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

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

In now offer  TWO VERSIONS of  the adf transfer kit:One with the cable and amiga boot disk and one  which also includes a pci parallel card for all of you that you dont  have a pc with parallel port onboard!

Thanks!  I've been struggling for a while with an idea how to get .adf's onto my Amiga 500, and was sort of resigned to having to upgrade the memory on it (enough to hold a complete .adf file), and then getting a serial cable, a USB->serial adapter for my PC, waiting for the slow serial transfer, etc.  Your kit sure makes this easier though, heck, I couldn't make my own cable for the low price you're charging, LOL.  ;-)

Just ordered it off your ebay site, looking forward to trying it out!  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Awesome, love software updates!  

BTW, I still need to leave you positive feedback on Ebay!  I got my kit a couple weeks ago and have used it successfully now to make about a dozen disks.  My first problem was (as you suggested in your response to me on Ebay) that I needed to right-click on the application and run it as administrator.  I assumed since my account is already admin that I didn't need to do that.  Once done, however, it's working great!

Also I've discovered that many of my old 3.5" disks are bad, it seems like sometimes when the utility hits a bad disk the only way to get it running again is to restart the program on my PC and reboot the Amiga.  I tried hitting various combinations of Esc and Enter, to no avail.  Don't have a monitor hooked up to my Amiga when I'm doing this (have to drag it over next to my PC), so no idea if it's prompting me with any kind of error message on the screen.  :-/

But, 20+ year old disks aside, it works great, thanks!  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Side question, what is the possibility of making a longer cable?  Don't recall offhand the cable length limitations of a parallel port.  Do you think if I just threw a regular parallel port extension cable off newegg in-line with your adapter it would work, since the swapping of the wire pairs would already be taking place inside your custom cable?

My Amiga setup is about 20' from my PC, any closer and my PC would get jealous, LOL.  :p

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I don't recall off-hand if the CIA chips affect parallel port operation, but you might try swapping those and see if anything changes?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Unless the cable got damaged when it was pulled out, I'd suggest you test your parallel port on the Amiga. Have an old printer lying around or anything?

If you're using the parallel port card that came with the kit you'll need the drivers from the website for it.  IRQ settings sound like maybe your motherboard is too old to support it though?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Amazingly enough, my Amiga A500 GVP HD8+ SCSI hard drive unit with 42Mb Quantum drive fitted has just arrived only 3 days after I won the eBay auction! The item details said it has Workbench 2.0 already installed.

I'd really like to be able to transfer some ADF files directly onto this drive, but my supplied Amiga autoboot Paradise software disk is set up to copy these files onto df0: . It just boots up, then says it's establishing a connection, but never says that it has connected. Resetting by pressing ESC, then Return doesn't give me any prompt which enables me to change the drive to any other drive. Can someone tell me the easiest way to do it? I'll also need to read up on and install WHDload.

You're about to move beyond the ADF transfer kit at this point.  The easiest thing for you to do now is to pick up a cheap external CD drive that plugs into the SCSI port on the GVP unit, then when you need to transfer files just burn them onto CD with your PC.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I don't think my laptop have a parallel port. It only have some kind of 15pin-port on the side... But what's this PCI PARALLEL PORT CARD you offer? Can I use my burt up Acer Aspire 5738Z to do the job?

I have this kit.  It works well, however you will need a parallel port to use it.  The PCI card is exactly what it sounds like - a PCI card with a parallel port on it.  It needs to go in a normal-size PC, not a laptop.  There are USB-to-parallel-port adapters that would work on your laptop, but as I understand it are not compatible with this kit.  So first off, you'll need a PC with a parallel port (or a normal system that you can install a PCI card into), and some good floppy disks.  I cannot emphasize that enough, you'll need some good floppies (your old ones with all the errors probably won't work).  Beyond that, you'd be all set.  Click on his ebay link to purchase the product.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Wouldn't hurt to start with this:

http://www.amazon.com/Cleaning-Kit-3-5-Floppy-Drive/dp/B000V6Y1W6/

Also somebody posted a tip on the forum a couple weeks ago about using a small dab of WD-40 to repair some issues with old disks.  Haven't tried it myself but might try searching for their post to get the details.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

The A500 uses standard double density disks.  High density "sometimes" work, but with poor reliability.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

... and what could cause this error message in the last 00.1 % ? :mickeymouse:

Bad floppy disks!