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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: michel3105 on November 03, 2011, 01:55:52 PM
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This is half an hardware issue and half a software question.
Here it is:
Let's say I've got a bare, unexpanded A500.
I want to run a demo (or whatever) on it, which is freely available for downloading, in the usual .mdf or .lha form.
So, I can download it on my pc hard drive, and...?
How can I create a floppy, possibly bootable, to feed to the Amiga 500?
Is WinUAE of any help?
thanks in advance
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You will need a Catweasel Controller to write Amiga floppies directly on your PC.
Other possibility is to create the floppy on the Amiga. You will have to find a way to transfer the data of course. There are a number of possibilities, such as:
- Use Crossdos on the Amiga, this will allow the Amiga to read 720k PC formatted disks
- Transfer data with a nullmodem cable
- Network
All of this is quite difficult though if you only have an unexpanded (i.e. 512 kB) A500.
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This is half an hardware issue and half a software question.
Here it is:
Let's say I've got a bare, unexpanded A500.
I want to run a demo (or whatever) on it, which is freely available for downloading, in the usual .mdf or .lha form.
So, I can download it on my pc hard drive, and...?
How can I create a floppy, possibly bootable, to feed to the Amiga 500?
Is WinUAE of any help?
thanks in advance
Your amiga can read a MSDOS formatted 3.5 (720) with crossdoss however it can't boot it.
You can transfer files over to the amiga's RAM disk via serial connection and write them to an amiga 880K disk. Obviously that is very tedious. if you truly have an unexpanded A500 with 512K, You'll at least want an external floppy to download to as intermediary storage because ram will fill up quickly.
Some versions of Amiga Forever come with Amiga explorer, which probably will do what you want. I have never used it, but I know it works over serial connection.
The only way that I know to truly create a (Amiga formatted) floppy on the PC is to get a Catweasel controller. WinUAE can be used with the Catweasel. I don't know how available that controller is anymore and if it is even supported under Windows7. I would make sure to do my homework on that before I would buy it.
You could look into getting a floppy drive emulator for the Amiga and forget about floppies.
Its getting harder and harder to find good quality media.
You could also look into sourcing an AD-IDE HD controller and a compact flash to IDE converter. You could use UAE to write to the CF. That is the solution I would probably look into.
I am far too impatient to mess around with serial port connections or floppy disks...
good luck, hope that gives you some options.
_nate
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If your image is an IPF, you can currently use Kryoflux as well.
It currently supports writing of IPF files to floppies from a USB equipped PC (Win, Linux, Mac).
I've used that and it works..
They are saying that ADF writing is on it's way as well (and they've come thru on their other promises so far), but not specific dates..
That being said, not a lot of people have Kryoflux's lying around.. ;-)
You're best bet is to ask someone with an Amiga if they'll write you a floppy. ;-)
(I've sent out several boot floppies with Transwarp ready for serial transfer..)
desiv
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One possible solution to move stuff to your A500:
http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=3586
Of course you'll need an external SCSI- controller, but they are not so hard to pick up on eBay these days.
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First of all I would recommend that you buy a 512KB memory expansion for the A500 since most games and demos requires a minimum of 1MB RAM, this should both be easy to find and not too expensive either.
It also sounds like the Hombre disk might be a solution for you, and if you can get somebody to download and write this to a floppy disk and then send it to you, you will have a boot disk that allows you to transfer files from PC to Amiga and write ADF images to floppy disks as well.
You can read more about Hombre here: http://wiki.abime.net/file_transfer/hombre
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This is half an hardware issue and half a software question.
Here it is:
Let's say I've got a bare, unexpanded A500.
I want to run a demo (or whatever) on it, which is freely available for downloading, in the usual .mdf or .lha form.
So, I can download it on my pc hard drive, and...?
How can I create a floppy, possibly bootable, to feed to the Amiga 500?
Is WinUAE of any help?
thanks in advance
Hi,
First you have to buy some plastic, either blue or black in color, about an eight of an inche thick, there are other colors but these seem to be the most traditional. Next you will need to buy a plastic vacuum form machine with a disk type mold for three and a half inch disks. Then you will need to find some sheet metal about 1/16 inch thick, a spring, and a magnetic film with particles on both sides.
Take the magnetic film, cut it in a circle form approximately 3.5 inches, take the 1/16 each sheet metal cut out approximately a inch and one quarter circle, punching a one eight inch square in the middle and a one eight by 5/16 inch square approximately 1/8 inch above the square in the middle of the circle, start 1/4 inch from the end of the circle and bend in an "S" fashion, take the circular magnetic film and cut a one inch hole in the middle, gluing it to the inside bent form of the "S". Insert into the plastic vacuum form of the disk, I use the blue for the disk part, and use a small piece of black plastic for the disk write protect.
Actually winuae will be no help in the creation of a disk.
to make a disk bootable try using a newer model of the Amiga OS, I won't use anything under OS 3.1 myself.
Remember when you feed a disk to your A500, it can be eaten and after going through all this trouble creating this disk, well you know.
hope this helped
smerf
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http://www.amigaforever.com/ae/
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First of all, thanks for all your replies.
I'll take some time to take a decision... In the meantime, I'm also considering to get a minimig/replay... I think that lots of things like this would be easier with them, and now I fully understand why they have been invented...
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So, how did things go? I'm curious, because I have to find a way to get a copy of OctaMed...
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I stood still, and I'll be getting an A1200 + online option. Will cost some money, but in the end I think it will solve all the problems...
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I stood still, and I'll be getting an A1200 + online option. Will cost some money, but in the end I think it will solve all the problems...
Yes..
And you will really enjoy it!!
And all the new problems that come with it.. :lol:
desiv
(Good choice..:))
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This is half an hardware issue and half a software question.
Here it is:
Let's say I've got a bare, unexpanded A500.
I want to run a demo (or whatever) on it, which is freely available for downloading, in the usual .mdf or .lha form.
So, I can download it on my pc hard drive, and...?
How can I create a floppy, possibly bootable, to feed to the Amiga 500?
Is WinUAE of any help?
thanks in advance
This comes up quite a bit and I realize the poster has since opted for an A1200. Not a bad path for a serious Amigan.
Here's another option, expand your unexpanded A500, at least moderately. As has already been said, add the 512K trap door ram expansion. Now you have the standard A500 for which most software was written.
Next step, add some FAST ram (like a Supra 500RX, it can take up to 8 Megs). With just 2 additional Megs of fast ram, the character and abilities of a lowly A500 changes dramatically. You can unLHA software to the Ram Disk and run it from there to try it out, without ever having to write to precious and rare 880K floppies. Serial cables and the required software to connect to your internet equipped PC are far more usable now. You will no longer need to use floppies as intermediate storage. A RAD: is now possible.
Take it to 4 Megs or more of Fast Ram and a RAD: becomes even more desirable. You could boot with 2 or more disks worth of all your favorite utils (unLHA, Amiga Explorer, Dopus, etc) and move it all to RAD. Now everything executes almost instantly and will survive a soft reset. Your Amiga can start to have a life separate from an internet connection!
Add a hard drive (even a small one, Amiga software is tight) in a side car, and your Amiga world opens even wider. Usually, these have some fast ram, too.
If you want to play an occasional game that doesn't like expansion, flip the disable switch.
In this day, with so much cheap hardware on eBay and elsewhere, there should not be that many unexpanded Amigas.
My 2 cents.
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If we look at the original concept of the original question, the answers are limited.
If you have an Amiga 500 with no boot floppy, how do you get a boot floppy?
There's only 3 ways I'm aware of (mentioned here above, I'm just summarizing):
1: Find someone with an Amiga to make you a copy and give/send it to you.
2: Use a catweasel controller in a PC and write an image.
3: Use a kryoflux USB attached to a PC and write an image.
You can't use serial or network to transfer the first floppy to the Amiga.
Once you have a boot floppy, then you can use serial to transfer whatever you need, but you need that first boot floppy.
That's one of the things I like about ADTPro and the Apple II computers. All you need is a PC and an Apple II and you can create the first boot floppy. You don't even need a serial port, you can bootstrap with audio. ;-)
But the Amiga needs that first boot floppy..
Hey, I just thought of another way.
4: Use a Floppy emulator. Then you either don't need a floppy (just use images in the emulator) or write one to an external drive..
So, those are the only 4 ways I can think of to get that first boot floppy.
desiv
(OK, technically, you could add a hard drive (for the A500, it'd have to be a sidecar SCSI unless you have a custom ROM) and you could write a bootable HD image to the SCSI disk, boot off of that and create the floppy, but that's getting pretty extreme..) ;-)
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Wow, I didn't understand that he had no bootable system floppies at all. I took it he had a booting machine but found 512K (or even 1 Meg) of ram very limiting for running demos, networking and de-archiving.
I stand by the things I wrote, though. A 1 Meg Amiga was a wonderful machine 20 years ago when there were many local Amiga BBSs, multiple magazine cover disks every month, and plentiful blank floppy disks around. It still is. An A500 expanded with just a little extra ram, on the other hand, is much easier to live with now, and, quite a lot less expensive.
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Old PCs could format floppy drives to the lower format DD instead of the HD so first you need to format a disk to the lower density drive so it can be read on the A500. Then simply use the 850MB floppy to store your information on the PC. Then obtain a copy of CrossDOS that can be run on the A500. This is the chicken and egg thing cus it is no use that being on a PC disk because you need to mount it and without CrossDOS you can't. At times like this it helps to know someone that can send you DD disk with it on. Where are you ?
Once you have Workbench loaded and clicked to mount the PC drive as your floppy drive from the CrossDOS software you can simply copy the file and then through disk swapping get it onto a DD disk. I do believe expanding the machine with a modest trapdoor RAM card could be helpful.
What I actually do is run a Parnet cable between the Amiga and the PC and run a small piece of software so that the machines can talk to each other. Bit slow, but actually does work. Most of the A500 stuff was for a single floppy disk so memory isn't that much of a problem. Parnet software is still on Aminet, though you need the cable.
Un-archiving involves software like a good DMS tool in C and also LHA in C and knowing what to write from the shell to fire them up. Knowing a friendly Amigan that can let you have a copy of these on a DD helps.
Once you get past the initial and start building your tools and floppies and understanding the way the Amiga works even with a single drive floppy unit then you simply go back to a time when this was the norm. Also try and get a second floppy drive and see if you can get the HD bigger capacity one. Then get an external hard drive sidecar and you will really start to enjoy the computer. Great fun.
Have a read on this
http://aminet.net/package/comm/net/ParBENCH31
There is a tutorial on my website regarding creating self booting disks which is fun though you need understand about firing up the shell.