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Offline amiman99

Re: format PC floppy to use on Amiga?
« Reply #44 from previous page: April 24, 2012, 10:22:34 PM »
Quote from: Thorham;689892
The OP wants Amiga formatted disks, so this won't work.

Quote from: sim085;690351
Thanks to everyone for the replies. As I said the relative new "amiga" floppy disks format fine. The very old "amiga" floppy disks (which data is also corrupt) don't format. Then I found some "amiga" floppy disks which when format give an error on some cylinder and then when I format again give an error on another cylinder and the previous cylinder is formatted successfully. The “pc” floppy disks never work and format always fail on cylinder zero.

I understand this might be a problem with the age and amount of dust in the drive … therefore I was wondering; does anyone know how to clean the floppy drive?? need to use any special liquid??
If you are not affraid to open you floppy drive then you can use cotton swabs and 91% isopropyl alcohol. Just swab both heads clean.
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Offline Fud

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Re: format PC floppy to use on Amiga?
« Reply #45 on: April 25, 2012, 12:20:17 AM »
Quote from: sim085;689770
Hello, I have a few new PC floppy disks which work fine on PC. I would like to format these in such a way that I can use them as Amiga floppy disks (not to transfer files between PC and Amiga, but to use them as if Amiga floppy disks).

I had a similar thread in the past but what was suggested then is not working. I have Windows7. I insert the floppy disk and then from command promt I enter the following command:

FORMAT A: /T:80 /N:9

However I get the following output

H:\>FORMAT A: /T:80 /N:9
Insert new disk for drive A:
and press ENTER when ready...
The type of the file system is RAW.
The new file system is FAT.
Formatting 720K
Invalid media or Track 0 bad - disk unusable.

Does anyone know if I can format a PC disk to use it as an Amiga disk? or this is not possible?
Back in 2002 I purchased a A3000D 1.76 HD floppy drive off of ebay for $40 s/h included for my A1200D works great just sits a little higher then the 880K drive. Get an 1.76 drive as I did, format your pc floppies and put them in your Amiga as CrossDos will read them up to XP Pro it's cheaper route to take. I just copy Aminet files to the pc disk then copy them to my Amiga. My A1200 just got operational thanks to Amigakit's 300w p/s w/the optional cabling. The A1200 has GVP1230/33 4mb, 3.1 and CrossDos 7 Gold installed.
 

Offline sim085Topic starter

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Re: format PC floppy to use on Amiga?
« Reply #46 on: April 25, 2012, 08:50:56 AM »
Quote from: amiman99;690358
If you are not affraid to open you floppy drive then you can use cotton swabs and 91% isopropyl alcohol. Just swab both heads clean.


I already opened it to see how it works :) 91% isopropyl alcohol is the same as surgical spirit? Is contact cleaner better? Sorry do not know this stuff ...
 

Offline spirantho

Re: format PC floppy to use on Amiga?
« Reply #47 on: April 25, 2012, 10:31:51 AM »
Can you just confirm exactly what you mean by "pc" floppy disks? They are DD ones, yes? Because HD ones will just fail on track 0 very often.
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Offline sim085Topic starter

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Re: format PC floppy to use on Amiga?
« Reply #48 on: April 25, 2012, 12:53:46 PM »
Quote from: spirantho;690425
Can you just confirm exactly what you mean by "pc" floppy disks? They are DD ones, yes? Because HD ones will just fail on track 0 very often.


They are HD not DD ...
 

Offline spirantho

Re: format PC floppy to use on Amiga?
« Reply #49 on: April 25, 2012, 02:13:32 PM »
That's your problem then. Using the wrong type of disk is never a good idea as the data will fail at just the wrong moment (if you get it working at all).

Seriously, there's so many cheap DD disks out there, forget HD ones, they're not worth it on a DD drive.
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Offline MrVotar

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Re: format PC floppy to use on Amiga?
« Reply #50 on: February 18, 2023, 08:27:27 PM »
Reviving this ancient topic with a new question...

I'm trying to get some files off my old A1200 and onto a Windows PC.   Just bought a new USB Floppy drive for my PC (coz it didn't have one) and it seems it can only write/format 1.44 mb disks.  But when I put that Windows formatted 1.4 mb disk into the A1200 I just get "DF???"   

Since the PC can't format 880k disks, but it can READ them, can I use the Amiga to format an 880k DOS floppy?   Can't seem to figure that out.
 

Offline nbache

Re: format PC floppy to use on Amiga?
« Reply #51 on: February 18, 2023, 08:39:46 PM »
The DOS diskette size you want is not 880 kB (that is the size of an Amiga formatted floppy), but 720 kB, i.e. half of the HD 1,44 MB size.

You might be able to trick the PC by covering the size hole in the diskette with tape, so it thinks it's a DD diskette, or maybe you can use format from the command line and specify the /F:size argument - try typing "format /?" in a command line under Windows to get the exact arguments possible.

Otherwise I think you should be able to format a 720 kB diskette on the Amiga if you have CrossDOS running and a suitable mount file for a PC DD floppy. But I'm grasping at vague memories now ...

Best regards,

Niels
 
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Offline AndyFC

Re: format PC floppy to use on Amiga?
« Reply #52 on: February 18, 2023, 10:54:02 PM »
You have a 1200, so you should have crossdos as part of the operating system. If so you can format a double density floppy as a 720k ms dos compatible disk. A windows pc cannot read an Amiga 880k disk.

To see if you have crossdos, open up your system disk (DH0) and look in Devs/dosdrivers. You should have a file called pc0. If it's not there look in the folder called storage. If it's there copy Pc0 to the Devs folder and reboot.

A much better explanation is here: https://wiki.amigaos.net/wiki/AmigaOS_Manual:_Workbench_CrossDOS
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Offline MrVotar

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Re: format PC floppy to use on Amiga?
« Reply #53 on: February 19, 2023, 05:13:48 PM »
Thanks -

I'm not too worried about the 880 vs 720k angle, just trying to find anything that both the Amiga and the PC can both read.  This A1200 used to belong to my wife, so I don't really know it too well.  My old A2000 was my main machine but it died when I tried to turn it on after all these years....

I guess I'll have to remember how to search the A1200 for the cross-dos devices.  Even the words 'CLI' and 'Device List' are ancient foggy memories I'm struggling to resurrect... I guess that's part o' the fun?

I purchased a used SCSI card for my PC, hoping WinUAE could 'see' my Amiga Syquest drive...   but it turned out to be the wrong kind of PCI card, so that is still a dead end.   I hope to figure out this mess eventually.
 

Offline mechy

Re: format PC floppy to use on Amiga?
« Reply #54 on: February 19, 2023, 05:58:27 PM »
why do all that when you can just stick a pcmcia adapter in the side and save the files to a fat formatted cf,sd card then move them to the pc?
just install cfd.lha and fat95.lha from aminet.  http://aminet.net/package/driver/media/cfd
« Last Edit: February 19, 2023, 06:03:21 PM by mechy »
 

Offline nbache

Re: format PC floppy to use on Amiga?
« Reply #55 on: February 19, 2023, 06:24:17 PM »
I guess I'll have to remember how to search the A1200 for the cross-dos devices.  Even the words 'CLI' and 'Device List' are ancient foggy memories I'm struggling to resurrect... I guess that's part o' the fun?
Indeed.

CLI: Command Line Interface, what you get when you double-click the Shell icon in the System drawer of your main disk (Workbench or whatever it is called on your machine).

Once you are in the CLI, at the prompt, you can e.g. type "info" and hit Enter. This will show, among other things, the devices you have mounted. If PC0 is one of them, you are okay, then you should get a PC0 icon on your Workbench if you insert a PC-formatted DD (i.e. 720 kB) diskette.

Apart from that, follow AndyFC's advice above about checking inside Devs/DOSDrivers (i.e. open the Devs drawer in your Workbench disk, then open the DOSDrivers drawer inside that.) - if you don't have a PC0 icon in there, you may have it in Storage/DOSDrivers, then just drag it from there into Devs/DOSDrivers, and afterwards do a reset.

Best regards,

Niels
 

Offline MrVotar

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Re: format PC floppy to use on Amiga?
« Reply #56 on: February 21, 2023, 01:19:24 AM »
Thanks for the reminders - I sort of remember the 'Command Line Interface".

But even if my A1200 has the PC0: device (it does), I can't find a way to make this Amiga FORMAT a DOS floppy.  Is that possible in Workbench, or something that must be done with special CLI commands?

The new floppy drive I just bought will only format in HD mode, which the AMiga can't read.  And if I cover one of the disk holes, the PC drive doesn't believe it's a 'valid' floppy.  So I assume my only option is to somehow create a DOS format disk from the Amiga...   ?   Any Amiga based formatting I've found thus far is only in 'Amiga' disk format.

Hopefully I won't need to worry about any of this when my PCM-slot CF reader shows up...
 

Offline nbache

Re: format PC floppy to use on Amiga?
« Reply #57 on: February 21, 2023, 08:19:55 AM »
Okay, so you have the PC0: device mounted. If you insert a diskette into the drive, do you get an icon for it on Workbench? Possibly with some strange NDOS or question marks name or similar? If you do, click once on it, then use the right mouse button to drop down the WB menu "Icon" and select the "Format disk" item from it. That should give you a dialog offering to format the diskette.

Of course, it's also possible that the diskette drive is not working correctly after years of storage. It might be worth a shot to clean it.

Best regards,

Niels