Question about Amiga floppies and duplicating disks

[jasongins]

I am a fairly new Amiga 500 user. I am having difficulty duplicating my workbench disk. Should I be able to boot up with a duplicated workbench disk? My duplicates don't seem to work, either to boot up with or just to access through workbench . I have been using HD floppies to make them, but in reading these boards it seems that the Amiga needs 720k floppies without the hole in the upper left. Is this the reason my duplicates don't work, or am I doing something else wrong? Also, does anyone know where I can get a hold of Arkanoid? I've been searching ebay but with no luck.

[Ilwrath]

Not sure how you were trying to make a copy of the workbench, but the workbench disk is not copy protected, so any disk copier should be able to make a duplicate, without any trouble.  You might want to try a copier like XCopy, or one of the freely available disk copiers with validate function, though, so you can see if you get any read/write errors.

The Amiga should use  double sided, double density disks (2SDD) not high density (HD).  Writing to a HD disk may or may not work, and the written data may or may not corrupt itself quickly after write.  I've used HD disks in a pinch and had them work for short periods of time, but I've also heard from a lot of people who have tried it and had them fail.  Personally, I stick to 2SDD for anything I plan to actually use for more than 10 minutes.

Arkanoid 1 is available legally and  freely from the excellent back-2-roots website.  :-)

[Lo]

Install Df0: ?

The Install command makes a disk bootable, but not sure if that helps?

[Jope]

What command are you using to duplicate the disk? Open up a shell and type

sys:system/diskcopy df0: df0:
(or sys:system/diskcopy from df0: to df0: if the above doesn't work for you)

If you copied the stuff over file by file, you need to install a bootblock onto the disk with the command

install df0:

You'll most likely want to say resident install and then swap your copy in df0: unless you have two drives.. (then it's of course install df1: and diskcopy df0: df1:)

Hope this helps.

[jasongins]

Following the instructions listed early in the Amiga 500 manual on making a copy of Workbench , I simply selected "duplicate disk" in one of the drop down menus in workbench.

[DoomMaster]

To jasongins:

Just select the icon for the Workbench disk, then choose Duplicate from the Workbench menu.  The instructions start on page 3-14 in your Amiga 500 manual.   You MUST use a DS/DD disk NOT a HD disk.  You can buy DS/DD disks on eBay.  I just bought 50 more of them for myself.  If you need any more help, just email me directly.     :-D

[jasongins]

DoomMaster - Thank you !  I thought I was having problems with the drive in this unit, but it seems my problem is with the HD disks, not the unit. I'll get a hold of some DSDD disks asap. One of the above posters told me where I could download arkanoid, but I'm not sure how I would get it onto a floppy readable by the Amiga. I use an XE1541 cable for my C64 stuff, is there something similar for Amiga?

[DoomMaster]

To jasongins:

You can get over 1000 vintage Amiga programs from me.  Just email me and we can talk about it.     :-D

[Jope]

Jasongins, you can check out Amiga Explorer, CrossDOS, Twin Express

Amiga Explorer and CrossDos are commercial, but you might have a hard time finding an old enough version of CrossDos to run on 1.3 (you never mentioned what OS you're running)

Twin Express is free, but it's a little less polished than Amiga Explorer, for example.

If you're into a real hardware solution (not just a null modem cable between the machines), the CatWeasel3 works just fine.. You plug it into your PC and you can transfer disks with a small Windows utility. (it's much more versatile if you use a Real Amiga or MorphOS to command it, but it works fine in a PC too)

[DoomMaster]

To jasongins:

I have the version of Cross DOS that you need for Workbench 1.3.  Email me if you want it.     :-P

[DaveP]

I hope that would not be pirated games....

[whabang]

I'd like to add a point to this discussion:
It is possible to use HD disks in an Amiga - they simply aren't very reliable when used as DD floppies.
Also, I remember an old program allowing the use of 1.44 meg floppies on an Escom A1200 (yes, I did try it and yes, it worked)

[mikeymike]

I hope that would not be pirated games....

That broken record again.

Is it really necessary?