disk, but it didn't work :( I think it's not a problem with the disk, cause the message "starten von msdos" appears on screen, but then the emulated amiga crashes and the usual guru message appears, so maybe it's a problem with Winuae of the config I'm using.

My problem was I can't mount pc0:, cause both "mount pc0:" and "mount pc0: from msdos.ima" ended with an error message. Once I'm able to mount, I suppose there will be no problem with TSGui.

I'll go on trying anyway :)

Best,

Juanma
 

Offline pjhutch

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Re: boot disks for emulators
« Reply #10 on: December 14, 2003, 04:15:30 PM »
To mount PC0 you need at least WB2.1 or later.
Also you need the PC0, PC1 DosDriver icons in Devs\DosDrivers folder (copy them from the Storage Disk).
 

Offline AdaTopic starter

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Re: boot disks for emulators
« Reply #11 on: December 14, 2003, 06:13:42 PM »
Hi!

Ok, I'm getting it (slowly :))

I've mounted PC1: by double-clicking its icon in the storage disk.

I created a custom disk named 'test'

In TSGUI, the screen appears as:

DF0: Workbench
DF1:
DF2:
DH0:
PC1: (I click here)

Then I select file->msdos.ima and press the 'file->disk' button. It begins to copy files and if I type dir pc1: in the shell, pc1: contains the command.com, etc... but how I transfer it now to the custom disk?

Oh, man, I'm getting mad with this, but I see a light in the end of the tunnel... :)

Thanks again,

Juanma
 

Offline AdaTopic starter

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Re: boot disks for emulators
« Reply #12 on: December 14, 2003, 06:14:57 PM »
Oh, I forgot, I simply double-clicked on PC1 icon to mount it, so I suppose it is assigned to DF1: automatically?

Best
 

Offline Thomas

Re: boot disks for emulators
« Reply #13 on: December 15, 2003, 12:38:48 AM »

I hope you cannot see me shaking my head. How do you want to run an emulator if you don't even know the simplest basics of data exchange.

PC0 and DF0 both refer to the first floppy drive, PC1 and DF1 refer to the second one and so on. PC* can read and write PC floppies while DF* can only read and write Amiga floppies.

Running PC* on WinUAE needs a custom ADF because standard ADFs are Amiga format only (for DF*).

Bye,
Thomas

Offline AdaTopic starter

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Re: boot disks for emulators
« Reply #14 on: December 16, 2003, 05:18:55 PM »
Ok, shame of me! :(

Now I understood. Then it should work :)

Thanks again!

Juanma