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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: AmigaEd on April 30, 2005, 05:04:47 PM
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Hello Amigans,
I have an A2000 without any internal floppy drives installed. I can pull a drive out of my other A2000 but I thought that I woud first ask if it is possible to boot an A2000 using an external floppy drive as I have a few of them to choose from.
Thank You,
AmigaEd
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It's possible if you have Kickstart 2 or better. Otherwise you may have to modify the external floppy drive to register itself as df0:
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Normally, to boot off an external drive you need to either select it as the boot drive in the Early Startup Menu (KS 2.04+ only) or use Degrader to force a boot from DF2:, which would require an already booted system, a catch-22.
However, with no internal floppies hooked up, I think the first external floppy will default to be DF0:. If not, then the system will try to boot from DF1:. At least, that's how it works on the A1200.
So yeah, you should be fine with an external drive :-)
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Well, I gave it a try by just connecting the external drive hoping that it would default to df0: but it didn't seem to work.
The bummer is that I'm stuck with KS1.2 in this machine for now.
Is there a jumper setting that can be changed on the mother board or in the external floppy so that it can be recognized as df0: ?
-AmigaEd
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You could open up an external drive and take it out of th ecase, then put it as an internal drive in the A2000. I've done that in the past.
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@Acill,
Well, I ended up doing as you suggested. I tore apart one of my external floppy drives and plugged it into the A2000 and it works fine.
I still would like to like to know for sure if booting from an external floppy is possible on the A2000 and if so with which KS.
Thanks,
AmigaEd
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@AmigaEd
I believe since Kickstart 2 the Amiga does a scan for bootable floppies in progression on the A2000 from df0, df1...df2 (external). On the A500/A2000 iirc the external floppy port is always df2. But I haven't used KS1.2 in a very long time.
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@Argus, Thanks for the info. I think I'll try and prove that out once I get beyond some of these other problems.
Well, after spending a completely good Sunday trying to figure this out, I have discovered that I can see the controller and drive under KS2.0 and WB 2.0 I can almost even get the software to load the system onto the Drive to work correctly.
When I try to use the AdSCSI 2000 and Quantum drive in my System with KS1.3 and WB1.3 the ICDPrepHD software seems to hang at part where it looks for the controller card and drive.
I even tried formattting the drive and putting os1.3 on it while I had it in the 2.0 system, but that didn't seem to work either.
So, I kind of wondering which direction I should go with this now. Any suggestions appreciated
-AmigaEd
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This is an old one but if anyone else googles it it might be good to have a response.
It should be possible to do the same mod on the A2000 as the A500 or A600, attack the CIA-B directly and connect the CIA _SEL0 to motherboard signal _SEL2. That would mean, disconnect pin13 and 15 connect 13 to where 15 was.
This will disable the original df0: leave df1: as it were and connect df2: which would be the external drive to where df0: was.
I'm not sure it will work without a df1: hooked up, there's a jumper on the motherboard to disable df1, don't remember what it's called right now.
The _SELx are found on pins 13-16 if you need to mix these up some more, perhaps you want to external drives as df0: and df1: then you need to move CIA pin13 and 14 to where 15 and 16 was attached. Or add a switch so you can switch back.
Two sockets, some wire and a switch is all you need if you don't want to mess with the original hardware. Then just plug this "selector" on the motherboard and the CIA in your selector.