Booting A1200 from Zip/Jazz drive possible??

[MarkAshley]

1. Create a boot floppy with the necessary dos drivers and mountlist to mount your Zip drive.

2. Install Workbench on a Zip disk

3. Modify your boot disk so that in the startup-sequence, the first thing it does is mount the Zip drive, then reassign C:, S:, L:, LIBS etc etc to the corresponding folders on the Zip disk.

4. Put the zip disk and boot floppies in the drives. The floppy will transfer the system folders to the Zip disk and then should boot from that.

I haven't actually tried this, but it should work. If you need help with the assigns etc, have a look at a 3.5 or 3.9 Emergency Disk as it does exactly the same thing (reassigns the system folders to folders on the CD).

HTH
Mark

--EDIT
Just for clarification, you can't boot directly from the Zip drive. The only way to do this would be to modify the kickstart ROM to include native support for Zip drives.

[MarkAshley]

Since the IDE interface is dead and he didn't specify that he had a SCSI controller, I'm guessing that he is connecting the ZIP drive through a parallel port???

@Amiduffer
Can you confirm how your Zip drive is connected?

[MarkAshley]

Yes it will work. You have to build an interface which connects to the parallel port in order to make it work. Go to aminet and search for ppazip to find the details. I haven't actually looked at the schematics but this is from the readme:

  The Iomega ZIP 100 drive is available with a choice of either a SCSI
  or a parallel port interface. Unfortunately the parallel version could
  not be used on an Amiga - until now!

  This project consists of both hardware and software - a small interface
  that connects to the Amiga's parallel and joystick ports, and a driver
  file which causes the ZIP drive to operate like a standard SCSI device.

Once you have built the interface and got your zip drive working, you can do what I suggested in my first post (using a boot floppy to boot from the zip disk).

Mark

[MarkAshley]

Yes I believe the crossdos filesystem and PC0 filesystem are on the Storage3.1 floppy. Just copy the files to the relevant locations on your Workbench disk and you can mount PC0 from your Workbench disk. You can then use your IBM formatted floppy to transfer the file to your Amiga and view the file.

Please keep us up to date with how you're getting on - I for one would be really interested to hear if you manage to pull this off!  :-)

[MarkAshley]

1. Did you put CrossDOSFileSystem in L:?
2. Is the diskette double density?
3. If yes to 1 and 2, try putting a diskette in the drive then formatting PC0:. In my experience, formatting on the PC doesn't work with CrossDOS, I always have to format it on the Amiga first.

[MarkAshley]

Once you're booting from your zip drive the disk swapping won't be an issue, as it will be as though you were booted from a hard drive.

You need the CrossDOSFileSystem in L:. PC0: won't work without it. Check this and let me know.

[MarkAshley]

Yeeeaaaahhhhh, well done  :-)

I've got my miggy all set up again now so I'll have a look at the schematic tomorrow and see if there's any hints I can offer.

[MarkAshley]

I assume you're looking at buff.iff and nobuf.iff.

Yes where you have 2-9 on the Amiga side and 2-9 on the Zip side, that means pins 2 - 9 are connected straight through from the Amiga to the Zip drive.

I don't know whether you need the buffered or unbuffered version. If you're able to, I would build the buffered version just in case the unbuffered doesn't work.

[MarkAshley]

If you are a confident solderer, then the buffered version will be easy. When you go to RS get the components for the buffered version, and also a 14 pin DIL socket for the 7407 IC (so you don't have to solder it directly and risk damaging it). You will also need some veroboard (copper stripboard) and I can easily convert the wiring diagram from ppazip in to a stripboard layout including the correct pins to connect to the 7407.

If however you are not confident to do this, go for the unbuffered version as it does not require any components or striboard soldering, it's just soldering wires to connectors.

[MarkAshley]

Have a look at this:

http://www.hardwarebook.net/connector/parallel/parallelamiga.html

As you can see 18-25 are ALL grounds. If I remember correctly, you don't need to connect them all. Try it with only one connected and see if it works.

If the adapter doesn't work then you may need to connect all of them. Jusdging by the diagram they are all connected in parallel to the capacitor and pin 7 of the 7407 IC. However, I really don't think this is necessary.\

EDIT:

I've just rethought this, and there are 8 data pins (2-9) and 8 ground pins (18-25). This makes me think they are all required to be connected, otherwise it will be unable to transmit on any of the data lines that do not have a corresponding ground. Since they are shown as connected in the circuit diagram, you should connect them.

I don't know what the triangular symbols mean on the circuit diagram. They look like logic gates, and the fact that they have numbers next to them suggests to me that they are meant to connect to the 7407. You may want to check with the author before building the device, assuming he is still contactable.

EDIT:

I have just confirmed that thos triangular symbols are transistors within the 7407 IC. So just connect it to the pins as shown in the diagram.

[MarkAshley]

Thanks for the info hppacito. I wonder why this is not in the original schematic? Maybe it's taken care of by the Parallel port's circuitry? I would suggest building it as designed, and if it doesn't work then try using the pullup resister.

[MarkAshley]

Why not try the unbuffered version first?

[MarkAshley]

Good luck Amiduffer. Let us know how you get on!  :-)

[MarkAshley]

Someone just figured out how to format text in his posts  :-)

How you getting on, you must have resoldered that wire by now  :-D