Amiga Explorer on Workbench 1.3.3

[doctorq]

Hi,

has anyone managed to uncompress ADFs using Amiga Explorer between a Windows XP machine and a Amiga 500, with 512 KB chip ram, 512 KB fast and only the build in floppy drive?

It can perfectly well set up the executable on the Amiga, I can copy a small text file, but I can't uncompress an ADF directly to the floppy drive. On the Windows side it just gives an error saying "Unknown command" and the log doesn't give any indications at the first quick glance.

The same file uncompresses nicely on my Amiga 600 (although booted from CF card).

Can it be done on a single floppy based Amiga 500 with Kickstart 1.3 and only 1 MB ram? If yes, how?

[Lockon_15]

Should be possible.

A year ago, in a hurry, I quickly fired up my Rev5 A500 with AExplorer file executed on stripped-down version of Workbench 1.3.2 (v34.28). I managed to copy few complete disk images, with no errors.

IIRC, that setup involved hacked serial port driver (BaudBandit.device) and reduced number of bitplanes (Add44K) to get some CPU cycles available.  

It seems you're experiencing problems with transmission errors - stock 68000 is too slow for your baudrate. Small files will get through, but a bit larger than a buffer size might become an issue.
 

[doctorq]

OK, I have messed around a bit, and reducing the buffer size to 2048 makes it possible to unpack an adf onto the Amiga.

Only problem is, it's so PAINFULLY SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW that the program itself isn't useable, as it took more than 15 minutes and then still haven't finished writing the disk. On the A600 it takes around 3-5 minutes to write the disk, in that's with adfverify set to yes, on the A500 addverify was set to no, which should make it write the disk even faster.

Anyone with more luck than me??

[Calde]

Hmm, I'm setting up to try thr same thing but I want to send mine to a hard disc I have on my 500.
Then I'm going to write it to a floppy, think it will work? Also try a shorter cable or a better shielded cable.
I'm having to build my own null modem cable so it's going
to be interesting.
Calde

[Lockon_15]

Try to set buffer at 512 and try again. Take it to the end of track 7 to get the tenth of projected time.

What is your baudrate, 19200 ?

[taunusand]

Hi :-)

I use a cheap low cost seriel caple, 2 meter.
It works great for my A600 and A1200, about 5 mins for an ADF here also.

But, sorry, I have never tried it on A500.

[doctorq]

I have tested some more, and tried with a 512 byte buffer instead of 2048 bytes. Started the transfer, and 13 minutes later it has completed a third of the whole transfer with adfverify disabled. It stops, giving me an error saying "There has been a conflict accessing the Amiga Explorer resources" so it seems like it drops the connection down the line.

Booted my A600 with CF hdd, also with only 1 MB ram and 68000 CPU, and started the transfer of the same file, this time with adfverify enabled and 4096 bytes buffer, and the transfer completes succesfully in around 9 minutes.

Still a long time to wait for getting a single disk done, so still very slow, but at least useable. I guess an A500 simply isn't up for the task.

-edit-

Sorry, just checked an had adfverify disabled on the A600 as well.

[Lockon_15]

You'll have to play with transfer settings since 15 minutes for a 1/3 of a job tells me something got badly wrong in setup. That 9-min time tag on A600 should be reachable on A500, altough some important difference between machines exist, for this matter (Kickstart version, serial.device version).

Just for record, I got 880K transferred on my A500 under 3 minutes, but that's something you shouldn't expect from unaccelerated A500.   :-D

[doctorq]

Well, I could just stick my 030 accelerator in it. I'll just stick with what works; it would have been nice if Amiga Explorer had worked right out of the box on my Amiga 500 as well, but since it doesn't it's being shelfed instead.

[Lockon_15]

Well said.
I just might add one more thing which I really object to AE developer(s) - lack of parallel support. That could speed up transfer rates and make floppy drive performance real bottleneck...

[doctorq]

Update

I managed to get it up and running; it's still slow, but useful for those without any other choice.

After freeing up some space on the Workbench floppy disk and doing the installation of Amiga Explorer once again, I managed to get a stable connection (I know, it doesn't make sense but worked for me).

It still took 10 minutes to write a disk though :-(

[rkauer]

 Aexploder is slow, indeed. But I achieve 3 minutes on mine A500 + HD when writing an ADF file into a disk. It is a rev6 PAL/NTSC (1Mb Agnus) using 2.04 ROM (37.299).

 The candidate of a culprit in this case is your cable! 2+ meter of cable without shielding is a major no-no for serial transfers.

 Also try lower transfer rates to less than 19200 (14400 just for testing purposes and use baud bandit device instead original serial.device .