Partitioning 140Mb HD and Installing WB 3.0

[X-SAS-Highlander]

Hey everybody. Im alive :-)  But my amiga is Dead :-(  Well not quite. I hava a standard A1200 and this bloke at a place i used to work put a 140Mb HD in it with tones of stuff. Unfortunately he has extensive experiance with amiga and im a total idiot. Well my problem is theres not enough space left so i thought hell lets just format the three partitions and repartiotion the system and basically start from scratch so i will know what ive got and how to ues it. Hey it cant't be that hard right ? :-)  Wrong. Ive been trawling the net on my PC and have read about LhA etc and other interesting stuff and i have working copys of WB3.0 on disk etc  but my main problem is of course , you guessed it, im an idiot. Ok seriously. SUPPORT ! that and maybe wanting an apollo gfx card and some memory and a bigger HD and some cool apps n stuff to put on it.  :-)  BUT first thiings first. How do i repartition my HD at the current stage im at and what tools / software do i need and where do i get it from and how do i get it on my amiga ? There that should keep you thinking for a few moments i been at it months now :-( HELPPP PLEASE GOD SOMEBODY HELP ME

[Cyberus]

Well, firstly, do you have any partitioning software - such as HDToolbox? Do you have an 'install' disk. Do you have GVP Faaaaaaaastprep or anything like that?

If not, you could try Aminet
perhaps try downloading rdp391.lha http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/~aminet/aminet.cgi?string=partition

[Matt_H]

Welcome back to the wonderful world of Amigas.

Hopefully you have an Install disk. Fire that up, and load HDToolbox to partition the drive. Once the partitions are ready, use the Format utility in Workbench:System to initialize them. Then use that same disk to install Workbench, and you're good to go.

If the Install disk isn't bootable, boot from Workbench3.0, and then use the Install disk. I don't recall how it's set up.

[X-SAS-Highlander]

Guess what ! I dont think I do have an Install Disk., or any of the software Cyberus mentioned. :-( What do i do now ? Im very new at this so please be patcient. :-?

[Matt_H]

Okaaaaay.... Now you might be in trouble. You need a complete set of disks. To be honest, I would advise investing in AmigaOS3.1. It'll give you the latest KickStart roms, so you can upgrade to 3.5 or 3.9 if you want, and it'll come with a full set of disks.

What disks DO you have? Even if you can get the hard drive partitioned, you need the Install disk to get the OS onto the drive. Maybe someone can send you theirs...

[Cyberus]

OK, well. You could download that file that I mentioned by following the link I posted.

You will need to  format a disk as a PC disk using your Amiga, then put that into your PC, then copy the file to the disk, then remove the disk from the PC and put it into the Amiga (after booting using WBench), then run the prog to partition the drive

--edit--
forgot to mention, you'll have to have a way of decompressing lha files. lha compression is not so common, but you can decompress it using winrar. There's a page (sorry don't have a link) with the relevant bits you need, maintained by the Japanese guy who wrote lha. Do a search on google for 'lha compression' or something.

Sorry I can't be more helpful  :-(

--edit--

[X-SAS-Highlander]

Ok Mat, I have all the 3.0 WB Disks and would be gratefull if someone could get the install disk to me. Maybe e-mail it ? my e-mail is pictpower@tiscali.co.uk Unfortunatley Im totally broke and Buying stuff isnt an option so 3.1 will have to wait unless its cheap on ebay or summut. Cyber im working on the learning process concrning lha / cross dos errhmm problem as we speak. Thanks for they help you did give. ! :-) Nice to b Nice eh ?

[Cyberus]

Right, what I've done is downloaded the lha file for you, decompressed it and then recompressed it as a zip. I'll email it to you, which takes that problem out of the equation, all you have to do now is format a floppy as a PC disk using the Amiga.

Don't hesitate to ask if you are having probs

[Cyberus]

Now, I just tried firing up the A1200 I have set up and found that something's amiss

So, from memory...

Go to System folder, and look for an icon that says Format. This should allow allow you to format the disk in the internal drive as a PC disk.

You might need to 'mount' the drive as a PC drive, by going to Shell (like DOS) and typing
mount pc0:

Sorry, purely working from memory, I'm sure someone else here will be able to chip in.....

[pjhutch]

Instead of HDToolbox get HDInst Tools from Aminet which is FREE and can be downloaded from http://de.aminet.net/pub/aminet/disk/misc/hdinst.lha

Also, check out my hard disk guide on
http://www.pcguru.plus.com/guides.html

[Matt_H]

The PC0 DOSDriver may not be on the Workbench disk. If it's not, copy it from Storage/DOSDrivers to Workbench:Devs/DOSDrivers. Now you can read PC Floppies, with the following restrictions:
1) Unless you have a high density drive in your Amiga, you're limited to smaller (700k) double density PC floppies.
2) WB 3.0's version of CrossDOS (to read PC disks) is very old and limited to 8.3 DOS filenames. Files inside archives are not affected.

I *think* Workbench comes with LhA in the C: directory, so you should be able to extract files. If not, get this fiie: http://ftp.plig.org/aminet/dirs/aminet/util/arc/LhA.run and run it from RAM:. Copy lha to c:, and your system can perform at least a few more tasks independently. I just hope your Workbench disk has enough space. DO NOT delete files to clear up space from an original disk. Make a backup.

[Varthall]

pjhutch wrote:
Also, check out my hard disk guide on
http://www.pcguru.plus.com/guides.html

I've taken a look at your page, I've found it to be
very useful and informative! Requests for help
on partitioning hard drives are really frequent on this forum, so  your amiga hard drive guide is a must. I've also discovered things I didn't know: I always believed that hdtoolbox's bad block list could be only modified manually (not really useful, BTW). My hard drive has got new bad blocks, I've tried to fix this with the utility WorseFormat but it didn't work (after format the partition is not identified by the system), now I'll try the Verify Data option of HDtoolbox.

I'm wondering if the bad blocks list is recognised and used by SFSFormat, I hope so. BTW, just a minor note: in your guide you mention that SFS is a commercial product... it's freeware, a link to the sfs archive on aminet would be helpful for novices!

Another thing I didn't know was the 8GB limit. You're mentioning the ROM update, this is only available in Os 3.5 and 3.9, isn't it?

Varthall

[xeron]

I *think* Workbench comes with LhA in the C: directory

No it doesn't. The first version of the OS to come with any sort of archiving tool was OS3.5.

[Linchpin]

LHA is on aminet i think...

--edit--

or here http://lha.warped.com/Downloads.html