FASTEST,EAYSIEST,CHEAPEST WAY TO TRANSFER ADF IMAGES BETWEEN PC AND AMIGA(mostly 500)

[ikonsgr]

Changing the pci slot is a good practice to solve an irq conflict on old motherboards.
Also, old bios usually offer 2 or 3 alternative settings for the on board parallel port. If i remember correctly something like 378h or 278h. The default usually is 378h, try to change this with bios and see if this resolves the conflict.

[ikonsgr]

So everything concludes to the "classic": RTFM! (Read the @#$@ manual!) :lol:
 
Anyway, as i note on the presentations of adf transfer kit (and ebay listings too), paradise utility can do MUCH more than transferring adf images. I decided to use it for adf image transfer only, as this is what most amiga users want, but most important,by doing this, i manage to automate the hole procedure to be as easy and simple as possible!
As paradise it's a very old cli utility on both amiga and pc it has some "oddities" and also ,in some cases, even the creator of paradise doesn't now how the util behaves with specific hardware configs.For example i recently found out that if you have a second floppy drive it's better to disable it because sometimes paradise seems to "hung up"! Also if i'm not mistaken somewhere in the paradise manual noted that author of the program doesn't know if it works with external drive at all!

 Reading AmigaBruno's experiences, i  sum up the following conclusions:

1) Eventually, it turns out that unplugging the cable while amiga is turned on, doesn't cause any problem to amiga's  parallel port (nevertheless ,all cables i make from early april, have the secure screws for anyone want to use them)
2) Paradise can indeed make transfers on external drives or hard disks too
3) For manual using paradise (e.g. for transferring files/directories or transfer from Amiga HD) it;s VERY important to follow exactly the order of procedures.

AmigaBruno you can correct me if i'm wrong on the above conclusions or you can add more if you want.
Also, i think it would be a great idea to present all your findings in a  "Troubleshooting/faq guide for adf transfer and paradise"  in a new thread or adding them in the first post of this thread.

I also want to thank you for sharing your experiences, as i'm sure they will be very helpful to Amiga community!  

[ikonsgr]

If you followed the instructions as you said, then the error messages you get, 99.9% are caused by bad floppy disks!
Anyway, floppy disks as we all now are not a very reliable mean of storage.
Try to amiga format (with verify) a disk (so to be 100% sure that disk is ok) and use it to transfer an image.
In order to make a transfer the disk must be unformatted, amiga formatted, or an amiga disk that already have data on it and you wish to overwrite it.

Btw, if you, or anyone have any problems ,it's better to contact through ebay messages or email me directly(ikonsgr@hotmail.com) to get a much more fast reply, as
i don't get to forums too often.

[ikonsgr]

@ mikkel_zen
Well i think there is not much do add, unfortunately,in order to make transfers you need a Real parallel port, cheap usb to parallel adapters don't work. So either you need an old laptop that has a parallel port on board or find any desktop pc! :rolleyes:


Now, i was thinking, although file/directory transfer from pc to amiga can be also done, it is not an automated process like with adf images, you will need to use paradise "old fashion" way, e.g.giving commands on amiga shell and cli!
So, i was thinking of making a second alternative boot disk (i will put it inside "useful adf images" sub folder of adf transfer program folder) and a small addition to adf transfer program interface in order to enable an easy and fast way to transfer files and directories instead of adf images!
How about that?

[ikonsgr]

You could get an old Pentium 233MHz Laptop with Win95 from 1990s, they should be almost free and they take up little space.

You can use paradise utility directly under old msdos/win95, so you don't need the adf transfer program for that, anyway!
  BUT, most probable,the program will not run under win 95,so you must use it through cli as paradise is a classic multi attribute command line utility!

[ikonsgr]

It's difficult to find double density 3.5" disks any more, at least cheap ones.
Personally i use only pc formatted High density disks as i can find new ones for 3-4euros/box of 10. You just need to give them a quick amiga format before using them.
I also know a couple of friends that have literally transfer 100's of adf images to HD disks with no problems.
Of course  as Oldsmobile_Mike said, there might be an "issue" of  reliability using HD disks on DD drive, but floppy disks in general, are not reliable mean of storage anyway! :rolleyes:
And in the end, if an HD disk would be unreadable after 10-20 readings you can just rewrite it using the kit in a couple of minutes!

[ikonsgr]

If, as you say,  adf transfer program can't automatically detect the parallel port adress, then most probable there is aproblem with your pc's parallel port.
First, check your device manager to see if parallel port there works ok (no exclamation marks). Also, if  you are using a parallel port pci card be sure it's plugged firmly into slot.
Hope these help.

[ikonsgr]

I just "discover" something that might be a cheap solution for all you "laptop lovers" that don't have a desktop pc, and want to use the adf transfer kit:
These pcmcia to parallel port cards
They claim that this offers a TRUE parallel port and they are rather cheap too!

Does anyone know if this kind of adapter really offers a real  bidirectional parallel port (you will probably know this, if you tried  to connect any device other than common printers)

[ikonsgr]

[UPDATE]

I just upload a new improved version of the boot disk.
I use the reorg utility to optimize the boot disk, so now you will only need ~7 sec to boot for PC->AMIGA transfers (previous was ~10 seconds) , and less than 20 sec (previous was ~25 sec) for AMIGA->PC transfers!
You can find the new boot disk here (i also put it inside the 32bit and 64bit versions of the adf transfer program folders, so anyone who downloads them will get the new boot disk inside "usefull adf images" sub folder)

[ikonsgr]

[UPDATE]

I just upload a new alternative version of the boot disk, named "Boot_df1.adf". As you can probably figure out by the name, you can use this boot disk, to make all transfers using the second external drive, instead of the internal!
 By doing so, you can leave permenantly the boot disk on internal drive, and change disks on external drive, so whenever a problem occurs you just reset amiga without needing to insert the boot disk again!


Also,i had some minor bugs fixed in both 32bit and 64bit versions of adf transfer program:
-  Choosing a read only adf image to transfer, doesn't cause "sticking" on  copying this same image. So no need to manually delete the  "temp.adf" file anymore (the workaround used so far)
- No need to restart  application to change i/o address of parallel port. This might also fix  some issues regarding the configuration file of  dosbox being "read only"

As always, you can find the new boot disk and versions of the program here.