How to make a backup of kickstart 1.2 and 1.3 disks?

[AmigaEd]

Greetings Amigans,

After many years I have just dug out my old A1000 and it seems to work fine.

I thought it might be a good idea to back up some of the old floppy disks before they crash. First I bought some new ds/dd disks (hard to find). I made out o.k. making back-ups of the workbench disks, but I couldn't quite remember how to make a back-up of a kickstart disk.

Could someone please tell me how to make a copy of the kickstart disk or perhaps point me to a site with such information.

Thank you,
AmigaEd

[itix]

Just get good old X-Copy III :-)

[InTheSand]

Or, for an Aminet solution, DeluxeCopy.lha looks like it'll do the trick (in disk/misc here).

 - Ali

[graffias79]

Simple, just insert the disk when you are in workbench, click once on the DF0:KICK icon, and from the Workbench menu, select "Duplicate".

[AmigaEd]

I tried this approach, of using Duplicate form the WB, but it doesn't seem to work.
I seem to remember there being some simple trick to copying the kickstart disk, but I just can't quite remember what it is.

AmigaEd

[Ilwrath]

I tried this approach, of using Duplicate form the WB, but it doesn't seem to work.

Yeah, the Kickstart disk has a non-standard bootblock, since it's not QUITE a standard AmigaDOS disk, right?

I seem to remember there being some simple trick to copying the kickstart disk, but I just can't quite remember what it is.

I think just using any standard nibble copy should work fine.  XCopyPro, Dcopy31, or any number of others on Aminet (as linked by the previous poster) should work fine.

[graffias79]

AmigaEd wrote:
I tried this approach, of using Duplicate form the WB, but it doesn't seem to work.
I seem to remember there being some simple trick to copying the kickstart disk, but I just can't quite remember what it is.

AmigaEd

That is very strange, I used to own an A1000, before I really knew much about computers at all, and before I had internet access or even a modem so I was pretty much stuck with the OS for all functions.  Backing up the KS disk was so easy I didn't think anything of it.  I was always paranoid the KS disk would go bad so I had like 4 backups LOL

[InTheSand]

Hi,

Another alternative.... if you have access to a different Amiga and can locate a Kickstart 1.3 ROM image (e.g. from an A500), you could use "writekick" to write out a fresh Kickstart disk...

Have a look here

Regards,

 - Ali

P.S. Was going to dig my A1000 out and experiment, but it's buried under an ancient Macintosh (oh, the treachery!) and I'm too lazy to untangle the mess of cables around it! :-)

[AmigaEd]

Hello,
I'm still struggling with this.

I've aquired the xcopy.adf. I compressed the file and have transfered the xcopy.lzh over to the A1000 from my PC using Wartrans.

I try to decompress the xcopy.lzh to the ram disk and it seems to run out of memory. I have a 2meg Microbotics Starboard attached, so I am surprised to find that the ram disk tops out at +512K.

So my question is, what is the best way to get the adf's extracted on to a1000 so that I can use adfblitzer or something similar to put these images back on to a floppy?

Thank you,
AmigaEd

[DethKnight]

maybe Im sniffing some of the same glue as lou_dias and his gamecube idea;

I vaguely remember altering the mountlist for device RAM:
but that was way back in my ICD adram540 1.3 days
on an a500 (never used an a1000)

somehow you make a RAD-alike thing

similar to the following
http://www.iol.ie/~ecarroll/a590floppy.html

[AmigaEd]

DethKnight,

I looked at the Eddy Carroll site and that started to bring back some of what I have forgotten about Amigas.

I'm not quite sure if this idea of altering the mountlist entry will work for the ram: device as it is sort of sized on demand.

I can't quite remember what the RAD: device was. Was that another variation on the RAM: device?

[Jope]

Forget xcopy, open a shell/cli and:

diskcopy from df0: to df1:

or for a one drive system:

diskcopy from df0: to df0:

There's nothing fishy in the KS disk, it's written out in a totally standard way (but of course doesn't contain a filesystem). No need for any nibble modes, they're normal Amiga tracks.

[Noster]

Hi,

> I can't quite remember what the RAD: device was. Was that another variation on the RAM: device?

Yeah, it was a fixed size RAM disk that was reset-resistant, i.e. you could copy your Workbench into that RAM-disk and boot from it with the next reset.
You can of cause copy anything you like into that RAM-disk.

Btw. I've never heard of any problem rising a RAM disk above 512 KB.

Noster