AMax floppy cartridge.

[circlip]

Hi guys.

Just wondering what people know about the Amax floppy cartridge. I have found one, and am thinking of getting it later on. It has ROMS on it, but it says nothing about software. What is required to get it working, is some special software or drivers needed?

also, I'm not sure which version it is.

Circlip.

[Jeff]

There is the Amax page here;
Amax Page

I have 2 of the Amax IV cards now, and I had the cartridge at one time. This page should have all the information you need. It's been up for years, if you need to download anything I wouldn't waste any time:-D

Have Fun,
Jeff

[circlip]

So is the floppy cartridge pretty much "plug and go"? I see files on that site, but utilities. I have Macintosh system 7.5.5 which I could easily copy from a CDROM of mine somewhere. Basically what I'm saying is, if I put the cartridge in, does a macintosh "insert disk" display come up?

Would be awesome if it's that simple, I can show mac-heads what an Amiga can do. ;-)

[Jeff]

From what I remember the Amax cartridge is a hardware dongle with roms and a floppy interface for the Amax application software. You will need that application to go with your cartridge.

I would start with one of the AMAX10 (1.0) files on the page plus the Utilites software. Might just as well download all the version 1.0 stuff and start playing around. The files aren't that big. Some of the .zip files on that page seem to  actually be .DMS files with the wrong extension. Try renaming any .zips if you have problems.

Sounds like fun,
Good Luck

[circlip]

Excellent, thanks Jeff.

[mark_k]

The A-Max cartridge is used for two things:

 1) It has sockets for a set of Macintosh ROM chips (either 64KB or 128KB total size). The A-Max program reads the ROM data when it starts up.

 2) It allows an 800KB Macintosh-compatible floppy drive to be connected, so you can use 400KB & 800KB Macintosh disks. Other programs such as CrossMac and ShapeShifter work with Mac disks via the A-Max cartridge and mfm.device.

The ROM-reading process is quite slow. There is a patch on Aminet to dump the ROM data to a file, and the patched A-Max executable reads that instead (and so no longer requires that an A-Max cart be present).

For what it's worth, the latest version of WinUAE can emulate the ROM-related part of the A-Max cartridge, which allows A-Max to be run unmodified under emulation.