[UPDATE] I've just received feedback for using the kit with AMIGA 500+ : Transfer times are reduced ~50% against AMIGA 500! You can copy an adf image to the disk in just 75 seconds!!
(Finally
found something that ECS chipset along with kickstart 2.0 made a REAL difference from OCS kick 1.3: I/O ports work faster! )
If you happen to have a "humble" Amiga 500 or 500+ like myself ,without any "serious" addons (except maybe from an extra 512k ram and a 2nd floppy...) you would probably tempted many times by the numerous games that are widely availiable today, in the form of adf images,and how you could enjoy them on your beloved Amiga. Or perhaps, you have some programs or games (even saved games...
) that you'd like to transfer them as adf images and use them with winuae or just take adf backups!
Up untill now, the options we have where:
1) Use a serial cable and some porgram like amiga explorer which is very cheap and rather easy procedure, but,unfortunately the poor 68000/7.16Mhz of an A500 can't give you nothing faster than 19.2kbps transfer rate e.g.
at least 8 MINUTES to transfer one adf image!!!
2)Use some floppy emu with sd card.Again,this "solution" is rather expensive (~90euro),and it doesn't give you any noticeable speed improvement,as the use of a fast sd card might suggest,the speed of amiga accessing adf images on sd card, is more or less of a classic floppy disk drive.
3)Use a
CATWEASEL MK4 PLUS PCI card .Of course this card can do much more than transfer adf files to amiga disks, and for that, it's rather expensive too (~120euro including postage)
Having to face this situation, i decided to try and "fill the gap" between the cheap but slow serial transfer "solution", and the fast but expensive floppy emu or catweasel pci card alternative. After a lot of searching,testing and programming, i've come up with a "solution" that , not only combines the cheap cost of the serial cable with MUCH more transfer speed,but also, is SUPER easy and simple to do it!
FIRST THE "INGRIDIENTS" for the..."recipe":
1) An amiga 500 and it's psu .Frankly you wont be needing ANYTHING else for the procedure,not even a monitor or tv connected to your amiga !(extremely usefull if there is a realtive big distance between your amiga and pc or if you dont have enough space for the monitor near your pc)
2) A PC running windows (XP,VISTA,7 32bit or 64bit) equiped with a parallel port. .Dont worry if your motherboard doesn't have any parallel port, you can find countless pci/pcie parallel cards on ebay, almost for nothing, (i bought mine for less than 3euros...
)
3) A special kit i make, where you can find it here:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMIGA-PC-A...item1c293ad68c .For ~10pounds (including postage), you will get a special custom made parallel cable and 1 amiga boot disk. (bellow i give you all the neccesary info to try and make it yourself too!
)
4) Many amiga formated 3.5" disks to transfer your beloved games adf images!
Also you will need one of these:
http://sdrv.ms/M6Xe6g . Download the apropriate file according to your windows version (adf_transfer_32 for 32bit windows and adf_transfer_64 for 64bit windows) and uncompress it anywhere in your hard disk.
Now for the "cooking":
FOR TRANSFERING ADF IMAGES FROM THE PC TO AMIGA 500:
1) Connect amiga and pc with the cable (beware to plug the right end on each side,if you put it either way it will not work!)
2) Power on your amiga
3) Insert the boot disk of the kit, and wait untill floppy led turns off
4) Insert the first empty amiga disk.
5) Go to the uncompressed folder and Run adf_transfer.exe. (on windows vista/7 you must "run as administrator")
6) Press "open file" button and select the adf image you want to transfer
7) Press "transfer" button.
8 )On the cli window that will appear on you screen of your pc, you watch the procedure of the transfer.
For an adf image it will take about 1 minute and 50seconds!! (compare it with the at least 8minutes you need using a serial cable for the transfer using an amiga 500...)
9)After the transfer is completed,insert another empty amiga disk to your A500 drive
10)Goto step 6)
FOR TRANSFERING DISKS FROM AMIGA 500 TO ADF IMAGES ON YOUR PC:-For 32bit version of the program ONLY: Install the special dosbox megabuild release, found in the uncompressed folder.USE THE DEAFULT INSTALL DIRECTORY (otherwise amiga->pc transfer will not work)
1) Connect amiga and pc with the cable (beware to plug the right end on each side,if you put it either way it will not work!)
2) Power on your amiga
3) Insert the boot disk of the kit, and wait untill floppy led turns off.Press
and then .Wait untill floppy led turns off.
4) Insert the first amiga disk you want to transfer.
5) Go to the uncompressed folder and Run adf_transfer.exe.Select direction "AMIGA-->PC" (on windows vista/7 you must "run as administrator")
6) Press "transfer" button.
7) After the transfer is completed,you will have a newly created adf image in the folder of the adf_transfer programm.insert another amiga disk you want to transfer, to your A500 drive.
8 ) Goto step 6)
The above procedures can be used on any amiga model, (500,500+,600,1200,2000 etc) but i believe, it would prove especially usefull on older 500/500+ models which lacks the Ide connector and pcmcia card slot that newer models (600,1200) has, and so they can't provide any easy and cheap alternative to access adf images or transfer files from/to a PC.Also nowadays , any addon accelerator cards,addon memmories or scsi hd's for 500/500+ models are rather expensive and difficult to find!
Finally, the speed improvement against serial transfer is MUCH bigger on amiga 500/500+ :
ON AMIGA 500: ABOUT 430% THE SPEED OF THE FASTEST SERIAL TRANSFER (max 19200bps)
ON AMIGA 500+/600:ABOUT 220% THE SPEED OF THE FASTEST SERIAL TRANSFER (max 38400bps)
ON AMIGA 1200: ABOUT 150% THE SPEED OF THE FASTEST SERIAL TRANSFER (max~56000bps)
Using xcopy (perhaps the best disk utility on amiga) needs about 1minute and 40 seconds to copy an entire disk,which is roughly the same time you need to transfer the adf image from your pc to amiga disk, using an amiga 500!
As you can see, the hole step procedure is so plain and simple that,if you follow exactly the steps above, you can transfer many disks in a row, without even having a monitor connected to your amiga!
Now, if you are more of a "do it your self" guy, you can try and make the special parallel calble yourself:
You wil need 2X 25pin D male connectors and make the cable (using a multistrand cable with at least 10 inner cables) according to this:
=============================================
AMIGA SIDE | Pins | PC SIDE
----------------------------------------------
Data bit 0 | 2 <---> 2 | Data bit 0
Data bit 1 | 3 <---> 3 | Data bit 1
Data bit 2 | 4 <---> 4 | Data bit 2
Data bit 3 | 5 <---> 5 | Data bit 3
Data bit 4 | 6 <---> 6 | Data bit 4
Data bit 5 | 7 <---> 7 | Data bit 5
Data bit 6 | 8 <---> 8 | Data bit 6
Data bit 7 | 9 <---> 9 | Data bit 7
Busy | 11 <---> 11 | Busy
Paper Out| 12 <---> 1 | Strobe
Ground | 25 <---> 25 | Ground
==============================================
Also you must take the file "paradise" which is in the folder "TOAMIGA" (inside the "adf_transfer" folder that you previous download),transfer it to an amiga disk and execute it in wb's amiga shell.For more information read the included paradise.doc.
I hope this new method of fast,easy and cheap adf transfer would make many of you to get your old amiga's out of the closets and trunks , and enjoy once again your beloved programs and games you want!
*some usefull notes:
1)Always turn off amiga and pc before connecting parallel cable.
2) On the amiga-->pc transfers you may notice that sometimes pc and amiga can't start the connection.In that case press and on amiga and "transfer" button on pc program.
3) I have succesfully test the kit with the program using an amiga 500 and 2 pc's:a rather old athlon xp with on board parallel port running windows xp/7 32bit, and a modern quad core amd fx pc equiped with a parallel port on a pci card, running windows xp/32bit and windows 7/64bit.
4) All programs that are used in the transfer proccess (including my adf_transfer gui utility) are freeware.
5) Some "teaser": Check out the attached photo of the program, "on duty". Notice that having transfered ~25% of the adf file to disk,the ramaining time expected, is less than 85seconds!!