Hi
I am going to assume you are not David Pleasance... If you are then I am not worthy.
The floppy disk you have is a data disk and it asks that you copy the files to your hard drive. It assumes you have a hard disk:
Workbench on a hard drive will be bigger than on a single floppy disk as the whole installation comes on five disks.
To see the full contents of a Workbench disk you need to show all files from the drop down menu.
On the Workbench is a drawer called devs and this is where various drivers are stored and the CompactFlash.device is just that. And so the first line is asking to copy the device to the devs drawer. This device most likely has some further data written to the 'tool type' icon that mounts the device on boot. Dunno haven't seen it.
Sys is the way the Amiga identifies the boot or workbench and so when you see SYS: it basically means the Workbench disk or the Workbench volume or partition of the computer. The route to devs is SYS:devs/ then the device. You could also type Workbench:devs/device and or DF0:devs/device or HD0: or DH0:. You are in the realms of basic AmigaDOS and how the computer sees the location of the Workbench:devs drawer.
The drawer that is named l or L that is the letter L and not i is where you will find file systems to run your computer like FastFileSystem and CrossDOS etc and to understand the long file names on a Windoes based disk you need the FAT95 system otherwise files will read as XXXXXXX.XXX all the time.. so say you have a file that is myteaisready.info it will be read as MYTEAIS~.INF and it also configures the drive. USB drives tend to be FAT even on NTSC machines. So you need FAT95 in L as the file system and the MOUNT file will have a mount statement calling up the FAT95 from L and will be looking for that on BOOT or when you mount the card.
CF0 is the mount file and auto mount this you would place this in a drawer in devs called DosDrivers. In the DosDriver drawer we can place mount drivers that will auto mount on boot. The tool will have two parts. The icon and the actual tool. To see the split elements of a tool it is best to use a file manager like SID, DOpus, Dir Works etc. That way you can interogate the mount file and the icon. They are in two parts if it has an 'INFO'. You can also check from the Workbench drop down menus for the details of the INFO or information. Mount files can be edited using 'ED' from the shell or a text editor like CED. Learn to use the shell/CLI and start to look at tools/icons.
CF0 is a mount file if you click it, it mounts what ever the mountfile says and that is basically the structure of the device/card plus links to supported filesystems such as FAT95. So to work it really needs to know where FAT95 is and that means you must have booted the Workbench disk with that file in the L drawer.
The PCMCIA is DRAM and can be set up from a PrepCard facility you have on the EXTRAS disk of the Workbench set. I wouldn't suggest doing that cus it will muck up the card.
For me I never use anything over 4GB in size on an Amiga running 3.0. I do use bigger hard drives than 4GB but it means I do a bit of fiddling with the setting up and basically only use 4GB and leave the rest empty. Compact Flash media is not something I use. I only use PCMCIA for the Squirrel, Ethernet and RAM plus an Arcos and QuickDrive I have. I was always tempted to get a CF card but don't like them.
OK the workbench disk not working properly. You need to sort that out. Instead of copying the whole disk copy file by file by showing all files and see if one of the files or drawers is having a problem. It may be someithing incidental. But if the disk has a problem it will simply copy an empty or reduced size file to a new disk and contain the same problem. It would be sensible making sure that all your Workbench disks work before setting up a hard drive.
Chicken and egg. The CF0 needs to be in the devs:dosdrivers drawer to automount the CF card. It would be interesting to see what the Amiga shows from holding two mouse buttons down from the boot and see if the CF0 is there as a boot option. I doubt it. I would think that the card is only really useful as a data store and gets called up by manually mounting by clicking CF0 or like I say sticking it in the devs:dosdrivers drawer on the Workbench.
Next: That disk. Make sure you have enough space on the Workench disk for the device and the FAT95. There may not be space for them.
If you want to see a JPG or a GIF then use something like PPaint. DPaint only supports the IFF/ILBM. Fortunately PPaint saves in ILBM.
What are you trying to do....? The stock Amiga 1200 has but 2MB of CHIP RAM and no extra memory unless you add this via the trap door. Once you load your Workbench and fire up any software you will not have any space for an animation. You will likely get three frames tops of a colour Dpaint HighRes and or 10 frames of black and white. To do any work on an Amiga 1200 you need 4 to 8MB of RAM for starters. Better would be RAM plus an accelerator. Without them life is going to be a struggle. But first you have to put these floppies away and get a hard drive. Plus a good monitor and then you can think about the CF PCMCIA. You came at this the wrong way round. Hard drive to RAM to Accelerator to PCMCIA. I had the same problem in 1993 and I just couldn't do anything till I had the hard drive, RAM and then acceleration. The extra data storage then became a real issue. But thats another story.
As for file transfers between PC and Amiga you will also need to mount a device that can read PC disks. I have no idea how the compact flash drive handles that but I assume it is set up to interpret. Otherwise you may need to set up another config with crossDOS. I assume it works like a CD0 for reading CDs and the FAT95 does all that for you.
I didn't read all the thread but I think your life gets easier with a hard drive. WB 3.0 is fine and shouldn't be a problem. From my understanding the CF hard drives are set up a little different to see bigger drive capacities. Personally I only use 2.5" internal drives and you can still buy them new. Just need to do the trick with the formatting, but they are fine.
Hope that helps.
