PC emulator in KCS Powerboard for A500?

Hi, this is my first post on these forums, but since I just got an Amiga again, I will probably be here quite frequently from now on...

Anyway, I am thinking of buying a KCS powerboard for my A500, and according to the documentation the KCS board has a 286 pc emulator built in. What I want to know is if this PC emulator can be used to get adf-files from the pc and then copy them to amiga disks or to a harddrive (so that they will work on the amiga). I have read that similar processes are possible with software such as Amiga Explorer, but I don't have this program, so I would love to know if I must get it or if I can use the KCS board only... if anyone has any knowledge or experience about this I would be extremely grateful for your help!

Regards,
Thomas

[Kronos]

286 ??
/me allways thought it was just an 8086 .....

But I don't see how this could help you much in the transfer
of ADFs. IMO the best way is still to use a null-modem-cable
and terminal-SW on both the A500 and your "real" PC.

The problem is that I don't have a HDD in my amiga, and getting one for the A500 seems to be a hassle... so my hope was that I could in some way transfer things via diskettes using the pc emulator... but maybe I should try and get hold of a HDD and a nullmodemcable instead...
How much do you think I should pay for a 20mb A590 HDD for the A500?

[Kronos]

You can mount DOS-disks with the normal A500 (via MSH, or
CrossDos), but since the the A500 only has a DD-floppy you
would be limited to 720k. Typical adf-file (uncompressed)
is about 1MB .....

Yeah... only problem is I don't have CrossDos, so I thought maybe the pc-emulator in the KCS board would work in some similar way to CrossDos... I don't know where to get CrossDos for the A500 either... any suggestions?

[sdesros]

Hmm...  What kickstart/workbench revision is your system?  CrossDos was included with Amiga since revision 2 AFAIK?  (Never really had AmigaOS2, had 1.3 and 3. )

Another thing you *could* do is get a CatWeasel Mk3 for your PC.  Then you could plug it into a PC drive and write floppies in Amiga Format that your A500 could read.

I don't know if the Catweasel comes with software to write ADF's into Amiga format, but you might be able to use it Amiga software via an Amiga Emulator on your PC.

Otherwise, I'd say if you can try and track down an external floppy drive for the amiga.  Then you can possibly have a boot disk with basic workbench, term program and a program to convert ADF's and then a blank disk in your other drive.  Then you could connect the PC to the Amiga with a null-modem cable, transfer the file over by dumping it to the amiga floppy (if it can fit) otherwise you might have to have 2+megs of ram and setup a ramdisk and save the ADF transfered to there.  Afterwhich you conver the ADF to floppy.  

Seems like a lot of bother.  Would be easier with some sort of harddrive attachement.

I have 1.3 in my Amiga, but I have no WB program disk... anyway, I read a little about Cloantos Amiga Explorer, and it seems that it can copy files from the PC directly onto an Amiga Floppy using a null-modem-cable.. or at least that's how I understood it... this means I won't really need a harddrive for the transfer of files. However, I suspect that 1mb RAM is preferrable and right now I don't have that (I'm getting a KCS board in 2 weeks).

Your solution with an extradrive might be a possibilty, since I already have an extradrive.. however, to make all this work I believe 1mb of RAM is preferrable as well.

OH man, I really hope I can get my hands on an A590... I have a guy who wants to sell a whole package of stuff including an A590 HD... if worst comes to worst I suppose I'll just have to buy the entire package off of him and then sell what I don't need...

[sdesros]

I'm reading up on Amiga Explorer.  You will need a workbench disk to begin with, other then that I'm not quite sure what else you need (ram, etc?).

I'm also unsure if AmigaExplorer will be able to do anything more then transfer the ADF file over to your Amiga.  I'm not sure if it could do the raw track-by-track writing in order to convert an ADF file to floppy.  Which means you'd still need to worry about storing the ADF file on the amiga, and then executing a program that converts it to an amiga floppy.

Hmm...  Say, would there be a utility on the PC that would convert ADF's to DM2's?  Maybe those would be a little smaller then ADF files themselves?

I guess the PC is not able to write the ADF Tracks to an Amiga disk.
A possible way would be to compress the adf so that it fits on 720kB disk or to split the file on 2 Disks.
Then you need MessyDOS from Aminet (and the compressor program) on an Amiga floppy disk, so that the A500 can read it.
This way I transfered the files to my A500 without hd also.

What format do the files need to be to be playable on amiga then? I guess ADF is not readable by the amiga as is, it needs to be converted but into what? And can that conversion be made on the pc?

As for the 720kb disk idea, it's basically the same concept people use with CrossDos (I think) but I have none of those programs on an amiga disk, so if noone feels like sending me a disk with some such prog (freeware of course) I guess I'm stuck.

[Kronos]

ADF-files are diskimages, mostly of disks with non-standard
formated floppies.

So the ADF-file is written back to a empty disk track-per-track.

Ok, but that only happens if you copy them back on an amiga right?

[Aegis]

Amiga Explorer can write ADFs from a PC to an Amiga floppy disk drive - with the client running on the Amiga, Windows displays an "Explorer" type interface which lists the Amiga floppy drives, hard disks and ROM - AFAIK you just stick a blank disk in the Amiga and drag & drop the ADF over the floppy drive icon to write the disk.

You will need Workbench however to run the client - you might be able to get away with a game disk that drops you into Workbench (like Defender of the crown) but I can't confirm that - Amiga Explorer does have an option to activate the client program on the Amiga from the PC but you're still gonna need some kind of rudimentary Amiga DOS.

Ok I see... but I need WB 2 or higher? Or was that just my misunderstanding? Because I can probably get a hold of WB 1.3.... 2 and up might be harder though.

[Aegis]

Cloanto's website - www.cloanto.com - says that Amiga Explorer will run on all Amigas from 1.2 upwards.