My first Amiga 4000, how to install Amiga OS?

[arjanv]

Hi,

I've got my first Amiga 4000, and workbench was installed but i've messed up partitions and won't boot workbench anymore.

I've got a original OS 3.5 CD here.

How to install Amiga OS?

Should a A4000 also show the kickrom(purple screen)?

thank you.

[Chucky]

Purple screen is only shown if there is no bootable device.   so a HD partition with bootable flag ticked should give you a CLI..

you need to start with your installdisk.   you cannot boot on CD on An Amiga,.

[BozzerBigD]

@Chucky

You can boot from a CD on a CD32 SX-1/SX32 system ;-)

[magnetic]

Hey welcome and congratulations you have the flagship amiga many ppl wish they had! Anyway, you will need the Workbench 3.1 disks to install the os and prep the HD. These are sold by numerous amiga dealers worldwide and are reasonably priced.

[goldfish]

Hi

Does that mean Amiga A4000 still needs CDrom drivers like A1200 and are not in the rom chips ? I Would of thought the CDrom drivers would be on the roms as the A4000 comes with a CDrom drive...

[kolla]

I Would of thought the CDrom drivers would be on the roms as the A4000 comes with a CDrom drive...

They were never shipped with CDROM drive, as far as I know.

[BozzerBigD]

@kolla

Crazy! Commodore produce the CDTV with all that investment in the CD-Rom technology as the future and then don't really support it with the AGA machines until the CD32! It's like Commodore's dalliance with LCD technology. Initially on the forefront of US LCD technology and then they sold it all off before laptops took off! Bad bad decisions :-(

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Not sure if it will be helpful to you but I created a two-part video showing the install process for 3.9 on Youtube a few years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCMw8bStvG4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufCuW--Q2nA

See if you can avoid making the mistakes I made.  

Btw you can still buy 3.9 here:

http://www.vesalia.de/e_os39.htm

[Thomas]

Btw you can still buy 3.9 here:

Doesn't help, does it? You need something on floppy disk which boots the computer and has CD drivers.

All you need is on the 3.5 CD, but without CD drivers you cannot read it.

BTW, 3.1 floppies don't help, either. You can boot the Amiga and install OS 3.1, but it does not have CD drivers. You also need IDEfix software or something similar to recognise the CD drive.

Unless the CD drive is a SCSI drive connected to a SCSI controller, probably on an accelerator. Then the CD drive is recognised and you can use the CD0 driver which comes with the 3.1 floppies.

Or in case the accelerator is a CyberstormPPC or MK3, then you might be able to boot from the SCSI CD drive by setting the relevant options in the firmware menu.

[SACC-guy]

Hi,

I've got my first Amiga 4000, and workbench was installed but i've messed up partitions and won't boot workbench anymore.

I've got a original OS 3.5 CD here.

How to install Amiga OS?

Should a A4000 also show the kickrom(purple screen)?

thank you.

or you can use the emergency disk that should have come with the machine.
It's made when installing the 3.5 or 3.9 system..

BTW, Welcome!

[shaf]

on reboot hold the 2 mouse buttons and you should be able to see the autoconfig screen which identifies the type of controller used.

[nicholas]

Plug the hard drive into a PC. Mount it in WinUAE and install the OS, then put it back in the A4000.

[amiga1260]

On the Workbench 3.1 you get a Commodore CD Filesystem.

[kolla]

Crazy!

A little late to be shocked about CBM's bad decision making, isn't it?

Remember, when the A4000 was launched, CDROM drives weren't cheap, and IDE was still kind of a new thing, CDROM drives were actually mostly SCSI still. Making CD drive standard would have put the cost of the A4000 even higher than it already was. Main media at the time was still floppies, and they were plentiful, and pros already had networking. Both CDTV and CD32 use custom CD drives, because neither IDE nor SCSI drives were cheap at the time (and they were clunky as heck).

[kolla]

On the Workbench 3.1 you get a Commodore CD Filesystem.

It comes with lots of issues though, you may want to use cachecdfs instead or simply wait for OS 3.1.4.