Amiga Explorer vs. my intelligence

[ArthurDent]

Hello all.

I've just obtained an second-hand Amiga 1200. I think it's working rather well, but, being new to this system, there's no accurate way for me to tell. I've just begun understanding the basics of it all. Please keep this in mind as I tell you of my linking woes: To be able to enjoy some games and demos, I've obtained Amiga Explorer from Cloanto. I've bought a serial cable with two 9-pin connectors and two 25-pin ones, all female. I've set my serial properties on the Amiga right, and as far as I can tell, also on my PC. Now, when I run AE's setup, it takes me trough several steps:

First, it let's me enter (in a shell window I've opened): type SER: to RAM:Setup, followed by [return] on both machines. This works fine. The PC shows it's copying something by displaying an indicator bar.

Second, I enter: RX to RAM:Setup, followed again by [return]. At this point it Amiga runs some kind of script, and the PC displays the proces-indicator bar.

Now here's were things go wrong. As soon as the script finishes, the copying of real files from the PC to the Amiga starts. After trying for a while, the PC gives up and tells me: 'Error writing to COM port'.

What can cause this? I've read the AE manual and troubleshooting guide and I -think- I've set up everything correctly. Although I'm not sure I own a 7-wire serial cable, it was rather expensive, and should be of high enough quality. What am I missing? :-? I've set AE to use COM1, since the COM2 setting doesn't even run the scripts etc. Finally, there's this CrossDos thing I've heard about. It should enable me to use a 720K PC disk in the amiga right. I've read it should be on my system since I use a relatively new version of the Workbench (3.9 or something). Where can I find it?

Thanks!!

[NJ_72]

make sure the transferspeed is the same on both machines, also start with a low speed first (19200 baud)

crossdoss is part of AmigaDOS (i think WB 2.1 and above)

just enter in a shell MOUNT PC0: and u can use pc 720k floppy's in your amiga

[Thomas]

As soon as the script finishes, the copying of real files from the PC to the Amiga starts.

Well, I never went through this mess myself as I already have an ethernet connection between Amiga and PC. But IMHO you are missing something here. I guess the script copies the Amiga part of Amiga Explorer to the Amiga (a program called AmigaExplorer). You have to start this program on the Amiga before you start using Amiga Explorer on the PC.

And make sure you copy the program to your harddisk rather than the Ram Disk, so you don't need to run the setup again.

Bye,
Thomas

[adolescent]

Thomas is correct, except for the program name.  The setup copies the AExplorer and AExplorer.info files over to the Amiga.  After that you need to run that to start the Amiga side.  

If you have trouble transfering the files over, you can just copy them from the C:\Program Files\Cloanto\Amiga Explorer\Amiga directory to a floppy.

[scholle]

Welcome to Amiga.org!

To make PC0: permanently usable after booting, drag the PC0: icon from SYS:Storage/DosDrivers to SYS:Devs/DosDrivers.

Regards,

Scholle

[EdKing]

 To be able to enjoy some games and demos, I've obtained Amiga Explorer from Cloanto. I've bought a serial cable with two 9-pin connectors and two 25-pin ones, all female.

Just out of curiosity, do you get a serial cable, or a null modem cable ?

A straight serial cable won't work. You need a null modem cable to use Amiga Explorer.

Ed King

[Thomas]

EdKing wrote:
Just out of curiosity, do you get a serial cable, or a null modem cable ?

A straight serial cable won't work. You need a null modem cable to use Amiga Explorer.

The answer is obvious: he successfully transferred the setup program so the cable works and this means it is a nullmodem cable (because a straight cable won't work, as you say).

Bye,
Thomas

[ArthurDent]

Thank you very much for all the help so far! I've copied the PC0: file into the right directory and am formatting a floppy as I'm typing this. I'll try to copy the files manually and will let you know if the program works!

Cheers,
Arthur

[ArthurDent]

Alas, no succes yet. While the suggestions have enabled me to copy the AE files to the Amiga using CrossDos, the program still reports an error while reading the COM port.

Can it be my settings? I've tried lowering the buffers etc. both on the PC and the Amiga. Or can it be that the cable I'm using is the wrong one? But if that were so, why does the program succeed in transferring the initial setting to the Amiga RAM?

I must admit I'm rather stumped. It seems that thus far AE is winning the battle

Regards,
Arthur

[Thomas]

Did you actually *run* the AExplorer program on the Amiga ? Just copying it is not enough.

AExplorer opens a window with either a protocol if the start was successful or an error message if it failed. Was the start successful ?

Bye,
Thomas

[ArthurDent]

Yup, I've copied the file into my WBStartup folder. It displays the protocol every time I turn on the Amiga.

[sir_inferno]

when the AExplorer window comes up on the amiga, does it say it's looking on the serial port? (and not ethernet?  :-? )

[ArthurDent]

Yes, it looks for the serial port. In the same window it displays the basic settings. Using the prevs->serial settings menu, I've set these to:

Baudrate: 19200
Input buffersize: 4096
Handshaking: RTS/CTS
Parity: None
Bits: 8
Stop bits: 1

On the PC, my WIN XP serial settings are:

Bits per second: 19200
Parity: None
Bits: 8
Stop bits: 1
Datatransportcontrol: Hardware

The 'Use FIFO-buffer' setting in the adavanced menu is ticked. Also, I've set the 'send' and 'recieve' sliders in this menu to both high and low.

Edit - There are some other settings wich might be worth listing: On starting up, the Amiga displays the following:

CONNECTION: Serial
SERDEVICE: Serial.Device
SERUNIT: 0
SERBAUD: 19200
UNIT: 0
PACKETSIZE: 512
RETRIES: 50
ADFVERIFY: YES

On the PC, the packetsize is set to 512 as well, and the number of retries is also 50. I'm using COM device 1 here.

[Failure]

Hi hi!

When I was using kermit to transfer files between AMIX and Linux, I had problems settling on a good serial port speed.  I actually got the best results set to 38400, with 19200 and 9600 causing kermit to error out.

I think you should try different speeds, both faster and slower, as a result of my experience with it :-)  It might just be my unique situation, but it couldn't hurt.

[_caddy_]

just playwith it until it works, that's my advise

you have it setup right, i can tell you that much

i used version 4.1 and that worked fine

try increasing the buffers on the amiga side, not the pc side

in serial prefs