Amiga 4GB CF A600 Help

[Thomas]

Hi Damiga.

I bought this thinking it would help but I dont really know how to use it

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140518696864&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

It said it has HDInstall but I cant find it on the disk

I doubt that you installed this inside the Amiga and set it to master. The "HD-Install" written on the disk probably means that the software can be installed to an existing harddrive, but not that it can install a harddrive from scratch. I am quite sure that this floppy disk only contains software to read FAT formatted CF disks from the PCMCIA slot.

The Install floppy mentioned above was only delivered with Amiga models which already had a harddrive and with upgrade kits. It was not contained with Amigas without harddrives.

You can use this to install your new HDD: http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/hdinst

If you have no means to transfer this to your Amiga, you can connect the CF card to a PC and prepare it using WinUAE.

[Thomas]

Preparing a new Amiga HDD with WinUAE is rather easy. "No joy" is not an adequate error description.

[Thomas]

Another WinUAE config will not help. Just do what roc suggested: your second hardcopy shows an input field called "File Name" which is prefilled with "drive definitions". This means it will try to save a file called "drive definitions" to the place HDToolbox was started from. This file is not needed in any way. So either change the input field to "ram:drive definitions" or "ram:junk" as suggested above, or simply drag the HDToolbox icon to Ram Disk and run it from there.

Also you should keep all your floppy disks (a.k.a. ADFs) write protected!!  There will come other obstacles later in the installation process where it tries to write to the floppy disks if you let it and will render them useless. The installation does not need to write to the floppies at any time. If it tells you to remove the protection, then you did something wrong.

[Thomas]

Did you miss Cammy's post?

Please do not call partitions WORKBENCH and GAMES. AmigaDOS will become confused if you do.

Each partition has two names: the device name (similar to the drive letter in Windows) and the volume name (the name you give when you format the partition).  The device name is given in HDToolbox. Use DH0 and DH1 for your two partitions. Then you will see DH0:NDOS and DH1:NDOS on the Workbench screen.

NDOS means "not a dos disk" and tells you that these yet need to be formatted before they can be used. Select one at a time and choose "Format disk" from the menu. Now give it a volume name (Workbench or Games respecively) and click on "Quick format".

After that you can open the Install drawer on the Install3.1 disk and double click on your preferred language in order to install Workbench to the harddrive. When asked for your skill, do *not* select novice mode.

[Thomas]

You don't have enough RAM. It cannot build the bitmap for such a large partition with just 300 KB free memory.

[Thomas]

You didn't need to format it again. It was already formatted, only the bitmap was not valid. It validated the bitmap automatically on reboot when enough RAM was available.