Can an Amiga 1200..

[Amigamia]

Boot from a PCMCIA Mini Hard Drive?

[Matt_H]

Yes.

If by "PCMCIA Mini Hard Drive" you mean "4MB PCMCIA SRAM card formatted as disk".

You need the compactflash.device from the cfd.lha package to use modern drives and I don't believe it can be made resident (read: it's not bootable).

[darksun9210]

i'd have said yes, as CC0: is set as bootable. mate of mine had a zappo PCMCIA 470Mb hard disk that plugged in the A1200's side port and xfered at 2.8Mb a sec!  :-o  :-)

PCMCIA is like IDE, a butchering of the ISA slot spec, so the two aren't that different... its why the A1200 and A600 have PCMCIA slots. build the IDE controller, and get a PCMCIA slot for free, or the other way round.

which is why i am surprized no PCMCIA slot adapter has appeared for the A500 yet :-? (not that i'd have a hope in hell of doing something like that myself) :lol:

[Everblue]

Because A500 has some weird scsi port.

[darksun9210]

yeah, but i was thinking the ide68k adapter mimics the A600 ide straight off the A500/2000's 68000 cpu socket... next logical step? pcmcia? i unno. the two are architecturally similar. just thought it might be an easy network interface...?  :idea:

[Amigamia]

It is one of these:




I put together an Amiga 1200 buying the parts from different sources. I have everything except a data cable+ power to connect a floppy. I am trying to figure out a way to install the OS on either the PCMCIA microdrive or a 10GB IDE drive but not from floppy.

[motorollin]

@amigamia
That device functions as a compact flash card. You would need a device driver and mountlist (cfd from Aminet) meaning you cannot boot directly from the card. You would have to boot from floppy first to mount the device.

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moto

[Amigamia]

@motorollin

Gotcha!

Since I don't have a floppy drive installed yet, will it be possible to mount an 2.5 IDE HDD under Winuae and install the OS that way and then put it in the amiga?

[motorollin]

Amigamia wrote:
Since I don't have a floppy drive installed yet, will it be possible to mount an 2.5 IDE HDD under Winuae and install the OS that way and then put it in the amiga?

You can if you want, but it still won't boot ;-) The problem is not that you can't install the OS, but that once it's on there the Amiga can't see the card until it is mounted. In order to mount it, you need to boot from a different device. Think of old PCs which couldn't boot from CD. You had to boot from a floppy first, mount the CD drive, then access the CD. The principle is similar in this case.

Your best bet would be to get one of these. Then you can put the microdrive *inside* the Amiga and it will function just like a hard drive, and you will then be able to boot directly from it without having to use a floppy. It will probably be faster than the PCMCIA slot too.

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moto

[Matt_H]

Since I don't have a floppy drive installed yet, will it be possible to mount an 2.5 IDE HDD under Winuae and install the OS that way and then put it in the amiga?

That'll work.

@ moto

True for PCMCIA stuff, but not an issue for internal drives :-)

[Lorraine]

/

[Amigamia]

motorollin wrote:

Amigamia wrote:
Since I don't have a floppy drive installed yet, will it be possible to mount an 2.5 IDE HDD under Winuae and install the OS that way and then put it in the amiga?

You can if you want, but it still won't boot ;-) The problem is not that you can't install the OS, but that once it's on there the Amiga can't see the card until it is mounted. In order to mount it, you need to boot from a different device. Think of old PCs which couldn't boot from CD. You had to boot from a floppy first, mount the CD drive, then access the CD. The principle is similar in this case.

Your best bet would be to get one of these. Then you can put the microdrive *inside* the Amiga and it will function just like a hard drive, and you will then be able to boot directly from it without having to use a floppy. It will probably be faster than the PCMCIA slot too.

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moto

Well I guess I'll just use it as a spare drive for now. I just received the correct IDE cable to connect a 2.5" 10GB HDD that I had laying around. I just need to find out how to install Amiga OS 3.0 (yes I have the KS 3.0 ROMS) or softkick it and then install 3.1 but under Winuae.

[motorollin]

Matt_H wrote:

Since I don't have a floppy drive installed yet, will it be possible to mount an 2.5 IDE HDD under Winuae and install the OS that way and then put it in the amiga?

That'll work.

@ moto

True for PCMCIA stuff, but not an issue for internal drives :-)

Yes, but I didn't know he had an internal drive when I answered his question ;-)

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moto

[motorollin]

Amigamia wrote:
Well I guess I'll just use it as a spare drive for now.

A better use for it would be for transferring files to and from the Amiga. If you get a USB compact flash reader, you can format the microdrive as FAT32. The Amiga can read and write to that (with the correct software) through the PCMCIA adapter, and a PC could read and write to it through the USB adapter.

Amigamia wrote:
I just received the correct IDE cable to connect a 2.5" 10GB HDD that I had laying around. I just need to find out how to install Amiga OS 3.0 (yes I have the KS 3.0 ROMS) or softkick it and then install 3.1 but under Winuae.

If you put the drive in a USB hard drive caddy you can use it within UAE. You have to use a command line argument like -disableharddrivesafetycheck or something. After that I believe it's just like installing on a real Amiga, though I have never actually done this. Others have, and there are posts on this forum about it if you search.

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moto