Best IDE to CF HDD solution

[AmigaBruno]

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.

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.

[AmigaBruno]

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.

[AmigaBruno]

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.

[AmigaBruno]

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.

[AmigaBruno]

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.

[AmigaBruno]

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.

[AmigaBruno]

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.