Crossdos Related Answers
Q: What is Crossdos?
A: Crossdos is a program that allows you to mount drives which can read and write to MS-Dos formatted disks. After you have mounted a drive, you can use this just like any other drive on your Amiga. For instance, you can mount a drive called PC0. Then every time you insert a MS-Dos formatted disk into DF0 (the internal disk drive of your Amiga), it will be shown as a disk in PC0. Crossdos is available for Amigas with Kickstart 2.x and 3.x.
Q: I've got WB 3.x. What do I do?
A: Crossdos is an integral part of WB 3.x, here's how to use it: Boot Workbench. Insert the Storage disk. Click on the Storage icon, then on the Dosdrivers Icon. You'll see several dos drivers. The neccesary ones are PC0 and PC1. PC0 is the driver you want if want to use DF0, PC1 is for DF1. You can use both if you require. If you want to use DF2 or something, you can easily modify the files to match your needs. See the manual.
Q: I've got an Amiga equipped with a Hard Drive, and I want the PC drive to be automatically mounted every time I boot. How do I do that?
A: Make sure the file PC0 or PC1 (or whatever) can be found in the Devs/Dosdrivers directory on your SYS: partition (the partition you boot from). Just copy it from your Storage: disk or the Storage/Dosdrivers directory on your Hard Drive (if this dir exists).
Q: I've got an earlier Amiga. What do I do?
A: You can use WB 3.x on your Kickstart 2.x computer. If you just want Crossdos, then the newest version, Crossdos 7, can be used on any Kickstart 2.x+ Amiga. For Kickstart 1.x computers, see the next question.
Q: Are there any shareware/freeware alternatives to Crossdos? Preferably something that runs on Kickstart 1.x as well?
A: Try Messydos. This is shareware, and it works on all Kickstarts from 1.2 and up. You can get it from the Aminet. You can probably find it in most good pd-libraries as well.
Q: OK, I've got Crossdos. What next?
A: You'll need a 720 kb MS-Dos disk. You can use a standard 1.44 Mb disk, but you'll have to format it as a 720 kb disk. I've never had any problems with this, but apparently you should put a piece of tape over the left hole on the disk (not the write- protect hole), in order to make the PC see it as a DD disk. If you have any problems, try using an original DD (like a standard Amiga uses) disk.
Q: How do I format a 720 kb disk?
A: Easy. In Win 95: Double-click on My Computer Right-click on A: Choose the Format command Under the word Capacity, you'll see a menu gadget. Click on the down-arrow, and select 720 kb 3,5 inches Select "Full". You cannot quick-format a disk if you want to change it's capacity. Press Start. In Dos, just type: format a: /f:720 You can format a PC disk with your Amiga as well, but apparently this option is a bit unreliable. This is done the regular way, but you must select the disk in the mounted PC drive.
Q: Help!! I can't create a 720 kb disk! What's wrong.
A: Unfortunately, some newer PC drives does not support 720 kb disks. I have only seen this once, on a Compaq portable computer. I don't think there's any way around it, except perhaps to install a new drive. Sorry.
Q: What if I own a High Density drive for my Amiga?
A: Then you can use 1.44 MB PC disks too. You're quite lucky.
Q: Ok, I've formatted a disk. What now?
A: Copy the desired files on to the disk, turn on the Amiga and mount a PC drive (like I explained earlier).
Q: Hmmm. I've inserted the PC disk into my drive. Now all I get is an empty window with no files displayed.
A: Make sure you've selected "show all files" from the disk menu. If you still can't see the files, try selecting "view by name" from the same menu. If the problem persists, then make sure you actually copied the files to the disk :-)
Q: Yikes! I'm using an older version of Crossdos (pre-Weird Science), and now the filenames are all messed up!
A: Before Windows 95, PC's didn't use filenames with more than 8+3 letters. If your file is called Verylongfilename.dms, it will be renamed to VERYLO~1.DMS As long as you're dealing with archives, this should not be more than a minor hassle, as you're the only one who need to know the filenames. You either choose to accept the new filenames, or you can rename the files on your PC before copying them. If you're copying a program with loads of files, and you haven't archived it first, then you must take care, however. If the program needs the file called Verylongfilename.dms, it won't understand that VERYLO~1.DMS is the same file, so you must make sure that you rename the files again. Also, there will be problems if there's a file called, say, Verylongfile.dms, as this file will also be called VERYLO~1.DMS. In this case, you should rename the files before copying them from the PC.
Alternatively, you could upgrade to Crossdos 7.
Q: I haven't got the software required. Where can I get it?
A: Workbench 3.x can be purchased from several sources. For instance, Epic Marketing stock it. Crossdos 7 was published by Weird Science. Here's the sales blurb from their website:
"CrossDos is a software product that allows the user to read and write MS-Dos formatted disks, directly from the Amiga. CrossDos integrates into the Amiga operating system, allowing access from virtually any Amiga utility or application, including file requesters."
You can perform most AmigaDOS functions, for example:
Read and Write files
Create directories
Set file or directory dates and protection bits
Relable the disk name
Rename files and directories
Supported drives are as follows:
3.5" 720k floppy disks
3.5" 1.44M floppy disks
5.1/4 360k floppy disks
5.1/4 720k floppy disks
Hard drives
Zip drives
Jaz drives
SyJet
EZ135
SyQuest and
Bernoulli
Other features include an ASCII text filter option, translation tables that handle international text character sets, automatically senses disk changes, floppy disks parameters are sensed automaticaly, various disk utilities, MS-DOS hard disk configuration software and many other improvements over the original CrossDOS.
