Workbench installation... knowledgebase?

[RedWarrior]

Hey again,
                    I'm beginning to have second thoughts about how fantastic I remember the Amiga to be after trying repeatedly to simply put a new hard-drive in my machine.  I can barely remember all the old workbench commands and protocols... and given that this machine came with wb2 on the hdd only (no floppies) and I only have wb1.3 on floppy disk... I have no clue what to do.

What files, commands, startup-sequence, libs, devs n all that do i need on a disk to simply boot and format a harddrive?  I don't know what Binddrivers is, and I can't remember what a mountlist is.

I've tried a few combinations with no luck, and I'm getting really frustrated. Are there any helpful databases on here or anywhere on the net that will spell all of this stuff out for the novice? (I used to think I was pretty clever until now!)

Once I've got the hdd formatted I'm putting all my faith in WinUAE to do the transfer...

Tired,
RW

[RedWarrior]

I know this is mildly technical, but surely someone knows...?

[RedWarrior]

Currently I can't transfer any adf's to floppy disk because Windows Xp doesnt want to know about anything less than 1.44meg when formatting.  I even downloaded MS-DOS 6, and taped over the hole on a dshd floppy, but it would only format at 1.44meg.

So, that's not going to happen in a hurry.

Right now the best I have managed is to physically install the new harddrive- it's spinning (I can hear it)... and from Floppy disk I've made it to a workbench screen.

HDToolbox is on there- and it says "Driver not installed"... I also don't have a picture of my RAM disk on the workbench... not sure how to mount these things (is that what you do?)

1>mount ram:
Can't open file 'DEVS:Mountlist'
1>

then i tried making a devs folder on the boot disk and copying the file "mountlist" off another floppy I made for backups (wb2)... same thing.

I imagine once I get an icon for the Harddrive (and ram) on workbench, all will be good...

why can't I get them to appear?

 :-?

[RedWarrior]

Amiga 600, Kickstart 2.0 roms, IDE hard-drive (standard IDE... came with an adaptor)

Currently in working order though I may take to it with a sledgehammer...


;-)

[RedWarrior]

The 600 came with a 120meg hdd which works fine... no floppy disks... wb2 installed... I'm simply trying to make a boot-disk with enough workbench files to allow me to format the hard drive. I just need to know which files will allow me to mount/access a new drive to format it.

I don't have a workbench 2 install disk.

[RedWarrior]

amigaguy wrote:

install df0:

(This will make it so the floppy will boot when you reset the machine. )

Copy the files you need from the HD to the floppy, reset, and you should have a booting install disk.

>>>>>>>>>Which files... pray tell?<<<<<<<<<<<<

  Once I get the hdd mounted, recognised and formatted... I can use WinUAE to transfer the rest. (supposedly)

  In another thread I was told not to attempt hooking 2 drives up via an unbuffered IDE interface...  has this policy changed? I don't really want 2 destroy drives.

my list from my trial and error experiment thus far includes:

df0: (installed)
c/mount
c/type
c/path
c/format
loadwb

devs/mountlist
hdtoolbox

but it still isnt working...  not sure which commands i need or how to use them.  This is driving me nuts.

[RedWarrior]

My mountlist is blank!

Copying files from the existing wb2 hdd.. i've noticed that my mountlist is an empty file!

Do I need all those command mentioned earlier for the wb1.x setup? Or will my wb2 files be smarter than that?

should my startup sequence have something along the lines of

assign >nil: dh0: exists

or something like that?

I'm trying everything here... someone has done this before surely...

[RedWarrior]

DH1:   device = scsi.device
                Unit = 0
                Flags = 0
                /*! ReadOnly = FALSE */
                Surfaces = 6
                BlockSize = 512
                BlocksPerTrack = 252
                Reserved = 2
                Interleave = 0
                SectorsPerBlock = 2
                LowCyl = 273 ; HighCyl = 4497
                PreAlloc = 0
                Buffers = 80
                BufMemType = 0
                DOSType = 0x444f5305
                MaxTransfer = 130560
                Mask = 0x7ffffffe
                BootPri = -128
                Mount = 0
                /*! Bootable = FALSE */
                /*# BootBlocks = 0 */
#

Note that this comes from OS3.9 and it's one partition ripped out of context. My guess is that scsi.device doesn't exist on WB1.2, so you need to replace that with whatever. DOSTYPE is wrong; you want FFS, I run SFS (atleast under OS3.9 FFS is: 0x444F5303). You want "mount=1" (auto mount). Max transfer should probably be decreased. Also: "Bootpri=10",  "Bootable = TRUE".

To mount you write in CLI: "Mount DH0:"
Then you should be able to format it. Format is a bit bitchy about parameters. You need to write like:

Format DRIVE DH0: NAME "Hubba" FFS

@general public: Does he need to "Install" to make it boot?

1> assign >NIL: DH0: exists
1>


that's as much success as I've had.

1>mount dh0:
ERROR: 'Sectors PerBlock' is not a valid keyword
               (file 'DEVS:MountList'. line10, column 1)

At least it's getting closer!!  

1>Format DRIVE DH0: NAME "Hubba" FFS
Format Failure: device (or volume) is not mounted.


Any mountlist champions online?

wb2.x

[RedWarrior]

Deleted "buffmemtype" and other invalid keywords...

1> mount dh0:
1>

omg... it worked?

1> format drive dh0: name "please" ffs
Format Failure: object is not of required type

>:-(

hdtoolbox still says "Driver not installed" also.

 :-?