Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: stevezx7r on October 24, 2006, 06:04:34 PM
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Hi all, after getting a couple of a1200's plus tons of software/utils/games/books and two spare a1200's etc etc. I finished putting one together today. Unfortunately, I don't have workbench on an amiga disk (pc only) so i'm unable to get into the "desktop" (been using PC's for to long) to format the hd. As I have workbench on my PC I was wondering if it's possible to format a blank floppy on the pc, write the relevant files to it then use it on the Amiga?
Thanks all.
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in short.. nope.
..unless you have a catweasel.
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..unless you have a catweasel.
Just a hint - you can't make a catweasel by taping a cat to a weasel. Attempting to do so may result in injury.
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Your amiga can read PC formatted 720kb DD disks if you copy the file PC0 from storage/devs/dosdrivers to your devs:dosdrivers and reboot, having workbench installed on HD is highly recommended but might work if you´re booting WB from floppy as well if you´re lucky :-D
If you´re using XP you better format it on the amiga (format pc0:) since support for formatting DD disks have been removed. It can still read them though.
Note that the amiga will format it as a DOS disks and not as a windows disk (FAT). So it will rename files having names with more than 12(?) characters.
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That will sadly not work. The ironic thing is that this would have worked if you had WB running though, since WB2.1 and higher comes with a driver that lets you read 720k dos formatted floppies.
But you can put your a1200 HD into your pc and format and copy WB over from there using winuae.
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Your amiga can read PC formatted 720kb DD disks if you copy the file PC0 from storage/devs/dosdrivers to your devs:dosdrivers and reboot, having workbench installed on HD is highly recommended but might work if you´re booting WB from floppy as well if you´re lucky
But he clearly stated in his post that he does not have Workbench, which was what he wanted to transfer to his Amiga anyways.
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ah yes, lol silly me! just assumed that everyone have a WB disk with their Amiga! :-)
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You can buy Workbench disk set from here:
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/
for about £14.99
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Thanks for the info guys. I'm loath to spend any money (ever) but I have thought of three things I could try...
1. The other a1200's have hd with a non standard os on them, can't remember what it's called...I have the box but again, no original disks. Would I be able to use this to maybe make a ghost image and port it over to the other hd?
2. What about using a null modem cable between the amiga and the pc, ftp'ing the workbench files over to the amiga hd (which needs formatting first, I think)...
3. Would an emu like winua be able to format a floppy on the pc in the correct format then transfer the files from the pc to floppy and then onto the amiga?
Whatcha think?
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Here's an idea... Setup WB on WinUAE, and use an IDE adapter to connect one of the Amiga HD's to the PC. You can then format and partition the drive through WinUAE on the PC, install WB and anything else you may want. Remove the drive from your PC, install it in your 1200 and start rockin'.
Kind of a pain, but it's the best option I can think of aside from buying WB on floppies or a Catweasel.
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SuperTurbo wrote:
If you´re using XP you better format it on the amiga (format pc0:) since support for formatting DD disks have been removed.
No it hasn't!! You can format a 720Kb DD disk in Windows XP by opening a command prompt and typing the following:
format a: /n:9 /t:80
But this still doesn't really solve the topic's issue. As others have said, either obtaining a new WB disk set or putting your drive in a PC and installing via WinUAE would seem to be the easiest ways.
- Ali
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The catweasel has been an amazing addition to my PC! Not only can you read and write Amiga disks, it also has it's own ports for an Amiga mouse and atari style joystick. Since I also have an Atari 2600 emulator, the joystick ports come in very handy for paddles and real joysticks.
You can read the full specs (it does more!) Here:Individual Computers (http://www.jschoenfeld.de/indexe.htm)
Bob
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And here of course ;-)
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=206
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Tomas wrote:
But you can put your a1200 HD into your pc and format and copy WB over from there using winuae.
that will not work IMHO. winuae only 'sees' hds with amiga partitions on them, empty hds just don't show up. (maybe one needs to completely remove the partition table with something like zerofill or fdisk but I have faint memories of that not working also).
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mr_a500 wrote:
Just a hint - you can't make a catweasel by taping a cat to a weasel. Attempting to do so may result in injury.
LOL :lol:
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@countzero
WinUAE can see those drives! I thought this too at first. You need to set the right device in the HDToolBox ToolTypes and then it works!
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No, I mean they don't appear in the winuae configuration window when I want to add a harddrive. it says there is no amiga formatted harddrive attached to the system. I have used harddrives with amiga partition on the uae, usually I use hdinsttools with the parameter uaehf instead of using hdtoolbox.
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If you run WinUAE with the -disableharddrivesafetyheck command line option then WinUAE will show all drives, even your Windows HDD.
Bye,
Thomas
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amigakit wrote:
And here of course ;-)
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=206
Of course! This is where I got my catweasel!
(nice to meet you at AmiWest, Matthew!)
Bob
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Likewise, it was great to put names to faces.
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countzero wrote:
Tomas wrote:
But you can put your a1200 HD into your pc and format and copy WB over from there using winuae.
that will not work IMHO. winuae only 'sees' hds with amiga partitions on them, empty hds just don't show up. (maybe one needs to completely remove the partition table with something like zerofill or fdisk but I have faint memories of that not working also).
Did you use the command for enabling winuae to see all disks? You run winuae with a command similar to this: winuae --disablehdsafetycheck or similar. I cannot remember the exact command, but it should be in the docs. And it is supposed to work this way, wether or not the disk is partitioned using a pc FS.
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@ tomas & thomas
thank you very much. I added the parameter to my shortcut now I can see all my drives. This has saved me a lot of time !
now if I can find a way to hotswap my scsi drives, I can amiga format all my drives without restarting.