FASTEST,EAYSIEST,CHEAPEST WAY TO TRANSFER ADF IMAGES BETWEEN PC AND AMIGA(mostly 500)

[Amiga_Nut]

Hi,

If you use Cloanto's Amiga Forever on your PC, you wouldn't have to go through all that trouble. Just boot up AF and play or run the program you want, and it is rather cheap. i believe about $39.95 or less for a digital download, and it can be cheaper if you owned AF before.

This also saves your Amiga 500 hardware, unless for some reason you like burning up old silicon.

smerf

Talk about missing the whole point of OP original intention lol

[ikonsgr]

AmigaBruno, i'm sorry to hear that you have these problems, but since you already made a lot of successful transfers, i don't think that the problems you encounter can possibly caused by  the cable or software.
After what you told us, i've update the ebay listing putting the warning note i already had  (about having both pc and amiga turned off before connecting cable) to a  much more visible place,and adding never to unplug cable when amiga is  turned on, just to be "on safe side"!
Now about the holding screws,maybe you are right that i should put them too, but i assume there was no need to put these, as in most cases, someone will have  the cable connected only when he make transfers, so  screwing/unscrewing  on both ends,every time he needs to make some transfers, (screwing only on amiga side,doesn't prevent  the possibility of unplugging on pc side, so both connectors need to be screwed),  is a rather tedious task that no one would do!
Moreover, the 25pin Dsub connector fits very tight on both amigas and pc parallel ports i've tested, so i never thought this would happen to anyone.
I really hope that parallel port is not damaged, although i believe that damage will possibly be made in the "opposite" case of yours, e.g. connecting the parallel cable while BOTH pc and amiga are turned on (although i personally, unplug/plug cable many times when only amiga is off and everything seems to works fine!).

p.s. Since you bought the kit with the pci parallel card, try to use it too, and see if it works. Drivers can be found here . The specific pci card has been tested with my pc and works perfect!

[AAACHIPSET]

i used to struggle to get files  from pc to  amiga ..now  i can either burn a cd ..or even quicker put them on a usb flashdrive ..walk to my bedroom an plug in my amiga ...i love usb ..

[ikonsgr]

That's very nice, but what was the cost to be able to do this? :rolleyes:
Judging from the machines you have in your signature, i guess the... "bill" was pretty large, right?

[AmigaBruno]

Unless the cable got damaged when it was pulled out, I'd suggest you test your parallel port on the Amiga. Have an old printer lying around or anything?

If you're using the parallel port card that came with the kit you'll need the drivers from the website for it.  IRQ settings sound like maybe your motherboard is too old to support it though?

All that has happened which may have caused all this trouble AFAIK is that the cable fell out of the Amiga parallel port while both computers were switched on. I have read the documentation about troubleshooting. It was working before this happened. Of course, I downloaded the drivers from the seller's site which also contains 32 and 64 bit versions of the ADF transfer software. AFAIK I have installed these drivers through the Windows found new hardware wizard. I told it to include the relevant directory in the search for drivers. After this, Windows has reported and is still reporting that it's found two multifunction devices, which seem to be this same PCI card, because I haven't fitted anything else except a new mouse, which is the same make and model as the old mouse, but I plugged it into a different USB port. I don't know how old this PC is, because I bought it from eBay last year. It's called a Fujutsu Siemens Esprimo and has a 64bit AMD CPU. Windows XP Professional was pre installed and I haven't set up any additional accounts such as Administrator, but the default account seems to have Administrator privileges and when I used the Command Prompt (MS-DOS) to try and get access to more settings under Paradise it said I was the Administrator.

Unfortunately, I have nothing else that I can plug into the Amiga parallel port. I think that if I don't get this sorted out myself, then I can get someone at Amiga North Thames group to diagnose the fault on April 14. I've seen one of them making modifications to Amiga motherboards and he had a look at my clock battery, which wasn't leaking.

So basically, whether or not this has caused the problem, these plugs should be supplied with screws to hold them in, but I don't know exactly what type of screws.

I've only just noticed that the seller has replied, so I'll reply to him ASAP.

[AmigaBruno]

AmigaBruno, i'm sorry to hear that you have these problems, but since you already made a lot of successful transfers, i don't think that the problems you encounter can possibly caused by  the cable or software.
After what you told us, i've update the ebay listing putting the warning note i already had  (about having both pc and amiga turned off before connecting cable) to a  much more visible place,and adding never to unplug cable when amiga is  turned on, just to be "on safe side"!
Now about the holding screws,maybe you are right that i should put them too, but i assume there was no need to put these, as in most cases, someone will have  the cable connected only when he make transfers, so  screwing/unscrewing  on both ends,every time he needs to make some transfers, (screwing only on amiga side,doesn't prevent  the possibility of unplugging on pc side, so both connectors need to be screwed),  is a rather tedious task that no one would do!
Moreover, the 25pin Dsub connector fits very tight on both amigas and pc parallel ports i've tested, so i never thought this would happen to anyone.
I really hope that parallel port is not damaged, although i believe that damage will possibly be made in the "opposite" case of yours, e.g. connecting the parallel cable while BOTH pc and amiga are turned on (although i personally, unplug/plug cable many times when only amiga is off and everything seems to works fine!).

p.s. Since you bought the kit with the pci parallel card, try to use it too, and see if it works. Drivers can be found here . The specific pci card has been tested with my pc and works perfect!

The Amiga parallel plug is very loose on my Amiga A500 Plus, which is why it fell out.

As I said above, I have plugged in the PCI parallel card, but can't get it to work.

Further details are that my BIOS is a Phoenix cME FirstBIOS Desktop Pro, Copyright 1985-2006 Phoenix and Copyright 2003-2006 Fujitsu Siemens. It's causing a conflict with the original parallel port and needs its IRQ or something else to be set, or the original parallel port to be disabled. This is at the BIOS level before any operating system has loaded. Of course, this is because it's a PC. An Amiga would just auto configure. I even tried changing the port address in the ADF transfer software to AD00 like in your graphic, but it didn't make any difference. I don't know anything else I can do except plug the PCI card into the only other free slot, but I doubt that would work either. How can I stop the PCI card from conflicting?

Of course, I've been doing all the transfers and attempts at more transfers using Windows. I have also got Ubuntu Linux, but this software won't run under that system, not even using WINE.

[ikonsgr]

Changing the pci slot is a good practice to solve an irq conflict on old motherboards.
Also, old bios usually offer 2 or 3 alternative settings for the on board parallel port. If i remember correctly something like 378h or 278h. The default usually is 378h, try to change this with bios and see if this resolves the conflict.

[AmigaBruno]

Changing the pci slot is a good practice to solve an irq conflict on old motherboards.
Also, old bios usually offer 2 or 3 alternative settings for the on board parallel port. If i remember correctly something like 378h or 278h. The default usually is 378h, try to change this with bios and see if this resolves the conflict.

I've now tried changing the BIOS settings to 278h, but that didn't work. I also tried changing all other BIOS settings I could think of which may be connected with it. The conflict and the same old error message still remain.

All that's left to try now is plugging the PCI card into the only other empty PCI slot. I'll let you know how I get on.

[AmigaBruno]

I've finally got round to unplugging the PCI card and plugging it into the only other spare slot.

The result of this is that the conflict has been resolved and Windoze has installed the drivers for the PCI parallel card as well as the multifunction device, which is PCI LPT!!!!

All that's left is to connect the Amiga and PC parallel ports together. Unfortunately, someone has been helping me to tidy up my flat and it looks like a small tornado has hit it! When I manage to connect the parallel ports together, then I'll tell you whether or not they work.

[AmigaBruno]

Finally, some good news! The ADF transfer kit is working again!!

The bad news is I don't know why it's working again. :crazy:

After installing the new PCI parallel port, I found I couldn't get it to work with this transfer kit.

What eventually worked was plugging the cable into the PC motherboard parallel port, setting the port address to $0378 (a new address of $4000 had appeared on the menu), booting the Amiga from the Paradise floppy disk in df1: with the disk write protected and having the disk to download onto in df0: . I have only ever transferred onto disks in df0: because that's the default and it worked. I don't know how to change this to  df1: or dh0: . I've recently bought a hard drive from eBay, but I haven't got it yet.

I only had one floppy disk left to copy stuff onto, but this gave an error message something like "Can't write. Please replace volume Workbench 1.3 into any drive". This error only comes up with certain software. After getting this error tonight with the ZXAM Spectrum emulator, I managed to transfer Arkanoid onto the same floppy disk, with no error messages at all.

So, to sum up, although this kit is very useful, it's also very temperamental, and I think we should have a topic on here where everyone gives details of anything that stops it from working and how they managed to get it working again.

[AmigaBruno]

Finally, some good news! The ADF transfer kit is working again!!

The bad news is I don't know why it's working again. :crazy:

After installing the new PCI parallel port, I found I couldn't get it to work with this transfer kit.

What eventually worked was plugging the cable into the PC motherboard parallel port, setting the port address to $0378 (a new address of $4000 had appeared on the menu), booting the Amiga from the Paradise floppy disk in df1: with the disk write protected and having the disk to download onto in df0: . I have only ever transferred onto disks in df0: because that's the default and it worked. I don't know how to change this to  df1: or dh0: . I've recently bought a hard drive from eBay, but I haven't got it yet. :confused:

I only had one floppy disk left to copy stuff onto, but this gave an error message something like "Can't write. Please replace volume Workbench 1.3 into any drive". This error only comes up with certain software. After getting this error tonight with the ZXAM Spectrum emulator, I managed to transfer Arkanoid onto the same floppy disk, with no error messages at all. :laugh1:

So, to sum up, although this kit is very useful, it's also very temperamental, and I think we should have a topic on here where everyone gives details of anything that stops it from working and how they managed to get it working again. :confused:

[Iggy]

I'm using one of these.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Amiga-500-1000-2000-3000-Floppy-Simulator-w-MPDOS-Pro-/321096932559?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEWNX%3AIT&nma=true&si=YTYHs8bhtECmFxprwITbDOEF3mc%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

The neat part is that its transparent to the Amiga.

[AmigaBruno]

I'm using one of these.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Amiga-500-1000-2000-3000-Floppy-Simulator-w-MPDOS-Pro-/321096932559?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEWNX%3AIT&nma=true&si=YTYHs8bhtECmFxprwITbDOEF3mc%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

The neat part is that its transparent to the Amiga.

So, this cable connects to a PC and allows Amiga users to use a PC as a server or peripheral. The bad news is that it plugs into your internal floppy drive interface. The same seller also has another cable, which can also be used with an Atari 8 bit computer, but that connects to a joystick port.

[AmigaBruno]

Amazingly enough, my Amiga A500 GVP HD8+ SCSI hard drive unit with 42Mb Quantum drive fitted has just arrived only 3 days after I won the eBay auction! The item details said it has Workbench 2.0 already installed.

I'd really like to be able to transfer some ADF files directly onto this drive, but my supplied Amiga autoboot Paradise software disk is set up to copy these files onto df0: . It just boots up, then says it's establishing a connection, but never says that it has connected. Resetting by pressing ESC, then Return doesn't give me any prompt which enables me to change the drive to any other drive. Can someone tell me the easiest way to do it? I'll also need to read up on and install WHDload.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Amazingly enough, my Amiga A500 GVP HD8+ SCSI hard drive unit with 42Mb Quantum drive fitted has just arrived only 3 days after I won the eBay auction! The item details said it has Workbench 2.0 already installed.

I'd really like to be able to transfer some ADF files directly onto this drive, but my supplied Amiga autoboot Paradise software disk is set up to copy these files onto df0: . It just boots up, then says it's establishing a connection, but never says that it has connected. Resetting by pressing ESC, then Return doesn't give me any prompt which enables me to change the drive to any other drive. Can someone tell me the easiest way to do it? I'll also need to read up on and install WHDload.

You're about to move beyond the ADF transfer kit at this point.  The easiest thing for you to do now is to pick up a cheap external CD drive that plugs into the SCSI port on the GVP unit, then when you need to transfer files just burn them onto CD with your PC.  

[AmigaBruno]

You're about to move beyond the ADF transfer kit at this point.  The easiest thing for you to do now is to pick up a cheap external CD drive that plugs into the SCSI port on the GVP unit, then when you need to transfer files just burn them onto CD with your PC.  

It took me about 4 months to get some kind of hard drive device like this because I haven't got all that much money at the moment and I just couldn't afford it. I bought this one a day after being beaten in a similar auction right at the end. I was determined not to be beaten again and even had to raise my bid at the end, while in the middle of watching some sci fi. At the moment I'm worried about not being able to have a social life this weekend or next, as well as paying for my broadband, cable TV and landline phone. I still need to check the figures for my budget, though. I often used to use Personal Finance Manager on my old Amigas and it may be a good idea to start using it again.

After plugging in and using my new old hard drive unit, I was shocked to find that only 10Mb of the 42Mb drive space remained! I immediately started worrying about if I could even fit the Lattice C compiler, which I think has 6 ADF files, onto the remaining space. I've recently been reading the 2 Abacus/Data Becker books about C programming and they seem to make sense to me! It looks like I should replace this hard drive or fit a second one via SCSI, but I'm not sure if it would be an external drive with its own case, an internal one fitted externally, or an internal drive which I can somehow fit internally into this unit. After this shock, I was pleasantly surprised looking at some of the RAM usage figures from one of the menus in Personal Paint, as well as looking at the figures on the menu bar of my Workbench screen. After some calculations to check everything, it seems I now have 3Mb RAM instead of the previous 1Mb RAM. This is although the eBay listing said it have no RAM fitted. The Deluxe Paint animation "Cry", now runs, but there's still a problem with the GFA BASIC "Pogo Sprites" program, which I ran once or in one session several times, while loading and running all the examples, but ever since then it's refused to run, saying the program is too long, or there's not enough RAM. It seems to me that the GFA menus have somehow changed since my first session, but I'm not sure.

To sum up, I'm not even going to bid on any external CD SCSI drives for at least a week from now, and when I do, I don't know how long it will take for me to succeed and actually get one. This is why I'd like to know how to change the Paradise default setting of saving to df0: to dh0: or if that's even possible for all the software I may try to do that with. I think I may have to change this at the PC end, but I'm not sure. I don't want to go for about another 2 weeks with my ADF transfer kit not working again! Another problem is that a shop on my doorstep has now stopped selling floppy disks. I've found 10 left over from several years ago, which I may be able to use after I check they're blank or what's on them. I hope I can find a shop that sells them, instead of having to wait for more to arrive from eBay.