The derpy adventures of RedWarrior...

[paul1981]

I don't use diskpart, or whatever it's called. My old PC has XP on it, I just use the Computer Management section, then DiskManagement to alter partitions and such. You shouldn't need to do this though under normal circumstances because CF cards of such capacities will be fat32 formatted already, so will work immediately with the Amiga. The reason you had to was because your card was previously used as an Amiga boot disk which was either FFS or PFS formatted.

You can format your CF card on your laptop or PC (PC through a card reader) to fat32, and if your Amiga is setup correctly it should read it.

One thing at a time though is the best way. You should read the Workbench User Guide too as you'd learn the basics there (did you download it from the link I provided?) Everyone has to start from the beginning, and that'd be a good place to start.

[paul1981]

Error 80000004.

Before I unscrew and remove the CF/drive again, perhaps someone could offer a course of action please? Is pfs3 compatible with an a600? All I did was copy my files off with diskmaster... format with pfs3 & repartition... then copy files back. And now it's being a moody little piece of $%^t...

The one that has failed (DH2) looks to be your third partition. Is it empty? Looks as though for some reason it's not liking it - I don't know about OS3.9 but it could be a problem with the old 4GB scsi.device perhaps? OS3.9 should take care of that upon booting...so perhaps something wrong with your startup-sequence? More likely though is that you have done something wrong in the partitioning and filesystem installation. You did install PFS onto the RDB yes? If not I would expect a failure like this as the Amiga would be expecting the partition to be FFS formatted and it would instead get presented with a PFS filesystem layout which would surely cause your machine upset. The Amiga has FFS built into ROM - if you'd like to boot from PFS it has to be installed on the RDB.

[paul1981]

The 68000 version of PFS3 will work with your unexpanded A600. I'm assuming you're using the 68000 version? If not, that could be the cause of your DH2 failure. People use PFS-AIO now, if you are too then you don't have to worry about that. Do you know which PFS you have actually used? The filesystem (PFS) needs to be installed on the RDB. You do this by installing the filesystem (PFS) onto one of your partitions, traditionally your boot partition which you should really rename and call DH0 just to avoid confusion (and some dumb installers from the early days may assume DH0 for Workbench and DH1 for Work.

Now that we know you're using OS2.x, we need to know the size of your CF card and its partitions please.

[paul1981]

RDB:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_rigid_disk_block

[paul1981]

..aaaaaaaaaand we're back to the exact same boot failure as before. Woohoo.

and then it looked like I had the buffer size and MaxTransfer setting wrong... changed them... no difference in boot error...

at this point I'm beginning to understand why these machines get thrown in dumpsters....

No offence, but you're not really understanding what you're doing. You won't listen to me. I asked you earlier about the size of your CF card, its partitions and your scsi.device (which is important because you're not using OS3.9) and also the rdb and pfs version but you chose to ignore it, and suprise suprise you're back to square one.

Why don't you setup the CF hard drive on your Amiga? This will be the simplest method for you. Once setup you can then put the card into WinUAE and copy your files over.
You'll need a floppy disk to store pfs onto, and you'll need the Extra's disk (provided with all Amigas). Boot from your Workbench disk, insert your Extras disk, load HDToolbox, read the drive config, save it. Partition your drive, install pfs onto the rdb from your pfs floppy, save changes, job done.

Depending on the size of your partitions you may need to replace the 1991 scsi.device (which is stored in Kickstart ROM) with a more modern version (actually, if direct scsi is used you can use hard drives up to 8GB with that old scsi.device). This would be in the form of a resident module, or if you were fanatical you could create a ROM yourself with this already in it. Infact I believe you can purchase updated roms to make it even simpler for you.

[paul1981]

So your keyboard is busted, your floppy drive is busted, your right button (mouse?) is busted...no wonder you're struggling.
I personally wouldn't dream of using a computer that was as crippled as yours, or crippled at all. If you're serious about using it you'll need to either get it fixed, or buy a refurbished one that's all working and re-capped to enable it to work for another 20 odd years.

I honestly would love to help you, we all want to help. The fact is, if you mimic the config of your A600 in WinUAE, then you should be able to setup your CF exactly how you want it with all your hundreds or thousands of games and application software. Download all the games or applications you need in an emulated Workbench...that's what I have done in the past, expanding archives etc to a real Amiga partition (don't expand them from within Windows if you can help it). Then pop it in your A600 and if the CF is partioned correctly with correct filesystem etc it WILL work (providing your Amiga isn't faulty!)

Your keyboard membrane will likely be damaged where it plugs into the motherboard, easy to damage on an A600 due to how the keyboard is mounted - any force on that connector when the keyboard clip hasn't been lifted will severely damage the tracks and its electrical conductive coating. I've revived a couple a few years ago by cutting a small amount off of the end, so that working conductor can make the contact in the keyboard connector socket.

Without your enter key working, how would you expect to enter highscores into games? You'd be left having to reboot. You need a working keyboard, surely to God.

You could go the gotek route, being as though your floppy is busted anyway.

Good luck with it all, stick with WinUAE if you can't get working hardware.

[paul1981]

The zeal you guys have in defending abandonware from copying isn't really seen in any other fan-club... I can't understand the logic.

The problem isn't old games and old application software, it's Workbench. If you had a CF card from somewhere packed full of games and the like, then they aren't legally allowed to enable it to boot to Workbench, infact there shouldn't be any AmigaOS files on there at all. So upon booting the CF card it should ask you to insert your AmigaOS disks so that it may install AmigaOS (Workbench etc) - then you can boot it and use it, thanks to your perfectly legal copy of Workbench. You'd need a working floppy drive for this though, either that or go through the procedure in WinUAE with Workbench 3 disk images.

Which leads me onto what I said earlier - just set everything up via WinUAE. And no, we're not copyright police or anything. I have 2000 WHDLoad games, did I buy all of them? No. AmigaOS is quite easy to find online last time I checked, although I am by no means saying that you should break the law by downloading it, but you should in theory be able to store backup copies for yourself being as though you do indeed own an A1200 which came with Workbench 3.0 or 3.1. Commodore-Amiga themselves told us to work with self made backup copies of Workbench, not the originals. You have the tools for the job in other words.

Ctrl+M will not work in games.