**Need Setup HELP** with Classic Amiga 2000 HARD DISK (Bridgeboard)

[Pat the Cat]

- According to the German Amiga wiki (http://www.amigawiki.de/doku.php?id=de:expansion:other:a2088xt), the German Commodore engineers in Braunschweig designed the PC/XT on the bridgeboard strictly in line with the original IBM 8088 XT/PC specifications.

And as far as I remember, the original IBM 8088 XT/PC only had two 5 1/4 360 kB floppy disk drives by default - no harddrive. That means you cannot use a harddrive with the XT/PC on your A2088XT bridgeboard - just the Amiga can access the drive via the bridgeboard and the MFM controller in the ISA slot.

Listen, the red parts are not true. Any XT could read and write to any ISA PC hard drive. It was delivered as a floppy only system, but it was upgradable. There may be a DOS partition on that drive, but whether it is BOOTABLE without a floppy, or Janus running correctly with right settings, or maybe both, is the issue. The original IBM PC is a different matter, XT allowed expansion beyond floppy.

All XTs could USE hard disks. Bridgeboards permit Amiga applications and operating system to access PC ISA peripherals, true.

There may not be any PC parititions, there may only be Amiga formatted partitions, BUT if Wally was using it as a PC as part of a university course, it's a certainty he used a DOS partiton for the DOS based work he was doing.

I say a CERTAINTY. Whether or not it's readable by the XT or any other system now is a different matter. I'm optimistic, I think it's still there.

[Pat the Cat]

What I think you got it basically the same as the A1000 sidecar, but with ISA abilty tacked on. That let you use either type of hard drive, from either side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Sidecar

The IBM XT WAS NOT AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST 2 YEARS WITHOUT A HARD DRIVE PREFITTED.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer_XT

It's stone age tech, but it does all talk to each other, IF you can set it up right. Sidecar let you have a PC, hard disk, connected to an  Amiga with it's own floppy drive. Check the photograph in first link, understand the drives. The Zorro 2 cards were much nicer, but same basic principles.

So yes, maybe you just did boot to Workench on the hard drive... but on 1.2, you could never autoboot from that or any other hard drive. You would have to start from floppy to boot Amiga, start Janus, Start PC. From then on, you could use floppy or hard drive on either system.

Why would you not have a PC boot partition too? You could work quicker that way, but you would still have to start from Floppy, from the Amiga, to run Janus, boot the XT DOS from it's own parition.

Maybe you never bothered and just used XT environment to boot from floppies all the time... doesn't sound right. To me, anyway.

[Pat the Cat]

OH MY GOD!! The HARD DRIVE is Alive!
I looked closely at the drive and noticed the only Jumper there. I decided to carefully remove-and-put-back that DS1 jumper to ensure good contact before putting DRIVE back.
....
During re-cabling of ribbon cables I wiped the contacts with some proper circuit board contact cleaner.

:laughing: :banana::juggler::drink:Congratulations.
[/COLOR]

[Pat the Cat]

You cannot run an MFM-drive on the ISA/IDE adapter. MFM is not the same as IDE. Even if they have the same connector.

Idea started as, Wally has lots of IDE and SCSI drives, but no controller to attach to Amiga.

With the IDE / ISA controller, he can practise setting up hard drives on Amiga and Bridgeboard, so can undestand better how the old school Oktagon is setup.

Plus, it gives him a place to store all the data he can access, once he can access it.

Wally, it was an honour to assist you. 99.99% of people do not want to know about the stone age XT systems and how tricky they were. I don't think drive has an Amiga bootblock as such - first parition is DOS, so should be where Bridgeboard can boot up from when Janus is running properly (needs to be cofigured properly). You personaly always started your system with booting from Amiga floppy on 1.2 system, so why need Amiga bootblock on hard disk?

Ribbon cables suck, long term. They wear out, get tatty and damaged, unreliable. I was taught at factory and lab, any sign of damage, replace. Cannot rely on damaged cables. Even a clumsy melt from contact with a soldering iron, I had to make up a fresh cable. Not acceptable to the end user (industrial, transport and military buyers).

Stick with Kickstart 1.2 system for getting your data. Then switch to 1.3, setup proper Amiga hard driveboot, and never worry again about floppy drive startup. (Until Amiga hard drive stops working, all hard drive with moving parts will wear out one day).

[Pat the Cat]

Already told you - 2GB initial boot partition, 2GB partition size for other partitions.

File system (FFS) and OS is limited to that, until you get to 3.5/3.9.

You can hack the software resources needed on to OS for big partitions in theory, but probably isn't going to work reliably with 1.2/1.3, if at all.

Size of card/drive isn't an issue, the way it is setup is an issue. Rather like the ancient drive you are trying to get the data off.

ISA picture you just posted on left is full size IDE. Adaptor on right is Amiga/laptop sized IDE. They are compatible, but you will need adaptor cable, big to small. Also, adaptor on right probably has power pins, it need +5V and ground from somewhere. They are built in to A600/A1200 IDE connectors at one end.

I think SD cards rock compared to CF. For Amigas or whatever. Good choices, I think.

[Pat the Cat]

Oh come on. Max transfer rate on ANY 8 bit ISA card is 4MB a second, on a good day with the wind behind it. 1MB second or less is more typical. Worrying about advanced PIO-4+ IDE compatibility with this age of technology is optimistic, to say the least.

The XT will struggle to beat PIO-0 mode speed. This is why we found the idea of "giga byte solid state storage" very Sci-Fi and unfathomable back then, when the IBM PC XT technology was in use. Now you can buy SD cards in a newsagent kiosk sometimes.

[Pat the Cat]

The problem with using DOS recovery tools - they are not going to recover data stored on the Amiga partition.

You would be gambling on the data you see being purely in the DOS partition.

Anyway, all looks good from here. I really don't see why you are reaching fos DOS recovery program.

[Pat the Cat]

I specifically paid attention to the connectors (to be male-to-male) so that I could just pop on a ribbon cable. In hindsight I wish I got a different Card, the CF cards look Full Size IDE (100%).

I assume these small IDE connectors are meant to plug into a board Female. I can build a female coupler, or I might be able to use my School Wire wrapping tool directly wrap on the male posts. Maybe not due to size. All a headache I didn't except (Thank for pointing this out).

I assume there are no ready small-Full cables, and this conversion project might cost more than a Standard-FullSize CF adapter. Plus the voltage wire (Messy and a Headache!!)

Well, such small/big convertor cables are not common, because they are tricky to build. But I have seen them around, occasionally on ebay, etc.

It's not like the pins are different or swapped around, just in a smaller size. And remember, couple extras on one end for power on the little ones. Usually called IDE 2.5 3.5 convector or adaptor. This is visual example;-

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811993005&cm_re=3.5_ide_to_2.5_ide_adapter-_-11-993-005-_-Product

[Pat the Cat]

Then it hit me "ADISK" is an Amiga Utility, but IT IS for AMIGA-PC (So DOS).

- I Formatted a Fresh DOS 6.2 (3.5" FLoopy) Bootable
- Copied over all the DOS Bridbgeboard disk files
- Created a CONFIG.SYS with (DEVICE=JDISK.sys)
- Boot the Floppy in my WindowsXP PC

ADISK WORKS!! (Picked up the DOS Partition on HD)... Full menu including option to make an DOS & AMIGA PARTITION (like like the MFM Drive on the Amiga-PC).

I'm going to replace the IDE drive in the XP machine (with a spare) and start playing with all the tools I got.  (RISK FREE)

NO more (downloading on my Workstation....copying to USB, moving to 486, then copy to 5.25 (low capacity), then to Amiga PC).

This is the bottom line. You can't do anything on an XT system unless you are prepared to make bootdisks with config.sys set just right.

Once you are prepared to do that, everything becomes accessible. Until you do that, expansions are a closed off area... and that is DOS and the XT for you.

Told you enough times, data is probably OK. Now get lots of practice, it is very good idea to have experiment setup to learn from. :laugh1:

Hard drive heads MUST be OK, if not they would have destroyed disk info areas already. It's a go, green light, everything OK indicator, on that hard drive.

[Pat the Cat]

I have to thank Pat to suggesting the ISA-IDE-Adapter, it might prove more useful than originally planned.

I've ordered one myself, you are not the only guy with data to be mined out of magnetic storage archives.

I you suggested the Gotek drive.  Well I found one here locally for a good price and it should arrive any day. Beige to match the A2000 Case.  Flashed and ready for the Amiga.

Sometimes they need a little extra attention to make them "TRUE" Amiga floppy drives. More specifically, the RESET pin needs connecting or some stuff just won't load.

[Pat the Cat]

Yes, if you had access to SATA, IDE, SCSI, and MFM/RLL controllers, BB Amiga would indeed be a very handy tool for accessing data on any old hard drives. With a Mac emulator added and a Mac floppy drive too if you wanted a "complete" solution.

The tricky part is assembling the software suite needed for such a purpose, but I think you've got most of that already by now.

If you do go that route, I daresay you will have an easy to use backup of the software suite, for completely resetting the system in between archive jobs. It will save you an awful lot of work in the future.

For the moment, getting the data off of YOUR floppies and hard disk is the priority. After that, you can sit back and consider your next move.

I bet my decades old 3.5" Amiga PC disk are the same.

They should be in better condition than the 5.25 High Density disks. First, the magnetic layer on them is twice as thick. Second, they have a dust cover built in to keep out dust and smoke particles. Even a partial read of a disk is useful, somebody else might have an incomplete ADF, and between the two incomplete sets, a complete set of data can be reborn.

[Pat the Cat]

Great effort wbrejnia. I've never worked with a bridge board, but back in the day I saved data data  from hundreds of MFM and RLL drives using spinrite. If you can talk to the HD and run this program, it's your best bet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinRite

Plaz

Yes, I have heard very good things about Spinrite. DOS utility for extracting data from damaged drives. Was very useful a few years back at my local Hackspace, when an old PC drive that controlled a CNC lathe failed. I had completely forgotten about it!

[Pat the Cat]

I may reach out to Steve Gibson in some way. ...

I just think I should wait till the ISA/IDE adapter comes.  As you mention I can change the address to not conflict.  If I can get the WD RLL controler in with a ISA/IDE-IDE drive, then I may be able to run Spinrite on the 486.

I won't need a USB or even a floppy.  I install DOS or a low gen version of windows on the Hard drive using any of my computers, and pop it in to the 486, DOS boot ready.  The work on the RLL drive, side by side.

Sounds a good plan to me. It's been 20 years, waiting a few more days isn't going to make that much difference.

[Pat the Cat]

Pat, actually it's 35 years. Still no ISA/IDE in mail.

I know you recommended the ISA/IDE Adapter, and you ordered one too.
Do you actually have your working in a A2000 with bridgeboard (with a Flash card, IDE drive or both)?

I actually am thinking of a plan B.  Since the Gotek is virtual writeable floppy, I could just image blank Floppies into the Gotek (Correct?) and if I get AWRITE working, copy across from the Amiga PC to the AmigaOS, the copy to the Gotek Floppy which USB (I guess then I have to extract the Data from the ADF file on my Windows Workstation).

The short answer is no, I didn't order an ISA/ISE convertor - I ordered an IDE/SD card convertor. For A1200/A500 (once A500 it has an IDE port on a TerrileFire accelerator, hopefully).

You have a few options for what you store the data on, but the reason for the convertor is - you posted pictures of lots of IDE drives and wanted to know how to update the RLL hard drive...

... using a drive like that for storing the recovered data was best bang per buck for you. That's why I suggested.

Crossed wires on my post "I've got one too" I think. :confused:

Yes, using Gotek is yet another way of storing recovered data, and that is what you need before biting the bullet and getting down to recovering the data - a solid way of storing the recovered data that you know is going to work.

Best place to browse Amiga utilities like undelete is aminet. It goes back a long way in time;-

http://aminet.net

[Pat the Cat]

Need some help on a couple of annoying items.

1) Is there some Video parameter config somewhere.  When I use different workbench disks, the Workbench border moves around, a bit off the Amiga Monitor screen.  The mechanical controls on the monitor help for left and right, but not up down.

Not sure if supported on WB 1.2, but on Amiga Prefs there should be an Overscan tool, to tweak display position and area. Its exasperating problem dealing with pre WB2.0 Amigas booting off different floppies from different people - because monitors all setup individually.

Much easier when you are just booting from one WB system partition on  HD.

2)  This one is annoying.  I know about the keyboard file maps, peeks at them.   But when I go into PC 8088 Emulation.   My "\" doesn't work.  It works on the amiga side.    Hard to copy files on the DOS side without that working.   Is there a good tool to fix this?

Amiga keyboards come in two basic styles - the American style with big Return and Left Shift keys, and the International style with extra keys to the right of Left Shift and to the left of the Return key. These are hardware mapped to key positions 2B and 30.

However, Bridgeboard keyboard driver probably assumes American keymap, so key should be remapped to a different place, as American Bridgeboard users would not have had the "/" key in the same place.

Check around, you might have to hack a keymap file, but more likely if you select USA keymap, the key will be mapped to a different key and will become available.

3) What is really weird, but not the end of the world, is I've downloaded all current libraries and SW.

Alink, Aread, Atime, etc Doesn't work (I run Adisk, and Jdisk.sys)

When I run Alink now it produce the multi Line message, and hangs.  Before it just hung.

No idea on that front. I assumed you would be happy enough to just dump the data from the RLL drive on an IDE hard drive. Which it looks to me like you can do, by using the 486...

... on the other hand, if you do get the SD card booting on the Bridgeboard with all Amigaside access too, would be a sweet system.

Perhaps you need to put DOS 3 on the SD card rather than 6.2? Strikes me that a lot of issues could be avoided if that can be accomplished.

[Pat the Cat]

Yes, I was going to try to hack they keyboard map file.  It appears to be documented within.  If I want to try International how/where do I switch it.

IIRC keymaps are kept on Extras disk on 1.2.

Amiga cannot tell what sort of keyboard is plugged in, User has to select from Preferences. Usually list is kept in devs/keymaps folder I think... Been a long time since I set one on a 1.2 Amiga.

So USA keyboard and keymap is "generic". Should work all Amigas.

In theory should also work on all applications. Obvously this last point not always true, as programmers often use the 2 extra keys in their software, not realizing some Amigas don't have them).

I've been having a lot of internet issues, very slow connection, horrible OS Linux issue I think. Was like 200 times slower than normal.