I screwed up and got a A1200 on EBay...

[KatManDEW]

I got a A1200 on EBay, and it arrived without the floppy installed, and no cables to install the floppy. There is no operating system on the hard disk. It has a CCF adapter, but I'm not familiar with how those are usilized.

I have an external floppy disk which I connected, but when I try to copy files to the hard disk it s'not a valid DOS disk".

I had to manually type in a Startup-Sequence, one line at a time, from DF1 to get workbench to load !!!

Any idea what's up with the hard drive? ANy way to use DF1 until I get the internal floppy working?

I guess I should have gotten a new A1200 from a vendor :boohoo:

[KatManDEW]

Thaanks for the feedback.

I have a CF reader on my PC, but I can't figure out how to format it as an Amiga disk with WinUAE. It keeps saying "Warning: The Drive Safety Check is active. The selected drive is not empty and non RDB partitioned."

[KatManDEW]

The -disableharddrivesafetycheck thing worked, and I was able to format the CF drive in WinUAE. I mounted one of the Classic Workbench hdf's in WinUAE, and copied it over to the CF drive, but the A12000 still comes up and says DH0 Is not a DOS disk, and when I try to chande the CC0 it says not a DOS disk.

Maybe the CIA is bad, as mentioned? What/where is the CIA?

[KatManDEW]

I can boot from the CF card with WinUAE, no problem (which amazes me because I'm a WinUAE rookie).

If I disconnect the hard drive from the real A1200, it will boot from a floppy in an external DF1 (which also amazes me), but the CF drive doesn't show up on Workbench. If I go to the System drawer and run Format, the CF shows up as CC0: but it only it only shows up as 20k in size (it's really a gig), and I can't format it.

Thanks for all the help.

[KatManDEW]

Wow! Great information!

I've had a A2000HD since they first came out, but I'm new to A1200's and CF cards.

It is a CF Card with an PCMCIA-CF Adaptor.

I was able to hold both mouse buttons and boot from DF1,  with the internal hard disk connected. If I try to format the hard disk or the CF card, I get the "Not a DOS disk" error after formatting. The hard disk and CF card apear on Workbench, but if I try to copy something to them I get an error that the disk is not validated.

I'll try some of this new info this evening.

Thanks very much for all the help. You folks here on amiga.org are great!

[KatManDEW]

It's hard to do anything, like mount devices, when booting from a floppy :boohoo:

I need to get the hard disk working. Is there supposed to be a power connector on the hard disk, or just a ribbon cable. Mine has two pairs of empty pins.

Here's a pic of my hard drive.

[KatManDEW]

I thought about HDToolBox, but I'm booting from a floppy, and it's not on my boot floppy. Where can I get HDToolBox if I boot from floppy? Can I get it off one of the OS 3.1 install disks?

[KatManDEW]

taunusand wrote:
The Install disk is bootable, you can run HDToolbox from it.

That worked! The hard disk is 15 gig, and I tried to partition and format it, but I got the "Not a DOS disk" error. I figured I was hosed because of the 4 gg limit.

I remembered that I had an old laptop drive laying on a shelf, so I stuck it in there, ran HDToolBox on it, and got it installed and working.

My A1200 has the 3.0 Kickstart ROM, so I didn't figure I could run the 3.1 Installation, right? I don't have 3.0 installation disks, so I took am Amiga Forever 3.0 Workbench ADF, and wrote it to a floppy with my Amiga 2000. Then I booted with it on the A1200 and Xcopied the 3.0 WOrkbench floppy to the A1200 hard disk, and - PRESTO! I booted from hard disk! Whoo hoo!

I ran that port test utility, and I didn't understand what I was looking at. So I'm going to get FAT95 and that CF device and see what happens.

At least I know my HD controller isn't hosed. If I could the the CF card working, I could install Classic Workbench on the A1200. That would be sweet...

Edit: I checked the Amiga OS website, and it turned out my Kickstart ROM is good enough for OS 3.1, so I got 'er on the hard drive now.

Whoo hoo!

[KatManDEW]

I got FAT95 and the CF driver installed, and now I can read CF crads! Yee Haw!!!

Next thing I gotta do is get DOpus on there (should be much easier with the CF Card. And then see if I can get Classic WB on there. I've never installed Classic WB on a real Amiga. I had a devil of a time getting it installed in WinUAE last weekend...

[KatManDEW]

weirdami wrote:
What were you trying to get instead?

I was hoping that I could install the internal floppy that was supplied with it, and that I could use the hard drive that was supplied wiht it.

But no data and power cables for the floppy were supplied, and the hard drive is 15 gig, so I can't use it until I get OS 3.9 (which I ordered weeks ago)

I was lucky that I had an external floppy, and an old laptop hard drive that I could use. I was also lucky to have my trusty old A2000 connected to my PC with a null modem cable, for getting files from the net and copying them to floppy to use on the A1200, until I got the CF reader working. The null modem link between my A2000 and PC isn't too hatefully slow since I have a GVP 040 in my A2000, with a high speed serial port, so I can run it at 115,200bps.

With the help of the nice folks here on Amiga.org, my A1200 is up and running. I can't do much with her because she doesn't have much memory.

I've been looking, and I can't figure out how to expand the memory without getting an accelerator?

I will definately need to get the Indivision video card because the screen is so sooo cramped on the 1084 monitor.

AmigaSYS4AGA looks awesome. I'll have to read up on that. I already registered WHDLoad, so I'm good to go there.

[KatManDEW]

Is there any way to add memory to a A1200 without adding an accelerator card?

WHDLoad is about worthless with no more memory than I have on my A1200 :boohoo:

I had never seen any AGA graphice in person, and the only way I've been able to see some is to boot a game from floppy.

[KatManDEW]

Thanks for the info.

An 030 card is good enough? The 060 Blizzard isn't really necessary if I won't be doing quantum physics? :-D I have a 33mhz 040 in my A2000.

Which 030 card for my A1200?

Thanks.

[KatManDEW]

I did a Google search for "Amiga 4 gig limit" and stumbled onto some info stating that OS 3.1 could use the first 4 gig on drives larger than 4 gig. It said to use HDToolBox and "Get Information", and just ignore it when it shows "-128 meg" as the drive size.

I did that and created 1 gig and 3 gig partitions, and it worked!

It's a 15 gig drive, so I'm "wasting" 11 gig for now, but I don't have enough memory for OS 3.9 right now, and I still haven't received the copy of OS 3.9 that I ordered anyway.

I might just order a data cable and power cable for the internal floppy for now, and see if it works. I need more memory and an accellerator, more than I need the internal floppy anyway.

Is there any way to change the icon for the CF cards? I got some icons and tried copying them to the CF card, and renaming the to "Disk.info" but it didn't change anything.

[KatManDEW]

Changing the tool type with IconEdit did the trick. Thanks!

So where's the best place to get a Blizzard 060? I don't see it on AmiKit. When I click on Accelerators is takes me to a little jumper plug.

[KatManDEW]

I've already talked myself into the arm and a leg :-D  Does any place sell them new(ish)?

I really HATE the video on my A1200, with the 1084 monitor, but I can't really do anything with the A1200 without some more RAM, so an accelerator is gonna have to come first...

What's the deal with the Blizzard 603's? Are they not as compatable as the 030/040/060?

Thanks for all the info.