Introduction and request for help RE: getting Amiga roms onto an Amiga.

[Amiga4Eva]

Hi everyone Just recently got back into the Amiga scene, with the purchase of,

- 2 x Amiga 500's
- 1 x Amiga 1200HD
- 1 x Amiga CD32

Very chuffed, but I have a question.  Most of the original software given to me is busted, (read errors on disks etc) but I have a large collection of Amiga roms that I have been using with WinUAE on my PC.

Is there any combination of software/hardware that will allow me to convert the Amiga roms back into actual floppy disks for use on the Amiga (thereby allowing me to preserve the images of the disks somewhere and make new copies if the disk itself becomes damaged).

I know you can do software/hardware combos to read Amiga disks on a PC, but what I'm after is slightly different.

[Amiga4Eva]

You could also burn a cd of all of your ADF's stored on your pc and then use this program to convert them back to real floppy disks:

http://aminet.net/disk/misc/adf2disk11.lha

But you'd need a cdrom drive of some sort.  I use a squirrel scsi interface which plugs into the side of my 1200, which is then hooked up to a scsi cdrom drive.  You can find these interfaces complete with the cdrom drive on ebay here in the UK quite frequently.

Or, if your pc has a floppy drive you could format a disk to the 720k format on your pc (if use High density disk, then cover up the extra hole) which will enable your amiga with workbench 3 (your 1200HD) to read pc formatted disks.  Just make sure "PC0" is dragged into the DEVS:DosDrivers/ drawer, or you could just click on PC0 (it's stored in SYS:Storage/DosDrivers) - which will enable you to read the 720K disks.

If you can't find PC0, then it should be on your "Storage3.0/3.1" floppy which should have come with your 1200.

Of course, an ADF won't fit on a 720k floppy....so you'll need to compress it first. You can download and use 7zip for this:

http://www.7-zip.org/

Then download an unzip tool from aminet, so you can then extract the zips onto your 1200 harddrive, then use the adf2disk tool to transfer to floppy.

http://aminet.net/util/arc/UnZip.lha

Or, another option is to go for the Compact Flash "CF" route.  Whereby you'll need a PC (pcmcia) Card CF adaptor, and of course a Compact Flash card (2 Gig for example).  This would then plug into the pcmcia card slot at the side of your 1200 (like the squirrelscsi inteface) and you'd be able to access the CF card like you would a normal hard drive, with a little software on the amiga side:

http://fi.aminet.net/disk/misc/cfd.lha

Of course, CF cards are portable so you can then hook it up to your laptop or pc, providing you have a CF reader on your pc or laptop, or a pc card slot on your pc or laptop....and then transfer all of your adf images at once!
I would favour going the CF route....

Thanks for the detailed responses Just a couple of questions on those methods... the null modem method, how would I get the Amiga Explorer program onto the Amiga in the first place being that it's a download? Am I not still stuck in that I need a method to get that program onto a HD Floppy to run on the Amiga?

And as for the CF card method - that one sounds the most appealing, but I'm still not exactly clear on what hardware I need for the Amiga and for the PC.  Can someone link me to a product spec or something? Just not sure exactly which device to get.