Amiga Explorer vs. my intelligence

[ArthurDent]

Hello all.

I've just obtained an second-hand Amiga 1200. I think it's working rather well, but, being new to this system, there's no accurate way for me to tell. I've just begun understanding the basics of it all. Please keep this in mind as I tell you of my linking woes: To be able to enjoy some games and demos, I've obtained Amiga Explorer from Cloanto. I've bought a serial cable with two 9-pin connectors and two 25-pin ones, all female. I've set my serial properties on the Amiga right, and as far as I can tell, also on my PC. Now, when I run AE's setup, it takes me trough several steps:

First, it let's me enter (in a shell window I've opened): type SER: to RAM:Setup, followed by [return] on both machines. This works fine. The PC shows it's copying something by displaying an indicator bar.

Second, I enter: RX to RAM:Setup, followed again by [return]. At this point it Amiga runs some kind of script, and the PC displays the proces-indicator bar.

Now here's were things go wrong. As soon as the script finishes, the copying of real files from the PC to the Amiga starts. After trying for a while, the PC gives up and tells me: 'Error writing to COM port'.

What can cause this? I've read the AE manual and troubleshooting guide and I -think- I've set up everything correctly. Although I'm not sure I own a 7-wire serial cable, it was rather expensive, and should be of high enough quality. What am I missing? :-? I've set AE to use COM1, since the COM2 setting doesn't even run the scripts etc. Finally, there's this CrossDos thing I've heard about. It should enable me to use a 720K PC disk in the amiga right. I've read it should be on my system since I use a relatively new version of the Workbench (3.9 or something). Where can I find it?

Thanks!!

[ArthurDent]

Thank you very much for all the help so far! I've copied the PC0: file into the right directory and am formatting a floppy as I'm typing this. I'll try to copy the files manually and will let you know if the program works!

Cheers,
Arthur

[ArthurDent]

Alas, no succes yet. While the suggestions have enabled me to copy the AE files to the Amiga using CrossDos, the program still reports an error while reading the COM port.

Can it be my settings? I've tried lowering the buffers etc. both on the PC and the Amiga. Or can it be that the cable I'm using is the wrong one? But if that were so, why does the program succeed in transferring the initial setting to the Amiga RAM?

I must admit I'm rather stumped. It seems that thus far AE is winning the battle

Regards,
Arthur

[ArthurDent]

Yup, I've copied the file into my WBStartup folder. It displays the protocol every time I turn on the Amiga.

[ArthurDent]

Yes, it looks for the serial port. In the same window it displays the basic settings. Using the prevs->serial settings menu, I've set these to:

Baudrate: 19200
Input buffersize: 4096
Handshaking: RTS/CTS
Parity: None
Bits: 8
Stop bits: 1

On the PC, my WIN XP serial settings are:

Bits per second: 19200
Parity: None
Bits: 8
Stop bits: 1
Datatransportcontrol: Hardware

The 'Use FIFO-buffer' setting in the adavanced menu is ticked. Also, I've set the 'send' and 'recieve' sliders in this menu to both high and low.

Edit - There are some other settings wich might be worth listing: On starting up, the Amiga displays the following:

CONNECTION: Serial
SERDEVICE: Serial.Device
SERUNIT: 0
SERBAUD: 19200
UNIT: 0
PACKETSIZE: 512
RETRIES: 50
ADFVERIFY: YES

On the PC, the packetsize is set to 512 as well, and the number of retries is also 50. I'm using COM device 1 here.

[ArthurDent]

Thank you all for your advice! Sadly, I haven't been able to get it working so far. I do appreciate the effort though!! Perhaps the log can shed some light on this matter? Here's wat AE reports on my PC:

AEXPLORER PROPERTIES
Connection: COM1 (19200 baud)
PacketSize: 512
MaxRetries: 50

Write Packet 2
> [26 bytes]
> 00 02 00 0A 00 00 00 01 CF 0A E6 77 43 6C 6F 61 6E 74 6F 28
> 72 29 3C 56 08 13
< [0 bytes]
COM READ ERROR: 4 bytes expected (code 0, timeout 5625)
> [4 bytes]
> 00 00 00 01
< [0 bytes]
COM READ ERROR: 4 bytes expected (code 0, timeout 5000)
Write Packet 109
> [12 bytes]
> 00 6D 00 00 00 00 00 01 F8 44 C2 DA
< [0 bytes]
COM READ ERROR: 4 bytes expected (code 0, timeout 5625)
> [4 bytes]
> 00 00 00 01
< [0 bytes]
COM READ ERROR: 4 bytes expected (code 0, timeout 5000)

[ArthurDent]

I finally got it working!!

Sorry for my late reply though. Somehow, as I grow older time seems to become a sparse commodity. :-) I haven't been able to fiddle around with AE up until this evening. EdKing's comment got me wondering if my null-modem cable was the right one. After following all the excellent advice, Jupp3's suggestion proved that data never reached my Amiga.

I've bought a new cable (had a hard time finding one!) and after powering up everything works as a charm.. Finally I can enjoy some oldskool Amiga demo's 8-)

Thanks for the advice all!