boot disks for emulators

[Thomas]

It works. Here is the procedure:

1. create a MS-DOS boot disk on your PC. Use a DD disk (720K) to be safe.
2. create an image file from the disk. Use a program like WinImage for that. The image must be exactly 720KB in size, no header and no compression.
3. start WinUAE and boot AmigaOS.
4. press F12, go to the floppies tab and create a custom floppy.
5. write the MS-DOS image to the floppy. Use a program like TSGui for that.
6. start PCTask and boot from the custom floppy ADF.

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

You need to write the image to PC0, not DF0. Mount PC0 before 3.

And you don't need to write the IMA to an ADF. Just add the Windows directory the IMA is in to WinUAE's harddrives list (or add the whole drive and save it permanently, so you always can easily exchange data).

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

Just enter

mount PC0:

or double click the icon in Storage/DosDrivers. Then use TSgui to write the IMA to PC0.

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

You wrote:

3. I used TSGui to copy the .IMA file (previously saved onto a .adf file by using ADF viewer on Windows) and it warned me that the final floppy would be smaller than the original custom amiga floppy. I accepted and began to make the disk.

This sounds totally correct to me. Just choose PC0 instead of DF0 (or PC1 instead of DF1, just where this big 2MB ADF is in) as destination in TSGui. Then the warning should disappear and the floppy should be usable afterwards.

The difference between DF0 and PC0 is that DF0 has 2 heads, 80 tracks per head and 11 blocks per track (= 880 KB) while PC0 has 2 heads, 80 tracks per head and 9 blocks per track (= 720 KB).

Well, I've just found this file on my homepage: http://home.t-online.de/home/thomas-rapp/download/dosboot.zip
I don't remember what's in there, but the name suggests, it is just what you need: a bootable DOS ADF for PCTask.

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

I hope you cannot see me shaking my head. How do you want to run an emulator if you don't even know the simplest basics of data exchange.

PC0 and DF0 both refer to the first floppy drive, PC1 and DF1 refer to the second one and so on. PC* can read and write PC floppies while DF* can only read and write Amiga floppies.

Running PC* on WinUAE needs a custom ADF because standard ADFs are Amiga format only (for DF*).

Bye,
Thomas