Amiga 600 -> PC link up...strange problems...?!?

[radiator]

Hi all,

First off, I'll apologise for my total n00bness.  I never owned an Amiga as a kid, and I've only just bought one.

Right, I picked up an A600 + 1Mb upgrade (kickstart v2.05 (37.350)), and also got a HDD for it (1.4Gb).

The first strange thing I noticed was that the HDD had WB3.1 installed, and after fitting the drive and turning on the Amiga (just to see what might happen) it actually booted up and appeared to run.  Is this right?  I was expecting some kind of error message telling me I had the wrong KS version (I thought that WB3.1 would only run on machines with KS3?)??

Anywho, I ended up formatting the drive as I didn't trust WB3.1 running with a KS2 ROM.

I then got hold of a Amiga -> PC kit, which consisted of a parallel cable, and the PC2AMIGA software.  The PC side of the software seems to run fine (and I've got everything setup correctly), but the Amiga software seems odd.

First off, there are 2 versions - one for KS2 and one for KS3.  I've tried running the KS2 version, but it doesn't seem to do anything (it reads from the disk, then just sits there doing nothing - no 'PCDISK' icon appears...I don't even get any error messages).  The KS3 version however sort of works...

Sometimes I just get error messages (something about not being able to receive packets), and other times I actually get the 'PCDISK' icon to appear, and can see my drives, but after trying to view the contents of the drive get the same packet error message.

Does anyone know exactly whats going on (ie, why could I run WB3.1 with kickstart2 ROM?  Why does the kickstart 2 version of PC2AMIGA not work, but the kickstart3 version does (sort of))

Do my programs think I've got KS3, when I havn't?!  Should I just bite the bullet and buy a KS3 ROM to see if it solves the problem?

Again, sorry if I'm being stupid.

If anyone has any idea what's happening, or how to make it work, I'd love to hear from you!

[radiator]

Thanks for all the help guys...

Right, after a bit of tweaking, I've managed to get the program working, and can see files on my PC's HDD.  The problem is I can't transfer them to my Amiga HDD.  I just keep getting packet errors (continuous) or the whole system crashes (the mouse point stops moving, the a software failure message flashes up, then the Amiga reboots).  This occurs whenever I try to drag-and-drop a file from my PC HDD to my Amiga HDD.

Now, when I check the PC2Amiga floppy disk (Amiga formatted) that came with the package, there are only 6 files displayed - the 2 versions of the software, an installer, "EasyTransfer" (for transfering files, but can't get it to work - I think it's serial only), "CreateADF" (for creating ADF files) and "Filer" a file manager type program - doesn't work though (software failure)).
The version of PC2Amiga I've downloaded though comes with a lot more files (manuals etc).
The problem is, I don't know how to read PC disk on an Amiga (when WB3.1 was installed on the HDD, it would read PC disks fine.  But as I've wiped the HDD, my only copy of WB is version 2.05, and I can't work out how to do it)...!?

Also, the Amiga software disk is bootable, but if I try and boot using my WB2.05 disk, swap disks, and then try and run the PC2amiga software, it doesn't work (I think the error is something along the lines of "Can't open IconX" (or something!?))

Gonna keep trying, fiddling, pulling my hair out, and see what happens...

(oh, and BTW, the cable is a standard LapLink one, and no, I don't want to upgrade to an A1200 (also just bought a motorbike so I'm a bit skint ATM!))

[radiator]

Right, I've tried the software on 3 different PC's now, so it's got to be the Amiga side of things thats screwing up...

Anywho, I've just bought KS3.1 and WB3.1...hopefully that'll fix the problems...