PCMCIA CARD AND BOOT DISK PROBLEMS- WORKBENCH 3.0

[wrath of khan]

Hi, I bought a pcmcia card and cf card to transfer files between amiga and pc.
It comes with a boot/driver disk. I cannot get it to open or work. I have attached a photo of the read me.

I am new to amiga os- I am not sure if the issue is with my workbench disk- seems theres an error on it- well it was stored somewhere for many years... it does boot though. I was unable to copy the workbench to a blank floppy either- maybe the floppies are rubbish too-

Am I doing something wrong or is it just my wb disk?

https://imgur.com/vIh12Ok

[Steady]

Hi Wrath of Khan,

What Amiga do you have? A600 or A1200?

If A600 you need to be sure that you have Kickstart 37.300 or better. When Workbench loads, select About menu item from the Workbench menu and it will tell you the Kickstart version.

[Pat the Cat]

More likely an A1200 with Workbench 3.0?

Couple pointers, "DF0:" always refers to the first (usually only) floppy disk drive connected, or rather, the disk currently in it.

"sys:" always refers to the disk that the Amiga loaded up from. Which could be a hard drve, or floppy drive if you booted Workbench from the floppy drive.

The snag wth PCMCIA compact flash is - you can't boot from a compact flash card plugged into PCMCIA. It's mostly used to transfer files to hard disk (or another compact flash or even sd card plugged into an adaptor) going to the internal hard disk connector.

The real snag with the A1200 is - PCMCIA cards don't reset properly. You either need to run a program to get them reset and working, or have a Gayle adapter fitted over the Gayle chip.

It might not be your Workbench floppy. It could be the above problem or the floppy drive needs a clean.

Are you trying to transfer files to or from the Amiga?

People like Amigakit or Amigastore will happily sell you compact flash cards preloaded with Workbench, Although they might insist you get Kickstart 3.1 or later to go with it. They might even sell you a set of replacement WB floppies if you ask nicely for 3.0.

3.1 or later is recommended, 3.1.4 is latest, and 3.2 is expected soon (the latter 2 allow hard drive partitions over 2GB in size as well as a ton of bug fixes).

Regading the pic you posted - The first 2 lines of typing copy are legit when typed into shell, the third one isn't. You can copy CF0 just by dragging, or copying and pasting, to the Window where you want it to go. The .info (icon file) will be copied too.

Diskcopy DF0: DF0: should make a complete copy of Workbench if you booted from it.

[wrath of khan]

Hi guys, yes its  a Commodore 1200 with wb 3.0 on floppy. The pcmcia card comes with a blank but ready cf card.
I am working on sprite art for a potential amiga game- I wanted to be able to transfer it to my a1200- I think i will need an old crt or is it rgb monitor to view the art properly? I create the art and animations on a pc in pro-motion but on a flat-screen telly, I wanted to check how it displays on my a1200 and do any needed changes in d-paint or such. 

I was under the impression that I could use the pcmcia card as a sort of hard drive/storage space?

I must read the amiga manual some more... so maybe i can try those commands in the shell...

I tried making a copy of the wb 3.0 but there was an error- old floppy disk maybe... might try again.

[Pat the Cat]

Well... you could do some of that with just a floppy and an A1200 with WB3.0.

You are a bit constrained for memory to display animations, but stills of sprites and still art, that's doable. If you can save or convert the stills to IFF format on the PC side, Multiview on Workbench could display them.

As for screens, if you are based in Europe, something with a scart connector should do just fine. Mr steady there does very very good Amiga-scart cables. You could call him the gold plated standard on scart.

Genuine retro CRT monitors cost a bomb. They're only going to get rarer.

You DO have phono out in color on an A1200 if you are based outside Europe. still a fair amount of old CRT TVs (video monitors) and early LCDs can connect there, but you get a fuzzier picture.

I would strongly recommend you fit a hard drive to the A1200 and upgrade it to 3.1 to make the project easier. Then you could more easily use graphic formats other than IFF (PCX or BMP or JPEG). Or run Art Department Professional to convert them, choosing a set pallette of 256 colors.

Or run an Amiga emulator to get the graphics tweaked, and just use the A1200 to display and check them on real hardware. Once you get the adaptor working, you could save your Kick 3.0 ROM with a tool from Aminet to run the emulator with.

The sad part of the A1200 is the Gayle issue. Because you can't get the PCMCIA working properly without a fix from aminet (CCReset) which you can't transfer to the Amiga without having a working compact flash solution.

I was under the impression that I could use the pcmcia card as a sort of hard drive/storage space?

It's a drive, but it can't boot without Workbench having the driver in devs... which if only stored on the compact flash card, can't be read.

You can't boot a system from a compact flash card plugged into the PCMCIA socket on an Amiga for this reason. Chicken and egg situation.

But it's a lot easier transferring files than unplugging a card plugged into the guts of the Amiga (the hard drive connector). That might be your only way to get CCReset and the PCMCIA working.

Unimpressed? Me too. :lol

[wrath of khan]

https://imgur.com/c9aDf8f

I tried a command in the shell- no luck.

I guess i need an internal cf card hardrive thingy then.

[Pat the Cat]

The snag is that the copy command is on Workbench, so it looks on Workench (DF0 at the time) and cant' find the file.

If you load Workbench, put the driver disk in, and have a rummage with "show All" option on the overhead menus, you can click and drag the files to the RAM disk.

Then put the Workbench disk back in, and copy the files to where they should go by dragging them from the RAM disk to the right place on Workbench.

People use "show all" a LOT on the Amiga, it reveals files with no icon (no .info file that stores the icon).

You only have 97K free. Might be enough, just about.

[giZmo350]

I guess i need an internal cf card hardrive thingy then.

Well, you don't.... but it would help immensely. At first, I didn't realize you were working from floppy. I would say that if you're having trouble with your boot floppy, that you may need to sort that first. Strictly working from floppy, this guide might help. https://devdef.blogspot.com/2014/01/amiga-1200-pcmcia-compact-flash-guide.html

I'm probably just making a suggestion that make thinks even more confusing however, if you had Amiga OS installed on a HD, things would go much smoother! 

[Pat the Cat]

If the drag and drop thing doesn't work out...

To make the copy command available at all times;-

resident c:copy

AmigaDos doesn't care about upper or lower case.

And if replaced the "DF0:" with the name of the disk, like CF0: or "CFO disk:" if there's a space in it, the shell will parse correctly and ask for the right disk when it needs it.

[wrath of khan]

ok so i don't have a hard drive but the read me says copy cf0: with cf0:.info anywhere to a harddrive- it also says i can do this without a hard drive- I copied the other drivers to the correct places in wb i believe- the trick with the ram worked well. Thanks

[wrath of khan]

so still stuck on the last step...

[wrath of khan]

https://www.ebay.ie/itm/New-Workbench-System-3-1-on-4GB-CF-Card-Adapter-Amiga-600-1200-Hard-Drive/284002839910?_trkparms=ispr%3D1&hash=item421fe36d66:g:RvwAAOSwwUlfVXOO&amdata=enc%3AAQAFAAACgBaobrjLl8XobRIiIML1V4Imu%252Fn%252BzU5L90Z278x5ickk7PdDazAlGltMLJlUhrWsDwdxBrj0m9AOiSlzn5Rtr3PV%252B0mVuY%252F%252BeCy8%252FB1hmGaOKAad%252BPMcK0OjfLl0J5yOv7J9ewWoqeSete%252F04TXwEAslN2w0gGVfQb8xZZ%252BeOTr76G3ptYTiljFGpNna5pv5G3p4yneydrssMk8E4%252FfnzoZkFsfvtpk01MhpyeRozuv%252FNRxcaZV1qiiLODcP9WbeNBorFRcpdP44eSgJAJan9rY5KdAZAiCgi8Pn49NQv53gV73aclg0UPkde1WmvRrR4GvMQD7wA1XOqskMSxe%252BvaiS3S76BipSEX6RSlJvaZy5uxwiW1u6qVYBoiZc0y3Svx2EdN4WdYCS9zNrTl9qDGXu7KnNkeVydl6ZWQpRZw5fDgHonowfA0ybGBIdgYFW6kCJsx9uYE1jN7L9dD6k%252BYw%252FuS%252BWQahHu7r1QBRfss%252Fb3gD7QhPTLH4ZqBzAQm0GNXstbEYAeqQVfj2OEiibtqbivfI25yxZtfGytfD0ogHL9DJ4sxSxEWV3yIcASUJg968VEqvpG2hl5fAbmOw2R5fHt2WCDaRutVFHWiCq0PrY%252FAW2V4VRhBseJ1Plx5ajPcOe3oK9hbbOwFm4V9kEhmL5nzkghIOLN5Pcd6VG%252FuxJRmeFUZQYj8n5c7S%252BrDitEqYa1KmoL%252FgjdwKQSPFwqaKNLUvc7aMyViQzNE4yOaAVfHgLNsC894ylI6kxKQnXawkdJUxYmPcTvojbPUGVIGA89lbZUx3NFJZ5Idsx%252FsUyEK5fmrEcTe8JwD5IJmymmdIPSAEVjZrNHy%252BG%252F8eK%252FY0%253D%7Ccksum%3A28400283991000180c3d08094e8f8959caf9005f7237%7Campid%3APL_CLK%7Cclp%3A2334524

I might buy this for the time being? It might help. I can store art on there etc. I am on the waiting list for a vampire board whenever that is available. Although i would like a nice workbench set-up. I see packages online that can be used.  My 1200 is stock- nothing extra yet...

[Pat the Cat]

If the files are in the right place, then when you double click on the CF0 icon, be it from floppy, RAM or anywhere else, it should put an extra icon on your desk for the compact flash card.

You don't HAVE to put it onto the WB disk.

The point of trying first is to check whether it works without further hassle.

If you can double click on CF0 icon, and then get an directory for CF0;-

DIR CF0:

That means Gayle is happy and you can transfer files to and from the compact flash card you already have.

The link you posted for an internal hard drive and compact flash, oK that would help. It probably won't be 100% functional without the 3.1 Kickstart ROM chips but it should boot to a Workbench at least.

It does raise the resale value of Amigas by fitting them with working hard drive solutions, and what really boosts the value is getting them recapped (much less likely to suffer damage in future).

The extra cost of a hard drive, Vampire or new Kickstart ROMs is more an investment than a luxury. The Vampire probably less so, not every Amiga use needs one.

EDIT:
What probably is not going to work without Kickstart 3.1 is the Datatypes, that is, the sytem to internally convert file formats so the Amiga can read them easily. For instance, loading a GIF file on Deluxe Paint.

Programs like Art Department Pro can convert them internally, so it's not as dire a situation as you might think.

Oh, one extra tip - you can use the jiffy bag the hard drive adaptor came in as insulation. If you keep it in there with the lead poking out to the hard drive adaptor, then it can't touch any other electronics in the Amiga causing damage. More environmentally friendly too.

[Thomas]

What probably is not going to work without Kickstart 3.1 is the Datatypes, that is, the sytem to internally convert file formats so the Amiga can read them easily.

That's not true. Datatypes were introduced with 3.0.

For instance, loading a GIF file on Deluxe Paint.

DPaint does not use datatypes, it cannot load GIF files in any case.

[Pat the Cat]

What probably is not going to work without Kickstart 3.1 is the Datatypes, that is, the sytem to internally convert file formats so the Amiga can read them easily.

That's not true. Datatypes were introduced with 3.0.

What made me cautious is that not all datatypes are Kickstart 3.0 friendly, for instance;-

https://aminet.net/package/util/dtype/PCX-DT43

Fair enough, there is a Kickstart 3 friendly datatype on aminet for PCX (and BMP, GIF etc).

While on the subject of aminet, I couldn't get your latest upload of MMUILIB to decompress on Linux for some reason. GadgetUK had some issues getting an 030 ROM shadowed a few months back, I was trying to check usage (he can't do .guides I think).

For instance, loading a GIF file on Deluxe Paint.

DPaint does not use datatypes, it cannot load GIF files in any case.

Thank you, I was unaware of DPaint's not using datatypes. I thought they worked across applications invisibly.