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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: AmigaBruno on June 25, 2013, 01:52:04 AM
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I've just bought an A1200, as I mentioned on another thread! :banana:
My first upgrade to this machine, which came without a hard drive, will be some kind of IDE CF card adaptor, as well as a CF card itself.
I wonder which of the many items of this type on eBay would be best for me. I can buy a ready prepared adaptor with formatted card containing various games and demos, or I can buy just the adaptor and a blank formatted card, or the adaptor and a CF card separately.
At least one seller claims that some CF cards are "too fast" for the Amiga, but I'm not sure which cards these may be, or if it's even true.
I'd like to have some storage space remaining on the cardl in any case, instead of it being full up with games and demos.
I also need to buy a USB CF card reader to copy files onto the CF card. I'm not 100% sure if these files should be ADF format or not.
What do you recommend?
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I use a SSD HD module (http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/New-Kingspec-32GB-DOM-Flash-44-Pin-IDE-SSD-Solid-State-Disk-On-Module-Drive-/151026088568?pt=AU_HardDrives&hash=item2329db3a78) in my A1200, it's a very nice and neat solution.
To setup your HD using your PC you can buy a USB to 44 pin adapter :)
I don't believe a HD can be too fast for an Amiga?
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I use a SSD HD module (http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/New-Kingspec-32GB-DOM-Flash-44-Pin-IDE-SSD-Solid-State-Disk-On-Module-Drive-/151026088568?pt=AU_HardDrives&hash=item2329db3a78) in my A1200, it's a very nice and neat solution.
To setup your HD using your PC you can buy a USB to 44 pin adapter :)
I don't believe a HD can be too fast for an Amiga?
I agree with NovaCoder, those are nice.
I use one with my A1200 with FastATA.
I always had to c-a-a on cold boot with CF because it was not ready or something.
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I use a SSD HD module (http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/New-Kingspec-32GB-DOM-Flash-44-Pin-IDE-SSD-Solid-State-Disk-On-Module-Drive-/151026088568?pt=AU_HardDrives&hash=item2329db3a78) in my A1200, it's a very nice and neat solution.
To setup your HD using your PC you can buy a USB to 44 pin adapter :)
I don't believe a HD can be too fast for an Amiga?
Unfortunately, due to Amiga and other expenses such as my Virgin Media broadband/TV/phone package, my social life has recently been in ruins. I'm hoping to find the cheapest and most suitable IDE CF setup, possibly buying them separately. This device is not only more expensive, but would take weeks instead of days to arrive here and may have customs charges as well.
Can anyone on here give me advice about the IDE to CF adaptors, the CF cards themselves, installing Workbench 3 and WHDload?
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Unfortunately, due to Amiga and other expenses such as my Virgin Media broadband/TV/phone package, my social life has recently been in ruins. I'm hoping to find the cheapest and most suitable IDE CF setup, possibly buying them separately. This device is not only more expensive, but would take weeks instead of days to arrive here and may have customs charges as well.
Can anyone on here give me advice about the IDE to CF adaptors, the CF cards themselves, installing Workbench 3 and WHDload?
Adapter wise id say most will work without issues, here is one with free shipping for 1.29$.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/CF-to-44-Pin-Laptop-IDE-Hard-Drive-Adapter-bootable-/250790187941?pt=US_Drive_Cables_dapters&hash=item3a644293a5
As far as CF card go I have had the best experience with SanDisk Ultra series cards, the 4GB SanDisk Ultra 30MB/s cards have worked flawless for many years on many Amigas, tho I use PATA SSD modules on my main Amigas nowdays.
So any 44-pin CF adapter and a SanDisk card will work great, I know lots of cards will work but since I have had problems with other brands I can only recommend what I myself have used the most.
As far as installation goes id say use a CF/USB reader for PC and set it all up in WinUAE since it will be fast and easy, I would recommend using ClassicWB http://classicwb.abime.net/, unexpanded A1200 id go for ClassicWB 68K or Lite.
Instructions are available on the ClassicWB page.
When setting up the CF card in WinUAE you boot from a WB 3.1 install ADF and then go to HDTools then left click once on HD Tool Box then rightclick go to the top menu and press "Icons/Information" or A+I.
Then click on the line SCSI_Device_Name=scsi.device and change it to SCSI_Device_Name=uaehf.device and hit enter.
Now you can see and partition your drive in WinUAE.
When setting up your CF card dont forget to set max tranfer to 0x001FE00 and hit enter.
The rest is guided by ClassicWB etc.
Hope it will work out for you :)
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another option (http://kipper2k.com/amigaforsale/)
:)
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Unfortunately, due to Amiga and other expenses such as my Virgin Media broadband/TV/phone package, my social life has recently been in ruins. I'm hoping to find the cheapest and most suitable IDE CF setup, possibly buying them separately. This device is not only more expensive, but would take weeks instead of days to arrive here and may have customs charges as well.
Can anyone on here give me advice about the IDE to CF adaptors, the CF cards themselves, installing Workbench 3 and WHDload?
Amigakit (http://www.amigakit.com) offers packages with an IDE-CF adaptor including a 4 GB CF card. I've bought one of those and one similar package from eBay, they both work great.
Now, if you want to save on expenses for the forseeable future, one of the pre-installed CF cards that comes complete with WHDLoad etc., that are sometimes available on eBay might turn out to be a good option.
Obviously, buying a pre-installed CF card from eBay will be a bit more expensive than getting a plain one in a local store, but then you can start using the HDD at once and then buy the additional hardware needed for smooth file transfers when you've saved some more money.
In order to set up a CF HDD on the Amiga, you really need at least some kind of CF-reader for your PC, to transfer files to the CF card using WinUAE. I've gone with the option of buying an additional PCMCIA-CF adaptor for my Amiga and a USB-CF adaptor for my PC. Using a 512 MB CF-card in these, I transfer downloaded files such as demos and games to the Amiga.
Using the normal Workbench 3.x install disk is simple. HDToolbox will read the correct options from the CF-HDD (except for maxtransfer, which should be 0x1FE00 - at least that works well for me).
Also note that a 4GB HDD eats up quite a bit of RAM, so if you haven't got some Fast-mem in your Amiga, you'll be wanting some soon.
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So now, there are some more factors to consider!
I didn't know that a 4Gb CF card used as a hard drive would eat up lots of RAM. I've only got the 2Mb onboard RAM at the moment. I've had enough Amiga related expenses recently, which is affecting my social life, so in this case I think I should go for a smaller CF card to start off with. What size do you suggest? Perhaps just a 256Mb or 512Mb card would be good to start off with. As these sizes aren't very popular nowadays, perhaps this would also mean they're more compatible with older equipment. From what I've read here, as well as on eBay, it seems that Sandisk cards would also be the best ones to go for.
At the moment, the most important thing for me to do is to get a copy of Deluxe Paint IV AGA installed onto my Amiga A1200, so I can produce some artwork using the extra facilities of the AGA chipset.
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Bigger hard drives will not eat up more RAM, that must be a mistake, but if you want to play WHDLoad adapted games then you will need a RAM expansion eventually. Better start saving up, they are all very over-priced unfortunately.
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You will not loose ram because you have a bigger hard drive so go for a 4GB one so you got space to load some games on it.
2MB chip using WHDLoad can run a decent amount of 1 floppy games and removing preload will run even more, not ideal but you will sure be able to run quite a ok amount of games, but keep the OS at a minimal to free up as much ram as possible.
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I was running a 4gb CF just fine with an unexpanded 1200, never noticed it was eating a lot of ram, or even any at all.
The speed of the Amiga IDE is a lot slower than most storage solutions so imho there's no need to spend lots on the faster speed etc. if you just want one drive then go for the CF solution - get a sandisk ultra for compatibility... you can go for SD cards too, which are cheaper than CF but the adapter itself will cost more.
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Bigger hard drives will not eat up more RAM, that must be a mistake, but if you want to play WHDLoad adapted games then you will need a RAM expansion eventually. Better start saving up, they are all very over-priced unfortunately.
Bigger hard drives are not going to "eat up" more RAM, the only way they would do that is if you create lots of partitions on them with lots of buffers. How you set this is entirely up to you, through HDToolbox.
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Also note that a 4GB HDD eats up quite a bit of RAM, so if you haven't got some Fast-mem in your Amiga, you'll be wanting some soon.
Bigger hard drives are not going to "eat up" more RAM, the only way they'd do that is if you create lots of partitions on them, with lots of buffers. This is completely configurable by the user through HDToolbox.
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There's also something about the maxtransfer that needs to be set?
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Thanks for all your replies! I'd never even heard of the option of using SD cards as an Amiga hard drive before. I've only found one adaptor for this on eBay. I've never even used a CF card to do anything at all, but as people think this is ideal for an Amiga hard drive, it seems that now is the time to start using them. The main thing is to put my new A1200 to some use which takes advantage of the AGA graphics. Not all that much AGA software has ever been produced, so the most important thing is to get an AGA version of Deluxe Paint, or some other graphics software with some detailed instructions on how to use it. This may mean downloading an AGA version of Deluxe Paint and buying a book by a third party, possibly in German. Searches on eBay for Deluxe Paint don't usually bring up an AGA version. Only one has just come up on eBay UK, but I don't want to pay that price at the moment, due to all my other expenses of the IDE to CF adaptor and CF card, Virgin Media, and actually having a social life.
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Dpaint 4.5 and 5 were AGA.
On amibay"
Max transfer and mask
When using onboard IDE and scsi.device, a maxtransfer setting of 0x1fe00 (or lower) is required on all partitions with any file system (to avoid read- and write-errors).
Be aware that wrong (too high) values are mentioned too many times on EAB.
Specific max transfer settings are not required if you use IDEfix97 on internal IDE, when using PFS3 All-in-One or when using PCMCIA
I do not know which drivers for third party IDE controllers are affected. It is likely that drivers made before 1994 (before EIDE, and later ATA-2 in 1996) are affected.
The maxtransfer setting limits the max size of one file transfer. It has no effect on speed. (Even battlefield 3 uses 128kB and less )
The reason for the max transfer issue has recently been found, see this thread. (Also due to changing ATA specs)
Mask settings are for DMA capable controllers and not required for Amiga IDE or PCMCIA use.
http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=19899
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I found this on http://uk.ebid.net/for-sale/disque-dur-amiga-1200-2300-jeux-aga-cd32-ecs-ocs-102073203.htm for a device which looks similar to most of them (translation follows) -
"Certains jeux (Hybris, Sensible Soccer 512 kb, Toki, Pang, Turican, Arkanoid, Carnage, Donkey Kong, Final Fight, DrMario, Dynablaster, Grand Monster Slam, Ghouls n'Ghots, Golden Axe, International Karate +, Jim Power, James Pond 1 & 2,Lotus, Micromachines, Motorhead, New Year Lemmings 199192, Pacmania, Rick Dangerous, Speedball, BCKid, Strider ....) FONCTIONNENT SUR UN AMIGA 1200 DE BASE SANS EXTENSION MEMOIRE, avec une méthode qui permet de lancer un jeu sans passer par le workbench (notice explicative fournie).
Une extension mémoire de 4 Mo minimum est obligatoire pour faire fonctionner le Workbench , les jeux AGA, CD32 et certains jeux OCS,ECS."
Some games (Hybris, Sensible Soccer 512 kb, Toki, Pang, Turican, Arkanoid, Carnage, Donkey Kong, Final Fight, DrMario, Dynablaster, Grand Monster Slam, Ghouls n'Ghots, Golden Axe, International Karate +, Jim Power, James Pond 1 & 2,Lotus, Micromachines, Motorhead, New Year Lemmings 199192, Pacmania, Rick Dangerous, Speedball, BCKid, Strider ....) WORK ON A STANDARD AMIGA 1200 WITHOUT RAM UPGRADE, with a technique which allows a game to run without the Workbench (instructions included).
A RAM upgrade of 4Mb minimum is essential to use Workbench, AGA, CD32, and some OCS and ECS games.
So, I wonder if someone can explain this and tell me which of these devices (if any) will run most games without a 4Mb RAM upgrade.
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It probably needs extra Ram as it's using WHDLoad for those games - it's a way of loading games from an icon in workbench without using the floppy disks, but it needs a few mb extra memory.
Where are you located? Someone near might have some software/games they'd be happy to pass on :)
Robert.
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It probably needs extra Ram as it's using WHDLoad for those games - it's a way of loading games from an icon in workbench without using the floppy disks, but it needs a few mb extra memory.
Where are you located? Someone near might have some software/games they'd be happy to pass on :)
Robert.
I'm in London, but that's not important. Lots of or even all commercial Amiga software is available for download. The point is that these IDE to CF adaptors are publicised as an easy way to gain access to a vast collection of Amiga software, but now it seems that (at least when it comes to games relying on custom floppy disk formats) you need a RAM upgrade which probably costs more than the price of this IDE/CF device. The alternative is to buy an IDE CF adaptor and a blank card, then copy applications and games onto the card using a cheap USB CF reader (which is required either way if you want to copy any software onto the card youself), but some floppy games can't be loaded from the card unless I buy additional RAM. The way to avoid this is to accumulate some more floppy disks. AFAIK the cheapest RAM expansion, apart from eBay auctions, is http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=43&products_id=1100 for £71.99.
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dont buy one of those overpriced relics, unless you're just interested in collecting the hardware or something. I don't really see how they can justify those prices when you can get a much better spanking new proper 128mb accellerator for less than a 4mb hawk or something, anyway.
you can run some older games, ones that came on a single disk for example, i think though that most (i'm assuming over 50% but perhaps more even?)games wont actually run on a 2mb amiga - the preloaded cards from ebayers don't cover this point at all, its all very misleading if you're not doing the research into it.
for a proper WHDload rig that will run anything you throw at it, you need at least the 128mb accellerator (yes all that ram is useful, for example, running the 'talky' cd32 beneath a steel sky from CF) (£80?) an adapter and decent CF (maybe 15 total - you can get cheaper from china, but thats what you'll pay for guaranteed amiga compatibility on ebay/uk stock - you'll also have to configure this and load all the WHD load games on yourself) and a WHDload license (another 15) without the license, a few games are crippled or wont run.
so £130 minimum, if you wanted to save some time and get a preload thats £145, (the preloaded cards don't come with a WHDload license either) though that gives you access to a huge library, you could do all that on a fairly old pc with emulator for just the cost of WHDL license but wheres the fun in that.;)
the other way is to get a device that will store and load adf images, a floppy emulator, that you install in place of your floppy drive, allows you to load stuff from virtual floppies, your amiga can't tell the difference.
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OK, I think that's enough to help me decide! Thanks for all your comments.
At the moment, I plan to get an IDE to CF adaptor and a blank CF card. The CF card will be a Sandisk Ultra, but could be smaller than 4Gb. I'll also buy a USB CF card reader to transfer some Amiga software onto the card. I'll see how I get on with that. I haven't used my A1200 for a few days now, because it's still floppy based and I've been concentrating on my A500 Plus with GVP SCSI hard drive, 3Mb RAM, and now plugged into a 1084S monitor.
Please search for and read my other recent threads for details of my other Amiga activities.
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Well, I've just an adaptor with cable and a blank 4Gb CF card on eBay for a total of £17.85. They're both from the same seller, so should arrive at the same time in a few days from now.
I've also bought a USB CF card reader for £3.50 which should arrive on the same day.
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I've now got the CF card reader, the IDE CF card adaptor and the CF card itself. I hope later today to get it installed, formatted, partitioned, a copy of Workbench installed onto it, then some applications, games and demos copied onto it and running.
I realise now that I haven't prepared myself enough in advance, so I need some advice. I could format the CF card either while inserted in the Amiga IDE CF adaptor or in the USB CF card reader using an emulator. If I format it while in the Amiga it will have to be FFS format under Workbench 2.05. I haven't got a copy of Workbench 3 on floppy disk at the moment, but that didn't come with the SFS filing system. I've never used SFS, anyway. My ADF transfer kit stopped working again some time ago, so I can't use that at the moment. I know I'll need to partition the 4Gb CF card, but I'm not sure how many partitions I need.
The first thing I'll do is check I've got the right screwdriver to open up the A1200, but I probably have.
If all else fails, I'll buy another one of these IDE CF kits next week, already formatted, partitioned, and with lots of games and demos pre installed.
It seems there are no A1200 RAM upgrades I can afford at the moment, so I'm stuck on 2Mb. This kit may enable me to copy some non AGA applications and games which require more than 2Mb and/or some Fast RAM onto floppy disk, though. After that, I could run them on my A500 Plus with 3Mb RAM, which can be cheaply upgraded to 8Mb or even 9Mb RAM.
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My progress so far is as follows. Of course, there are some things I've forgotten about the Amiga, as well as some things I never knew. I never had a hard drive for my Amigas in the past.
I've found out I've got the right kind of screwdriver to unscrew my Amiga A1200. My old A500 required a torx screwdriver of a specific size. Luckily, I lived next door to a hardware store at the time. I returned the original screwdriver a few minutes later for one of the right size.
I watched a video on Youtube about how to format and install the CF card. It recommended using HD Toolbox to format and partition the CF card, before transferring it to a PC running WinUAE to install a version of Classic Workbench by Bloodwych of EAB.
Unfortunately, I've only got Workbench 2.05 at the moment, which doesn't contain HD Toolbox. I can't find any HD software on it at all.
I inserted the CF card into the CF card reader while running Ubuntu Linux, which can read and write various formats. It said that the card was in
MS-DOS format, but there was no option to reformat it as any other format.
I now plan to fit the IDE CF adaptor to my Amiga A1200, with the power off, then turn it on and see if the hard drive light comes on. I will then insert the CF card with the power off before turning the A1200 on again to see if I get any options to format and partition it. I know this setup is compatible with the A600 as well, so I hope this will enable me to get started. If this fails, then I'll try to format and prepare it under WinUAE, but I haven't run it recently and I never ever liked the idea of emulating an Amiga on a PC. I had it running a demo disk called Demonia 31 a few months ago.
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My work installing the CF card as a hard drive has ended with me successfully installing the interface, so that the hard drive light flickered, but that's all so far! There's no sign of a new hard drive waiting to be formatted.
I suddenly feel very tired, so I think it's time for bed.
I hope to format the CF card either on the A1200 or under WinUAE sometime later today (Thursday).
One problem is that I don't know if I can get my ADF transfer kit working again, so the only transfers for the moment would be onto the CF card itself.
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If youre on a budget I wouldnt even bother with a CF card. Theyre much more expensive than a standard 2.5inch ide drive, and actually marginally slower (although seek times are better on a CF card).
Im not sure where this whole CF card being a good option for an a600/a1200 came from, but unfortunately I fell for it and got a 32gig card. While this works fine I couldve either saved a decent chunk of money (32gig cf cards are pretty pricey per gig), or got a 320gig 2.5inch ide drive for the same price.
Remember, its mostly the a1200's ide port that dictates speed, not the storage medium (the a1200's IDE port is so slow that there'll be little difference, regardless of theoretical speed of a device).
Should be easy enough to find a 20gig or so drive for about $10 on ebay. If money was a concern Id go that route. Amikit are pretty expensive too, Id steer clear of them too unless you want to effectively donate to them for dealing with amiga stuff.
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If youre on a budget I wouldnt even bother with a CF card. Theyre much more expensive than a standard 2.5inch ide drive, and actually marginally slower (although seek times are better on a CF card).
Im not sure where this whole CF card being a good option for an a600/a1200 came from, but unfortunately I fell for it and got a 32gig card. While this works fine I couldve either saved a decent chunk of money (32gig cf cards are pretty pricey per gig), or got a 320gig 2.5inch ide drive for the same price.
Remember, its mostly the a1200's ide port that dictates speed, not the storage medium (the a1200's IDE port is so slow that there'll be little difference, regardless of theoretical speed of a device).
Should be easy enough to find a 20gig or so drive for about $10 on ebay. If money was a concern Id go that route. Amikit are pretty expensive too, Id steer clear of them too unless you want to effectively donate to them for dealing with amiga stuff.
Obviously, I've already bought the CF card, so your solution involves me spending even more money. Apart from that, I was told that 4Gb was the maximum size of CF card allowed with this setup or even on the A1200 at all, including if it was an actual IDE hard drive. There's also the fact that it gives me another way to transfer files between the A1200 and any computer or device which can read CF cards.
I'll contact the seller now to see if he's got any suggestions on how to format and partition the CF card. His instructions only explain how to install the adaptor and where to download games.
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Ask someone to send you the 3.0 or 3.1 disks in adf. Otherwise they are included in Amiga Forever about $30, but I haven't checked in a while.
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Ask someone to send you the 3.0 or 3.1 disks in adf. Otherwise they are included in Amiga Forever about $30, but I haven't checked in a while.
I've already got the Workbench 3.1 set of disks in ADF format, but I may have to copy them onto Amiga floppy disks. Unfortunately, my ADF transfer kit hasn't worked for some time. Perhaps I can use these ADF files under WinUAE, but last night I was getting lots of errors saying something like "Can't create device" followed by some numbers, although earlier on I managed to get the Kickstart 2 and Kickstart 3 boot screens. Eventually, all I could get were the 1.3 and AROS boot screens.
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Do you have a Kickstart 3.0 or 3.1 ROM to use with WinUAE, so you can emulate an A1200?
The most straight forward way to do this is to install ClassicWB in WinUAE and then attach the CF hard drive, partition and quick-format it, and copy the finished ClassicWB to the CF.
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Do you have a Kickstart 3.0 or 3.1 ROM to use with WinUAE, so you can emulate an A1200?
The most straight forward way to do this is to install ClassicWB in WinUAE and then attach the CF hard drive, partition and quick-format it, and copy the finished ClassicWB to the CF.
BDo you have a Kickstart 3.0 or 3.1 ROM to use with WinUAE, so you can emulate an A1200?
The most straight forward way to do this is to install ClassicWB in WinUAE and then attach the CF hard drive, partition and quick-format it, and copy the finished ClassicWB to the CF.
I've got a 3.1 ROM imaga & it's working with WINUAE again now.
I think the problem may be quite simple. Perhaps I should just plug in the USB CF reader and insert the card before trying to create the device under WINUAE. This could prevent the error message "Can't create device...". I could then format it with HD Toolbox.
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You need to use Diskpart to clean all partitioning information off the card before you can connect and use it properly in WinUAE.
Run Diskpart as administrator, type "list disk" and find your card and select it, f.ex "select disk 3", then type "clean". Make sure you get the right disk, as you won't be able to recover any files after cleaning it.
If Diskpart says it succeeded with cleaning the card then it's ready for use in WinUAE. If Windows asks to initialize or format the card, click no/cancel.
Run WinUAE as administrator and load a quickstart A1200 config, enable turbo floppy, add the ClassicWB HDF file on UAE controller, and add your card as a new hard drive on IDE. Now you can finish the installation and reboot into ClassicWB.
Do you know how to use HD Toolbox or HDInstTools to change filesystem and partition the card correctly?
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You need to use Diskpart to clean all partitioning information off the card before you can connect and use it properly in WinUAE.
Run Diskpart as administrator, type "list disk" and find your card and select it, f.ex "select disk 3", then type "clean". Make sure you get the right disk, as you won't be able to recover any files after cleaning it.
If Diskpart says it succeeded with cleaning the card then it's ready for use in WinUAE. If Windows asks to initialize or format the card, click no/cancel.
Run WinUAE as administrator and load a quickstart A1200 config, enable turbo floppy, add the ClassicWB HDF file on UAE controller, and add your card as a new hard drive on IDE. Now you can finish the installation and reboot into ClassicWB.
Do you know how to use HD Toolbox or HDInstTools to change filesystem and partition the card correctly?
I prefer to attempt things on a real Amiga before giving up and using an emulator. This time neither approach has worked, though.
I never used HD Toolbox or HDInstTools until last week because I never had to set up an Amiga hard drive before. I watched this video about it, but things didn't go the same for me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsRSVpfy7_o . The CF card was detected, but I didn't find a way of dividing it into partitions. I made sure I set the MaxTransfer to the figure mentioned. The next thing I knew, my CF card was listed as having only 20Mb capacity, instead of 4Gb! I tried to reboot from the Workbench 3.1 floppy, but it stopped and displayed the 1> prompt! I later found that trying to boot from this disk also stopped with the 1> on my A500 Plus, although it was working previously, so then I copied the ADF file onto the floppy disk again.
I see that the price of 2Mb SRAM cards has now come down to £45, so I'll probably get one of those in the near future.
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After thinking about what to do for several days now, I finally found and watched another video by the same Amiga user, but things must have been explained slightly differently in this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wSv53nKdFA . For a start, the software used was on the Workbench Install floppy disk. I followed these instructions more or less, but I think my CF card is bigger than the one he used. After all this, I've now got a CF card with Workbench 3.1 installed, but with 4 partitions instead of the 3 featured in the video. My partitions are Workbench (309Mb), Work (208Mb), Games (1745Mb), and Art (2393Mb). I did a full format of the partitions Workbench and Work, but a Quick Format of the other two partitions, as recommended in the video. I wonder if people on here think this setup will work. This video doesn't say anything about Maxtransfer settings either, so I hope that's OK. I plan to transfer various software onto this new hard drive ASAP, but I'm not sure which is the best way to do it. I may have to keep opening the Amiga and removing the CF card to do it. There's some other software I've already got on floppy disks, though.
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yes its a pain, I had my amiga case open for months. IMHO, the best ways are:
1, get another CF card and a PCMCIA adapter and with fat95 FS use that like you would a memory stick (you can also easily add a further 4gb (possibly more) storage this way).
2, get a PCMCIA NIC (about 10 quid) and setup TCP/IP stack and dl all the stuff you want directly using the amiga.
they're both worth doing.
what do you want a 2mb SRAM for?
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yes its a pain, I had my amiga case open for months. IMHO, the best ways are:
1, get another CF card and a PCMCIA adapter and with fat95 FS use that like you would a memory stick (you can also easily add a further 4gb (possibly more) storage this way).
2, get a PCMCIA NIC (about 10 quid) and setup TCP/IP stack and dl all the stuff you want directly using the amiga.
they're both worth doing.
what do you want a 2mb SRAM for?
It looks like I'll have to remove the card, then copy enough software onto it using my USB CF card reader/writer to keep me occupied for the time being.
If I connect my A1200 to the Internet, then I may find I start doing Internet related things on it most of the time, so that may not be a good idea.
I'm considering getting a 2Mb SRAM card because that seems to be the cheapest RAM upgrade at the moment at £45 compared with £71.99 for an ACA 1220 128Mb accelerator from Amigakit. It may be nice to have the ACA 1220 accelerator, but I don't actually need it. I've read that I DO need more than 2Mb RAM to run various software from a CF card using WHDload, though. I also need to go for some nights out, stop Virgin Media charging me so much, etc. I think I should start doing my personal budget in detail again and using Personal Finance Manager, like I used to. Does anyone else on here use this, or something else they really like?
BTW, I've run into my first problem using this device. I downloaded a copy of Deluxe Paint IV V4.5 AGA, which when booting from floppy displays the message that it's a version included with an A1200 pack and this disk is not for resale. There doesn't seem to be an HD installer included. I copied the program and artwork icons onto both my Work and Workbench partitions. When I try to run it from the CF card it always crashes, though. The Workbench Screen says I've got about 1.7Mb of RAM, then I usually get Guru Meditation #0000000B, which I've found out stands for "Opcode 1111 emulation", but I don't know what that means. Sometimes it crashes with a bright red screen and sometimes there's a more spectacular crash with some kind of interference pattern or loss of sync, horizontal or vertical hold, similar to crashes when using Relokick 1.4. I installed the English, German, and French locales, British, German, and French keyboards, and Epson printer drivers, but I don't know if these would affect it.
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It looks like I'll have to remove the card, then copy enough software onto it using my USB CF card reader/writer to keep me occupied for the time being.
If I connect my A1200 to the Internet, then I may find I start doing Internet related things on it most of the time, so that may not be a good idea.
I'm considering getting a 2Mb SRAM card because that seems to be the cheapest RAM upgrade at the moment at £45 compared with £71.99 for an ACA 1220 128Mb accelerator from Amigakit. It may be nice to have the ACA 1220 accelerator, but I don't actually need it. I've read that I DO need more than 2Mb RAM to run various software from a CF card using WHDload, though. I also need to go for some nights out, stop Virgin Media charging me so much, etc. I think I should start doing my personal budget in detail again and using Personal Finance Manager, like I used to. Does anyone else on here use this, or something else they really like?
BTW, I've run into my first problem using this device. I downloaded a copy of Deluxe Paint IV V4.5 AGA, which when booting from floppy displays the message that it's a version included with an A1200 pack and this disk is not for resale. There doesn't seem to be an HD installer included. I copied the program and artwork icons onto both my Work and Workbench partitions. When I try to run it from the CF card it always crashes, though. The Workbench Screen says I've got about 1.7Mb of RAM, then I usually get Guru Meditation #0000000B, which I've found out stands for "Opcode 1111 emulation", but I don't know what that means. Sometimes it crashes with a bright red screen and sometimes there's a more spectacular crash with some kind of interference pattern or loss of sync, horizontal or vertical hold, similar to crashes when using Relokick 1.4. I installed the English, German, and French locales, British, German, and French keyboards, and Epson printer drivers, but I don't know if these would affect it.
if your adventurous ..try amigasys4aga ..its a decent download ..all you need is a copy of your workbench an extras disk ..on a freshly formatted drive you basically copy the program on to dh0 an reboot an it installs itself ..done it a few times ..partioned my sdcard into dh0 an dh1 ...copied the amigasys4aga onto dh1 ..formatted dh0 ..an copied the program across to dh0 ..then reboot ..it asks a few questions what your system is etc ..a couple disk changes an its done..id put a pic of my workbench but they always seem to big to upload here ..
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It looks like I'll have to remove the card, then copy enough software onto it using my USB CF card reader/writer to keep me occupied for the time being.
If I connect my A1200 to the Internet, then I may find I start doing Internet related things on it most of the time, so that may not be a good idea.
I'm considering getting a 2Mb SRAM card because that seems to be the cheapest RAM upgrade at the moment at £45 compared with £71.99 for an ACA 1220 128Mb accelerator from Amigakit. It may be nice to have the ACA 1220 accelerator, but I don't actually need it. I've read that I DO need more than 2Mb RAM to run various software from a CF card using WHDload, though. I also need to go for some nights out, stop Virgin Media charging me so much, etc. I think I should start doing my personal budget in detail again and using Personal Finance Manager, like I used to. Does anyone else on here use this, or something else they really like?
BTW, I've run into my first problem using this device. I downloaded a copy of Deluxe Paint IV V4.5 AGA, which when booting from floppy displays the message that it's a version included with an A1200 pack and this disk is not for resale. There doesn't seem to be an HD installer included. I copied the program and artwork icons onto both my Work and Workbench partitions. When I try to run it from the CF card it always crashes, though. The Workbench Screen says I've got about 1.7Mb of RAM, then I usually get Guru Meditation #0000000B, which I've found out stands for "Opcode 1111 emulation", but I don't know what that means. Sometimes it crashes with a bright red screen and sometimes there's a more spectacular crash with some kind of interference pattern or loss of sync, horizontal or vertical hold, similar to crashes when using Relokick 1.4. I installed the English, German, and French locales, British, German, and French keyboards, and Epson printer drivers, but I don't know if these would affect it.
I can't help you with your software issues.... but every version of Dpaint I've tried can be 'installed' by copying the contents of the disks, i've never have to make 'assigns' or use an installer - there isn't one, AFAIK.
IMHO Don't waste your money on the 2mb melcard or whatever it is... I don't have one but it seems a waste of money... its probably even slower ram than chip ram. just stump up the extra 30 for the proper accelerator, even with the lowest model you'll probably have a 3x system speed boost, and 64 times the memory of the melcard. just my 2p.
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Here's my progress with the CF card over the last few days.
I went to the Amiga North Thames meeting on Sunday. From what I was told, it was a record breaking attendance, so I hope there are even more people there next time.
I asked one member about this problem with DPaint IV 4.5 AGA crashing and he compared the floppy disk and HDD startup sequences. Another member (whose name I've sadly forgotten) chipped in that the problem may be that the MaxTransfer rate needed to be reduced. This advice had come up in one installation video by retrosofer on YouTube, but not in another video of his which I finally used, and my installation hadn't even brought up a screen which mentioned MaxTransfer. This number was changed to something like $1FE000 , then DPaint IV 4.5 AGA was copied onto the CF card again and it worked! The problem may have come up with this version of DPaint, but not an earlier version or any other software, because it may have been a larger file to any of the other programs already installed.
The following day, I did some more work copying software onto the CF card. I finally unscrewed my A1200 again and removed the CF card. I inserted it into a CF card reader/writer and managed to add it as a hard drive in WinUAE. This was only after I failed to get UAE and E-UAE (both under Linux) to run, though. I had various problems with Kickstart ROM images under WinUAE and finally had to use it to run as an A500 Plus with 4Mb RAM. I managed to install the applications Personal Paint, and Platinum Works!, as well as the games Colonization, and The Secret of Monkey Island. I had problems finding the best version of Monkey Island, because the first version wasn't cracked and I haven't got the manual. It was in German, which doesn't bother me, but I didn't know which year various pirates had been arrested or killed, so I couldn't play the game. I installed another version, which has been cracked and is in French, but that's OK with me. I may even learn some new vocabulary! I couldn't install The Bard's Tale, or Gods. These may both require WHDload or something similar. I think another game called Colony1 may just require an assign.
I looked at the extracted archive of WHDload and didn't see how I could install it. It later dawned on me that I'd probably need to compile it all into an ADF file. I can't understand why it hasn't been supplied as an ADF. I hope to get that done today.
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I looked at the extracted archive of WHDload and didn't see how I could install it. It later dawned on me that I'd probably need to compile it all into an ADF file. I can't understand why it hasn't been supplied as an ADF. I hope to get that done today.
It can't be supplied as an ADF because the archive file is too large at 1.4M in size, and using several ADFs would be impractical as well.
To install, just open the WHDLoad drawer and click Install.
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It can't be supplied as an ADF because the archive file is too large at 1.4M in size, and using several ADFs would be impractical as well.
To install, just open the WHDLoad drawer and click Install.
The main problem is BEFORE I click on Install where do I save the Install file and all the other package files to? They would either be on a Windoze partition on my laptop or desktop PC, a Linux partition on my laptop or desktop PC, or somehow copied onto Amiga floppy disks. If I somehow click on Install from inside WinUAE I don't know how to get to that stage yet. I think the answer is in some videos on YouTube, but there are different ways of doing it.
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I apologise in advance if I am off topic...
Why is there such a fascination with IDE to CF adaptors; When IDE to SD adaptors do exist and SD cards are cheaper and are more readily available?
Secondly, wouldn't SD cards would make it easier to use in WinUAE since most new laptops now feature SD card readers but not CF.
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The SD adapters cost $5-10 more, maybe that's why. I agree SD is a more elegant and convenient solution than CF.
The main problem is BEFORE I click on Install where do I save the Install file and all the other package files to? They would either be on a Windoze partition on my laptop or desktop PC, a Linux partition on my laptop or desktop PC, or somehow copied onto Amiga floppy disks. If I somehow click on Install from inside WinUAE I don't know how to get to that stage yet. I think the answer is in some videos on YouTube, but there are different ways of doing it.
You can extract the WHDLoad archive anywhere, the installer will copy all files to your Workbench installation. Just add the LHA archive file as a hard drive in WinUAE, and connect your CF card and boot from it.
This is why it's so much easier to finish your whole Workbench installation in WinUAE; you can make any directory of files, disk images, hard drive images and program archives instantly available with no fuss.
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I apologise in advance if I am off topic...
Why is there such a fascination with IDE to CF adaptors; When IDE to SD adaptors do exist and SD cards are cheaper and are more readily available?
Secondly, wouldn't SD cards would make it easier to use in WinUAE since most new laptops now feature SD card readers but not CF.
The reasons are because from what I've seen and read, the SD card adaptors are for floppy drive emulators, you have to replace your internal drive with them, as well as being more expensive than the CF card adaptors. Most of them are out of my price range anyway. Also, the IDE to CF adaptors are a big upgrade because when the A600 and A1200 were designed no one thought they would ever have such a large hard drive. Apart from this, I heard that SD slots aren't supplied with some recent laptops, because USB SD card readers are widely available and cheap.