HELP! Cannot transfer files from PC to Amiga 500 in ANY way!

[TribbleSmasher]

All in all, consider investing in...

• The ACA 500 Plus expansion card
• The X-Surf 500 peripheral card
• AmigaOS 3.1.4 (including a ROM chip and a set of system software floppies)
• The Roadshow TCP/IP stack

Can you sum up the overall cost of this? Would it be cheaper to try and get a working A600 instead which can use PCMCIA?

[giZmo350]

@First Ninja

Why do you continue to change thread titles and basically hi-jack the original user’s thread? How is it you have this ability? By doing this you are essentially “erasing” the owners thread as when titles are clicked, the forum jumps to the last post. Unless a user were to deliberately navigate back to the first post in the thread, a user will never see the original user’s post at all! This is just wrong. If you want to contribute by posting a solution that has no relevance to the original thread topic, start a new thread. Look, I’m not criticizing your “solution” posts but your method is highly irregular. Please reconsider from doing this. Thanks, we all enjoy your input.

[scuzzb494]

Or the OP could simply buy' Amiga Format Cover Disk - Collection No.8' from Ebay currently £1.99 which when loaded lets the user see PC disks. It really isn't that hard especially if the end user wants to experience life as it was all those years ago.

An ADF file on a PC compresses to 625K ZIP  that fits on a 720K disk that can transfer to the A500 and with DFace and Unzip open the file. Then use an ADF writer to create the Amiga disk.

And then ... for the 720K disk. This.

https://techatplay.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/how-to-format-floppy-disk-to-720k-in-windows/

[First Ninja]

Certainly.

• The ACA 500 Plus expansion card + The X-Surf 500 peripheral card (including a free version of AmiTCP) from Icomp.de: €132.75 + €78.66 = €211.41
• AmigaOS 3.1.4 (including a ROM chip and a set of system software floppies) from AmigaStore.eu: €34.94
• Optionally, but highly recommended: The Roadshow TCP/IP stack from AmigaShop.org: €25

Grand total without Roadshow, excluding shipping fees but including EU sales tax: €246.35. It may be hefty at first, but given what you get for your money - a brand new processor, 16x more RAM memory than a stock Amiga 500, hard disk capability, real Ethernet connectivity, a free TCP/IP stack with DHCP capability and the very latest version of AmigaOS, I think it's actually quite a lot of features at a resonable cost. Moreover, your Amiga 500 will be a citizen on your home network - and that alone should be incentive enough to break the piggy bank. Here's what it all looks like, by the way:



For anyone who'd like their desk tidy, an acrylic case for the ACA 500 Plus and the X-Surf 500 can be bought from PlexliLaser.de for €22.37. Here's another photo showing it:

[lauramacfan]

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for your replies and suggestions! I really appreciated all of them, even if unfortunately I won’t be able to spend more than $60 for this A500. I really cannot afford anything in this particular moment, and since this won’t be my “final” Amiga (my dream is, in the future, to own another A1200)  all I need is a cheap solution. What @scuzzb494 suggested (thank you!) is probably the best one for my problem.

I wanted to update you about my initial post: yesterday  I finally received the new null-modem cable from Monoprice. Making sure that the settings were the same on both iMac (running Windows 7) and Amiga 500 (OS 1.3), I tried to make them communicate with each other using Amiga Explorer installed on my iMac.

Here’s what I discovered after many attempts using different settings: if I use the recommended settings (Baud Rate: 19200, Buffer size: 4096, etc...) the **BREAK line never appears in the Amiga shell. On the contrary, it appears when I lower the baud rate to 9600 on both computers. Unfortunately, no matter what I try, I keep on getting the ”Error reading from serial port” on my computer, and “Unable to load RAM:Setup: file in not an object module” on my Amiga. COM3 is also the only port that works.  I didn’t think about replacing the DB9 to USB cable. The one I’m using is almost 15 years old and may be damaged or incompatible with Win 7.

@OldAmigan: unfortunately my external floppy drive plugged to my iMac doesn’t recognize 720k Amiga floppies. When I insert one it asks me to format it. Because of that, I can’t even format it at 720k (only 1.44mb, otherwise it would always abort the operation giving me an error). I tried everything, but I believe the USB floppy drive that I’m using is too new for this purpose. I read that some older models (such as LACIE) can accomplish this task, but if I don’t know exactly what to buy and if it’s compatible with my iMac I don’t want to waste more money.

@First Ninja: to think that I had all those expansions for my old Amiga 1200...I spent so much for it. Cannot spend the same amount of money anymore. It was different back then. I still have the XSurf 100, NetPCM010, Poseidon, EasyNet, AdaPCMCFL original floppy disks that I purchased years ago. Although I sold the cards , I still I have all the cables, PCMCIA adapter, CF cards, and even a wifi network card that I was never able to use. I wish I could use this stuff with my A500 but there’s no compatibility (especially because I only have a KS 1.3). An external CF adapter and internal 40gb hdd used to be all I really needed back then to transfer data PC->A1200.

At this point I’m really at a loss....

[lauramacfan]

Or the OP could simply buy' Amiga Format Cover Disk - Collection No.8' from Ebay currently £1.99 which when loaded lets the user see PC disks. It really isn't that hard especially if the end user wants to experience life as it was all those years ago.

I just purchased it Not sure how long it will take to arrive here in the US from the UK, especially during this pandemic. Hopefully international mail won’t be suspended again! Keeping my finger crossed... 

[scuzzb494]

Hi

A couple of other disks that are very useful Amiga Computing Issue 51 Coverdisk34 August 1992 called Arcadia and CUAmiga 100 DOpus 4 and or Amiga Computing June 1992 Issue 49 with SID v2.00. You are trying to trackdown software called MultiDOS. This lets you format DOS disks. Saves you having to do it on a PC.

Most copies of Amiga Computing cover disks from the 1992 era self boot into their own version of Workbench. By following the guides online and copying a few disks from the CLI [shell] you can create your own Workbench disk. Its very easy. This morning I copied the files over from ARCADIA MultiDOS disk to my own Bench disk which involved LIBS,L,C and DEVS files and then from a simple command

PCMOUNTALL FROM devs:mountlist.multidos

I was able to mount both Df0 and Df1 as PC drives [ MD0 and MD1]. Better still with the command:

PCFORMAT DRIVE MD0: NAME [ dusk name ]

I was able to format a HD disk with the corner taped over and then could see that on a Windows PC. Amazing. You need SID or DOpus cus you can't see files without icons in 1.3 The software isn't suppose to work under WB 2.0 but I got it working on 1.3. I have photographed everything and will appear as a blog in a week or so.

MultiDOS came on a few cover disks.

https://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog_october20_2/car_sbd_161020_03.jpg

The Amiga was seeing DOS disks a long long time before folk got use to downloading off the internet. So there is plenty around that will let you do it. Having a file manager like DOpus really helps seeing those files that are invisible to 1.3.

Using that FORMAT line I gave in my link may work on a USB drive. But with the PCFormat too in MultiDOS you don't need to. I didn't know if MultiDOS worked so I didn't suggest that one but if you see it going cheap I'd grab a copy.

Good luck

Er sorry almost forgot. Research creating your own self booting disk and the INSTALL command that prepares disks. You only need half a dozen files to create a self booting disk. Knowing how to do this and how to customise the disk thro the CLI [ shell ] is the way 1.3 works really. The basic 1.3 Workbench is very limited. It needs extra 'umph' to get it working to your benefit. Great fun.

[lauramacfan]

Hi everyone,

I have an update on my Mac->Amiga transfer issues, and not a very pleasant one unfortunately. I ended up purchasing both CrossDOS and MultiDOS on floppy disks, but for the latter I’ll have to wait until February because it comes from the UK (I live in the US).

So this is what happened: I inserted the CrossDOS 4.02 floppy disk in my Amiga 500 running my old Workbench release 1.3 GAMMA version 34.4 main floppy disk (the only one I have because I lost the "Extras" long time ago). I clicked on the large software icon called “CrossDOS MSDOS_FileSystem” and noticed various icons such as “Attach”, “Attach.DI0”, “Attach.DI1”, “Install_MSDOSFS”, and so on.

Problem #1: because my Amiga 500 has no hard disk, I cannot install CrossDOS. I read the documentation (“READ.ME”, “Tech_Ref”, and especially “In Case of Difficulty”), but it's not helping me to figure out how to use this software.

Problem #2: I launched “Attach.DI0”, but my Amiga still showed floppy disks formatted on my iMac as "DF0:BAD" (these floppies work and are tested). I wrote .adf files on some of them with Total Commander, but the situation didn’t change on my Amiga.

I’m pretty sure I'm doing something wrong here. I see that CrossDOS has a folder called Systems that contains other options, such as “MFormat”. I wonder if I should try to format a floppy disk with CrossDOS and see if the usb floppy drive connected to my iMac will recognize and read/write it?
This is a sad situation. Maybe my Amiga 500 is too “basic” for all this? I’m getting very confused and frustrated. I really wanted this to work but I can't make CrossDOS work on my Amiga, so I don’t see any other option but to buy a Gotek drive soon.

[lauramacfan]

This morning I copied the files over from ARCADIA MultiDOS disk to my own Bench disk which involved LIBS,L,C and DEVS files and then from a simple command

PCMOUNTALL FROM devs:mountlist.multidos

I was able to mount both Df0 and Df1 as PC drives [ MD0 and MD1]. Better still with the command:

PCFORMAT DRIVE MD0: NAME [ dusk name ]

I was able to format a HD disk with the corner taped over and then could see that on a Windows PC. Amazing. You need SID or DOpus cus you can't see files without icons in 1.3 The software isn't suppose to work under WB 2.0 but I got it working on 1.3. I have photographed everything and will appear as a blog in a week or so.

Thank you for your advice, @scuzzb494. As soon as I get the MultiDOS floppy I'll also try this and see what happens.

[giZmo350]

Hi Laura, hope you had great T-Day! First off, what version of OSX are you using? Anything after Snow Leopard is just not going to work if you’re formatting the floppy from the MAC side. You’ll have to boot to your Win 7 side and format as a 720K disk. I tried using a 1.44MB disk and version 4.02a of CrossDos on the Amiga Format disk won’t read 1.44MB disks. I don’t know if newer CrossDos versions work with 1.44 disks.

To format a 1.44MB disk as 720K in Windows press the Start Button and type CMD. Right click on CMD and “run as administrator”.

Type:    format A: /FS:FAT /T:80 /N:9   this will format the 1.44 floppy as 720K.  Be sure to put tape on the left side hole.

Now here’s the catch with ADFs. Most are 880K and won’t fit on the 720K formatted floppy. However, if you zip the ADF first (in my test case 880K ADF compressed down to 632K) it will fit but you’re going to have get an Amiga UnZip program on a floppy also to unzip the ADF - I would assume to RAM:

Second, I have the exact same Amiga Format disk #8 and went thru the procedure with a 720K formatted disk.

1. Loaded the CrossDos file by double clicking the Attach.DI0 icon. Once successfully loaded the program responded with “Done”.

2. Inserted the 720K floppy and it was read just fine (with the zip file) however with two icons. One displayed the disk as Unrecognizable and a second as the title of the 720K floppy (named TEST) that I could open - no problem. Odd. Like Matt said "Windows doesn't really handle USB floppy drives very well" except for transferring files.

That’s about it really. Maybe someone else could add to this for additional help?

At least if you just write a zip file under 720K to the floppy using Windows you'll be able test thru to a visible disk on the Amiga. Hope this helps a little.   

[lauramacfan]

Hi GiZmo, I had a great Thanksgiving, thanks! Hope you did too! 

The versions of OS X I used are High Sierra and Catalina, but I must specify that for this task I'm mainly using Windows 7, either running in dual boot or in a virtual machine. I tried so many times to format floppy disks to 720k in the Command Prompt with the same command you wrote in your post, to no avail (I can successfully format them with the regular Format a: command, but that’s about it). I also tried with Format a: /f:720, but I always get the same error: “Parameters not supported”. Just in case, I installed XP on the virtual machine and tried the same procedure, but still got the same error.

I made sure to put back the piece of black tape to cover the second hole of the floppy disks each time I inserted them into the disk drive of my Amiga, but I’d still get the "DF0:BAD" or "DF0:DOSc" icons. When I saw the "DF0:DOSc" icon I though "Well well, that's an improvement" and immediately launched CrossDOS, but obviously my excitement was short lived when nothing changed after loading Attach.DI0 (Amiga asks me to switch between the Workbench floppy and the CrossDOS one at least 4 times just for completing this task!). Those floppy disks can still be formatted successfully in their original format on the Amiga after covering the second hole, and under Windows with the Format a: command after removing the piece of tape, but that’s all I can do. I cannot format them to 720k, nor can my Amiga read them afterwards. I’m basically stuck.

At this point I believe the culprit is my cheap external Mitsumi USB floppy drive: it's either defective, too new, or incompatible. The reason why I'm saying this is also because while I’m having those problems in Windows, Mac OS doesn’t even recognize this FDD and it doesn’t show up under Disk Utility.
I was watching some old USB floppy drives such as the LACIE Pocket 706018 MyFloppy3 that I read on some forums should do the trick; instead I decided to go ahead and purchase a Gotek drive because I am not willing at the moment to waste more time and money for a device that I don’t even know for sure if it will solve my problem. And believe me, I’m not too happy about this. I was hoping for a more “traditional” (translation: old fashioned) way to transfer adf files from computer to Amiga, but I guess I’ll have to accept this arrangement until the day I’ll be able to find/afford another Amiga 1200.


PS: Wish I could find a purist who hates their Amiga 1200 so much to the point they would trade it for my classic Amiga 500 with original floppy drive, box, internal Gotek drive, UK power supply (that I don't need because I use my US version), and memory expansion included. I would gladly part from it, and even add the original Amiga tank mouse as a gift...I'm sure they would have the experience to enjoy this A500 much more than I do

[nbache]

I made sure to put back the piece of black tape to cover the second hole of the floppy disks each time I inserted them into the disk drive of my Amiga

[...]

Those floppy disks can still be formatted successfully [...] under Windows with the Format a: command after removing the piece of tape, but that’s all I can do. I cannot format them to 720k, nor can my Amiga read them afterwards. I’m basically stuck.

I may be wrong, but I would have thought you needed to cover the hole when formatting on the PC, so Windows sees the disk as a 720K one.

If you format it with the hole free, you are probably creating a 1.44MB disk, which obviously can't be read on the Amiga with or without tape (unless you have a HD floppy drive).

Best regards,

Niels

[giZmo350]

Hi again Laura, Please make sure that both holes are covered on the 1.44mb disk when you format using your external USB drive.

Then using Win 7 (which is what I used with my test).....

Click the Start Button and type CMD. Right click on CMD and “run as administrator”.

Type:    format A: /FS:FAT /T:80 /N:9   this will format the 1.44 floppy as 720K.

Name the disk TEST or something. That's all that is needed to then read the disk on the Amiga (after firing up CrossDoss).

This work perfectly for me.   

[scuzzb494]

This is how I wrote an ADF file to an Amiga disk tranferred from PC to an Amiga without a cable.
The whole process has formed a series of blogs on the issue. Great fun.

Baybench 1.3 - ADF and TSGUI.

https://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog_december20/scuzzblogddecember20_0501.htm

What I tried to do was create an Amiga disk on a 500 using only none-Workbench disks.
The aim being to customise so I could tranfer a ZIP from a PC and unarchive it and
from the ADF image create an actual Amiga disk using my version of 1.3.

HOW I DID IT:

Baybench 1.3 - Make your own WB.

https://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog_december20/scuzzblogddecember20_0201.htm

Baybench 1.3 - Adding Disk Master.

https://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog_december20/scuzzblogddecember20_0302.htm

Baybench 1.3 - Adding MultiDOS.

https://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog_december20/scuzzblogddecember20_0301.htm

Baybench 1.3 - UNZIP and ADF.

https://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog_december20/scuzzblogddecember20_0401.htm

And finally .... Baybench 1.3 - ADF and TSGUI.

https://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog_december20/scuzzblogddecember20_0501.htm