Amiga.org

Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: Amiga_CDTV on July 24, 2012, 07:16:27 PM

Title: How to create a DOS disk for the Amiga Transformer emulator?
Post by: Amiga_CDTV on July 24, 2012, 07:16:27 PM

Out of interest I am testing the Amiga Transformer PC-emulator (for the original A1000). I have a working copy of the emulator itself, but now I don't know how to create a DOS disk that would boot.

I have tried with the idea presented here: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=10143 but the problem is that I don't have a PC machine to create the 720k DOS disk in the first place. Or actually I should have, but all the machines are piled away at the moment.

I tried to download the MS-DOS3 disk image from http://www.allbootdisks.com and turn that into a disk with TSGui (on Amiga 1200), but the disk doesn't work with the Transformer ("Drive is not ready or there is a disk error").

Any ideas?

Title: Re: How to create a DOS disk for the Amiga Transformer emulator?
Post by: Thomas on July 24, 2012, 09:11:34 PM

I doubt that you can make a working 720k disk from a 1440k image with TSGUI.

Title: Re: How to create a DOS disk for the Amiga Transformer emulator?
Post by: Amiga_CDTV on July 24, 2012, 09:31:10 PM

Quote from: Thomas;701128

I doubt that you can make a working 720k disk from a 1440k image with TSGUI.

Yeah, realized that few moments later :razz:
Nice program anyway, the TSGUI.

I searched thrue a pile of old PC floppies and find an install disk of a MS-DOS 4.01 and that booted. I was able to cancel the setup and get back to the command prompt. If I can't find a real boot disk (not install disk) I can use this to format a disk in DF1 and make that a boot disk.

The transformer indeed works, albeit rather slowly.

If anyone wonders about the NOKIA MS-DOS, this was an install disk for an old Nokia -built PC. Hm, where else have we seen Microsoft and Nokia being mentioned lately? :lol:

Title: Re: How to create a DOS disk for the Amiga Transformer emulator?
Post by: Thomas on July 25, 2012, 08:30:12 AM

You could boot PCTask on WinUAE with the 1440k image and format a new 720k image this way.

Title: Re: How to create a DOS disk for the Amiga Transformer emulator?
Post by: Amiga_CDTV on July 25, 2012, 09:06:56 PM

I fiddled with VirtualBox and managed to make all sorts of DOS disks. They were disk images connected to the virtual machines and then I wrote them to real floppies thrue a USB-connected floppy drive (on my MacBook Pro) and OS X terminal.

Does the Transformers documentation give any mention of MS-DOS versions compatibility? I found out that:

- MS-DOS 5 booted but halted when it reached the user prompt
- MS-DOS 4 booted and works, but even running EDIT halts the machine (could be due to low RAM available)
- MS-DOS 3.3 boots and works, but I don't have any software to run with it. It's the "fastest" (being the simplest) of the three I tried.

Anyway, it works. This was more like an proof-of-concept sort of testing, with no real usage in mind. Still, the Transformer must have been quite an amazing piece of software when first launched with the A1000.