Need help setting up some Amiga kit

[Thomas]

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.

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

[Thomas]

Well, it's probably not that easy. IDEfix probably needs to be installed and that does not work on a floppy disk. You might need to partition the Drive, install a basic OS3.1 and install IDEfix just to access the CD-ROM drive.

But as you already know how to transfer files from PC to Amiga using CrossDOS, you can drop IDEfix and follow these steps:

Insert the OS3.9 CD into your PC's CD-ROM drive. Copy everything from :\OS-VERSION3.9\EMERGENCY-DISK to A:\. ( is the drive letter of your CD-ROM drive and A is the floppy drive with a 720kb disk in it.)
Copy :\EMERGENCY-BOOT\STORAGE\DOSDRIVERS\CD0 and CD0.info to A:\DEVS\DOSDRIVERS.
Now go to the Amiga and boot with the Workbench disk. Mount PC0 so that the data from the PC disk can be read. Open a Shell window and enter the following commands:

copy df0:c/(copy|install|ed) df0:system/format ram:
cd ram:

now insert the PC disk and enter

copy pc0:#? ram:boot all
ed ram:boot/devs/dosdrivers/cd0

If Ed asks you to insert the Workbench disk, just click on Cancel. Change the DEVICE and UNIT lines to read DEVICE=scsi.device and UNIT=1. Press Esc and enter X to save the changes.

scsi.device represents the internal IDE bus and unit 1 addresses the drive which is jumpered as slave (unit 0 is the master).

Now insert a new empty disk which will become the OS3.9 Emergency-Disk. Enter the following commands:

format drive df0: name Emergency-Disk noicons
install df0:
copy ram:boot/#? df0: all

Now insert the OS3.9 CD into the Amiga's CD-ROM drive and reboot. The Emergency-Disk should boot OS3.9 from the CD. Now you can partition the HDD as you like and install OS3.9 on it. No need for OS3.1 or IDEfix any more.

Will it not even install with chip RAM only?

There are only 2MB of chip RAM and it needs more just to boot. If it would complete the boot process without running out of memory, you won't not be able to start any programs.

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

Well, you could try it without. I tried it with WinUAE and it does indeed boot into Workbench. However, the background pictures does not load and there is only 78kb of memory left. You can't even run HDToolbox to partition your HDD.

Edit: no, that's not true. If you close AmiDock, thre are more than 400kb left and HDToolbox runs fine :-)

Bye,
Thomas