Amiga 600: How to upgrade to WB 3.1?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Personally I would download the six disk ADF's of Workbench 3.1 (Google is your friend) and do a fresh install on the Amiga with them.  They'll have everything you'll need to get the system running under 3.1, then you can use your CF or somesuch to transfer updates and other files over from your PC onto the A600.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Clean the floppy drive, including the write-protect sensor?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I would put the A600 hard drive in a computer

Kind of laughing at this comment, "put the A600 hard drive in a computer"... what, the A600 isn't a computer?    Everything you're trying to do can be done directly on the Amiga, just as Commodore intended.  Everyone advocating the use of WinUAE just wants to take the easy way out, LOL.  

If you google "clean amiga floppy drive" there are many, many threads and videos on this subject that will come up.  If every disk you insert is complaining about being write protected, I'd start there first.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Congrats on fixing the drive!  

Re: the install problem, it sounds like you're trying to install 3.1 overtop of an existing 2.1 setup.  Since there's no telling what's going on with that existing installation, I usually have the best success by first booting off the 3.1 Install disk, then use HDToolbox to wipe whatever existing partition data you have, set up new partitions (make sure to check the "Bootable" option for your first partition, and press enter in each field after changing anything), reboot (again booting off the 3.1 Install disk), format your new partitions, then install 3.1 with the installer script.

Try that and let us know how you get on, also if you search Youtube there's several videos from people showing how to install 3.1.  I've been meaning to make a video myself, but you know, that whole "never enough time" thing.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Workbench and Kickstart are two different things - you've got the 3.1 ROM installed correctly, but only running Workbench 2.1 on top of that.  No worries, we'll get ya fully updated to 3.1 here, soon.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Hi Mike.

Thanks for the very fast reply :-D
I will try to perform the operation that you suggest here. One very odd thing: When I do a mouse right-click and go to "Version", then it gives me the follwing info: "Kickstart Version 40.63, Workbench 40.42, 3.1 ROM". As far as I have been able to research WB 40.42 = WB 3.1.!!! However, my Workbench screen looks nothing like the characteristic "blue workbench 3.1", which I remember from my childhood. It looks just like the same old dull 2.1. How can this happen?

Hope to hear from you again :-)
Anders

Okay, I had to re-read your question again.  It does sound like you're running Workbench 3.1, however if you've installed it on-top of an existing 2.1 installation then it may be some of your preferences are getting mucked up based on files from the old versions.  Definitely recommend trying that "clean slate" approach mentioned earlier.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

When you're done there check out mfilos's awesome blog post about making 3.1 look more modern.  Personally I love VisualPrefs and Rebel's palette, but I'd skip Birdie on an ECS machine.  

http://www.mfilos.com/2012/01/guide-making-workbench-prettier-using.html

Also don't forget PeterK's updated icon.library!  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Hi again Mike.

Well that's good and bad news. Good because it does seem to work afterall. Bad because I was hoping that 3.1. would give me a tiiiny bit better graphics ;-) And also, the refference to "the blue look" is just me remembering my old Workbench 3.1.

"A clean slate" install sounds like just the thing for me! :-)

But just a newbies question: I have a 20 GB old iPod HD installed in my Amiga. Can I partion this HD in two and then make 1 for WB 3.1. and 1 for "Games"? Have NO experience with HD on an Amiga 600 whatsoever :-)

3.1 compared to 1.3 is like night and day, much more professional looking and easier to customize.  3.1 compared to 2.1... yeah, you probably won't see as much difference initially.

Re: the hard drive, if you google you'll find about a million threads on using large hard drives on an Amiga.  AFAIR AmigaOS did not natively support hard drives larger then 4GB until 3.5 or 3.9.  Prior to that you need to use a different file system like SFS or PFS (as opposed to the native Amiga FFS file system) to use that much space.  While there are many valid good reasons to consider their use, IMHO FFS ain't that bad and it's what you've got to work with currently, so what I'd recommend is the following:

DH0: Workbench, 400MB
DH1: Work (music, graphics programs, whatever), 1700MB
DH2: Games, 1900MB

This keeps all your partitions smaller than 2GB, and your formatted capacity within the 4GB space.  This is the "safe" option, feel free to go bigger if you want the "risky" option.  All of these settings can be changed within HDToolbox on your 3.1 Install disk.

*disclaimer - I'm sure someone will come along and tell you different in about a minute.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Also for way more technical details than you'll ever need, ref. the Wiki entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Fast_File_System

Perfect for reading if you're having trouble sleeping.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

ARGH! Just ran into a problem. Partioned the HD in three as you suggested. However, first of all my WB 3.1. does not want to boot. It simply opens WB 3.1. and has a disk image on the "desktop". Secondly, the three partions are all "NDOS", so i cannot open, read or write to them.

How do I fix this? :-)

all best
Anders

After the partioning, reboot your system (booting off the 3.1 Install disk), then format each partition and give it a name from within Workbench - click on the partition (probably named "NDOS" or some gibberish name), then right-click and choose "Format" from the menu.  Once each partition is formatted then you should be able to run the install script on the disk, and install onto your first partition (DHO) which should be the one made bootable in HDToolbox.

Can you tell I've done this a lot lately?  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Good plan, glad ya got it working!

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Try checking the icon tooltypes for the installation script.  Is its default tool set to C:Installer?

You may also want to update to the latest version of the installer tool for 3.1, here:

http://lilliput.amiga-projects.net/TechDetails3.htm

(7th down on the list under "Component")

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

But just out of curiosity: The link you gave me have some interesting thoughts on how to make 3.1 act more like 3.9. Have you tried these installs? Recommendable?

W00t.  

Personally - I've installed nearly all those utilities at one time or another, plus many more off Aminet.  Anything to squeeze an extra ounce of performance out of this 23-year-old hardware, ya know?  But then again I enjoy spending time tinkering with stuff (and cursing a lot, mostly cursing).  Might not be worth it if all ya want to do is WHDLoad games.

If you do though, I'd start with FFS, SetPatch, Installer, and the libraries.  Here's one that's definitely recommended:

http://aminet.net/package/util/libs/IconLib_46.4

If you google "peter K icon library" you'll find all kinds of threads describing it, even a few youtube videos.  On my A500 I'd been running an 8-color Workbench, after installing the Peter K library it got so much faster I had to bump it up to 16-color mode just to slow it back down, LOL.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

If Cloanto has a deal with Amiga Inc - how does that affect me as customer of Cloanto?

I believe the copy of Workbench distributed with Amiga Forever has been "tampered with" to make it more difficult to extract the files necessary to run it on a real Amiga.  But if you google there's hacks around that, or just download your Workbench software from bittorrent or somesuch, or copy a friend's disk, like everyone else does.