mrescher wrote:
1 - the latest OS on the A4000 and stop using Amiga Forever.
OS 3.9 requires Kickstart 3.1 - you'd have to buy that first... it *is* possible to install 3.9 on an Amiga with 3.0 ROMs, but that's pretty tricky. If you're willing to buy 3.1 ROMs, you already have (pretty much) the latest version of the OS:
AmigaForever 6.0 comes with something that closely resembles OS 3.9. They couldn't get the license for 3.9, so they licensed most of the components of 3.9 from their original authors.
The problem is: I don't know what parts are missing in AF's version of 3.9. The most important things (for now) would be HDToolBox (Should be in Sys:Tools/, open a shell and type 'version sys:tools/hdtoolbox', report the results here) and NSDPatch (this is neccessary for HD's bigger than 4Gb, open a shell window and type 'version scsi.device', report the results here).
If these components are included and you have WindowsXP, you can simply connect the Amiga's HD to your PC and partition and format it under AF. Copy AF's SYS: partition to the HD and put it back into your A4000. AF's license probably forbids a stunt like this, but it's up to you if you call that "piracy".
2 - forgoing that, read CDs on the A4000 in 3.1
Download
IDEFix from Aminet, this one patches the drivers for the internal IDE controller to support ATAPI (i.e. CDROM drives).
Download
AmiCDFS from Aminet. This is a freeware CD file system.
Now you're able to read CDs.
3 - network the A4000 - maybe with serial cable - I don't want to spend anymore on hardware for now.
I think AmigaForever contains a tool called "AmigaExplorer" or something like that. This is probably the most comfortable solution and supports serial and parallel (IIRC) connections.
