Amiga 1060 issues

[scuzzb494]

I have an Amiga 1060 connected to an Amiga 1000 and both power up and the Amiga 1000 is working. I have no way of checking if the 1060 is working. On that power-up on these units let me start by discussing this. You run the pass through from the 1060 to the back of the Amiga. That way the power from the sidecar comes from the 1060 when switched on. ALWAYS switch the Amiga 1000 on first, though nothing will happen until you power up the Amiga 1060.

Next you boot from the Kickstart and your Workbench disk and then use the software to create a special Sidecar boot disk. This was strange for me cus it fails to tell you to create a second backup Workbench disk and use this during the create process to add files so you can boot a special Workbench disk.

When you have created the special Workbench disk when you boot the Amiga 1000 you will see that the Workbench is now the sidecar version.

From my manual ... this is where the problems start for me. There is power to the 1060 but there is no disk activity. I click the PC Mono version on the Amiga and I get an error saying cannot read library. Problem from the manual says its a hardware issue check cables etc. There should be an icon of the DOS disk on the screen and you should click the software from the 1060 drive... I am presuming.

I do not have a DOS disk or 5.25" disk and I have not seen anything in the manual for checking to see if the disk drive is working or not.

So two questions....

01: How do I create the boot 5.25" floppy disk that the 1060 should have come with. I currently have created all the various 3.5" disks. Janus plus the PC Install.

02: Is there any way to check if the disk drive is working. Like the old Load "$",8 on the C64 with the 1541.

At the moment I may actually have a dead 5.25". Just don;t know how to check it.

scuzz

[scuzzb494]

If you can, use a newer Janus version. I think it's still 1060 compatible. I thought it was also possible to connect an external floppy to the sidecar, which should make things easier.

I hadn't realised that. Thing is there is no life from the 5.25" I would have expected at least a flicker of light from the drive, but then thats the Amiga in me. Just want to know the sidecar drive works. The power does. I'll certainly look into hooking up a 1010 now I've read up a bit on the use of a floppy. Dunno why I thought that was an LPT port. The floppy is in PC format so like the 5.25 will run through the emulator. Which isn't activating so I'm not hopeful.

[scuzzb494]

I do this all the time. I say I'll give up and then find at 2 in the morning I'm still here.

I plugged in a 1010 floppy drive to the back of the 1060 and for some reason on booting this time the 5.25" floppy burst into life and I got a different screen with a RAM test and the recognition of the Janus Library giving me a version. The joy was short lived as there was no input from the keyboard and no action other than this from drives or any other interface. I tried other disks and clicked away but resolved I needed the necessary DOS disk.

I sifted through all I had and found indeed a DOS disk plus reference to JANUS but sadly no luck. Worse when I powered down and restarted the floppy didn't kick in when I booted as before.

So I decided to create a new sidecar disk and this time use OS 1.3.2.

These are the files I created disks from...

CBM-AmigaJanus21-3683.dms
install disk v2.1
janus.library v36.83 (21.8.91)
280 kB

CBM-PCInstall-334.dms
install disk v1.02
janus.library v33.4 (11.09.1989)
328 kB

CBM-PCInstall-331.dms
install disk
janus.library v33.1b5 (25.10.1988)
324 kB

CBM-PCInstall-322.dms
install disk
janus.library v32.2 (25.04.1986)
182 kB

CBM-PCJanus.zip
PC Software
99 kB

Anyway... I went through the process of creating disks again and this time when it got to the point of copying to RAM to create the disk I get an error message that the RAM disk is full. I have the 1050 256K in the front on the 1000 but what I am dealing with is differing stages of the Amiga OS in respect of the dates for the Sidecar software. Maybe 1.3.2 was a bad idea. and I should go back to 1.2 again.

Whenever I do these things I just keep thinking of different things to do and before you know it ... its four in the morning. So I give up for tonight and hope I can switch the brain off without getting out of bed like I have done so many times in the past.

Really never understood why humans have to sleep. Such a waste of time. Never mind. Tomorrow is another day..... Hmmm maybe clean the connector and slot. Had that problem before.

scuzz

[scuzzb494]

All the sidecar needed was a stiff brush. A little technique I learned trying to recover Amstrad CPCs and their interfaces. I split the Amiga 1060 from the 1000 and then gave the connector both male and female a stiff brushing. I reconnected and the result was immediate. When I booted from the Sidecar 3.5" Boot Disk I received a very pleasant mobile phone style ring from the sidecar as both 5.25" and 3.5" drives sprang into life. And then when I clicked the PC folder icon for the PC I got another high pitched ding as the floppies again flicked into life and the following screen appeared

Commodore Sidecar BIOS 2.06

LPT 1 at 0378h
RAM 256 KBytes OK

Janus Handler V2.20
found at segment E000

Non-System disk or disk error
Replace and press any key

So job done . The sidecar is working  I just need a DOS disk that is supported off the sidecar. So I can power down, put the dust cover on and go in search of a DOS disk. If anyone has a spare 5.25" 1060 system disk then I obviously would be very interested.

Onwards as they say. She's alive.
http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz548.htm