Need help setting up some Amiga kit

[MarkAshley]

I've recently decided to get back in to the Amiga. I've bought a vanilla A1200 from eBay, and now want to add a CD ROM and hard disk.

Despite the fact that I used to have a fully loaded A1200, I'm embarrassed to say that I can't for the life of me remember how I set it all up! So what I need to know is:

- How do I partition/format the hard disk for OS3.9? I seem to remember having a Workbench Install disk before, but I don't have this any more.

- How do I get the CD recognised? I think I previously used a DOSDriver (?) for this but I can't remember how I did this.

- One final question, the A1200 seems to take quite a long time to get to the purple kickstart screen (with the animated floppy disk), it's roughly 30 seconds. Not unusable but longer than I remember. Is this normal or is something wrong?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Mark

[MarkAshley]

Vincent wrote:
30 seconds is perfectly normal if there's no hard drive connected.  If there is one connected then it shows up almost immediately (unless the HD is bootable).

Someone else can answer the other 2 questions more cohesively than I can, so I won't bother confusing you :-)

Ahhh that would explain it, there's no hard drive (yet).

Hopefully somebody can answer the other 2 before my hard disk cable arrives

[MarkAshley]

Thanks Dandy. IDEFix sounds familiar, but at the time I had the IDEfix hardware. I'm just using a cable now so I'll try AmiCDFS.

I managed to remember how to mount PC0 and format a CrossDOS floppy, so I'll download AmiCDFS at work today in preparation for when my IDE cable arrives.

Mark

[MarkAshley]

Thomas wrote:

AmiCDFS does not work alone. The built-in driver for the internal IDE bus does not recognise CD-ROM drives. You *need* the IDEfix software to recognise the drive. The IDEfix hardware is not needed.

Once you have installed OS3.9, you no longer need IDEfix as OS3.9 comes with its own ATAPI driver.

So this is the order I need to do things:

1. Boot from a Workbench floppy and mount PC0
2. Put in my CrossDOS disk with IDEfix on it and run IDEfix to get my CD drive recognised
3. Put in my OS3.9 CD, run HDToolBox to partition my hard drive
4. Format the partitions
5. Install 3.9
6. Boot from hard disk and CD drive will automatically be recognised???

Thomas wrote:

Please note that a stock A1200 is not sufficient for OS3.9. You need at least 6MB of fast RAM.

An accelerator would be handy, too, because OS3.9 needs some more CPU power. Without it you might be disappointed by the speed.

Bye,
Thomas

Will it not even install with chip RAM only? I do plan on getting an accelerator with additional fast RAM when I can afford it.

Thanks
Mark

[MarkAshley]

Wow, that's great, thanks Thomas. Can't wait to get my acellerator and try it out

Thanks!
Mark

[MarkAshley]

Hi Thomas

I just tried what you suggested and as you described it successfully booted OS3.9 from the CD! So I really wanted to say a big thank you for your help.

As you expected, I had less than 512k of chip ram remaining after booting. Even HDToolBox wouldn't run  :-o  So I've just ordered a Blizzard 040/40 + 32mb from amigakit.com - can't wait!!!!!!!!!!