Merging my Amigas

[mrescher]

Hey all!

Was after some advice on the best software updates I can get out of my Amiga system without spending more money (I've been out of the scene for a while and have just got a mint A4000/040 of eBay).  Not condoning piracy (and willing to prove ownership of any parts with silly photos or whatever!)

I have:

1 A500, 3Mb fast ram, with HD and 3.1 kickstart
1 A4000, 16Mb fast ram, with HD and 3.0 kickstart
1 Amiga Forever 6.0 (OS 3.9?)

(oh, and an A600HD in the post for my girlfriend so I can reclaim my A4k in exchange for the lemmings and pinball discs!)

What I want to achieve is:
1 - the latest OS on the A4000 and stop using Amiga Forever.
2 - forgoing that, read CDs on the A4000 in 3.1
3 - network the A4000 - maybe with serial cable - I don't want to spend anymore on hardware for now.
4 - get the emplant board I found inside working - does anyone have the faintest idea how that works??
5 - use Dpaint5 (again I have the originals) on the A4k
6 - finally get WHDLoad so I can run games from the desktop on both the 600 and the 4000

the last 2 I can figure out (I think) but I'd love advice on any/all of the first 4.  If I can't rip the Amiga Forever OS I'd buy it but I don't really want to fork out more for A4000 roms (which is 2 chips IIRC)

Thanks so much in advance.

Mr Escher.

(PS. Anyone know if I can use the A500 3.1 Rom in the A600 when it gets here?)

[Cyberus]

(PS. Anyone know if I can use the A500 3.1 Rom in the A600 when it gets here?)

Yes

edit:
But it won't support the IDE header in the A600 motherboard nor the PCMCIA slot

[PaSha]

Cyberus wrote:

(PS. Anyone know if I can use the A500 3.1 Rom in the A600 when it gets here?)

Yes

edit:
But it won't support the IDE header in the A600 motherboard nor the PCMCIA slot

Huh? AFAIK the Kickstart 3.1 chip is the same for A500,A600 and A2000 (v40.63). C= were smart enough to not bother making too many different chips.... in an A500 or A2000 the PCMCIA and IDE stuff simply won't be loaded.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but to the best of my knowledge I'm not...

-Paul

[Jope]

PaSha wrote:
Huh? AFAIK the Kickstart 3.1 chip is the same for A500,A600 and A2000 (v40.63).  in an A500 or A2000 the PCMCIA and IDE stuff simply won't be loaded.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but to the best of my knowledge I'm not...
-Paul

You are correct, it's the same ROM and everything works in the A600.

[Cyberus]

@ all


[color=006633]I thought he said 1.3, my mistake.[/color]

[color=CC9900]Of course 3.1 supports that IDE and PCMCIA - in fact, *I* have a 3.1 ROM in MY A600....!!!![/color][/b]


edit:
Do you think its symptomatic of human nature or AOrg that people quickly jump on my mistake, yet no one bothers trying to answer the questions of the original poster....?

[mrescher]

he he - cheers Cyberus.  I guess it's a pretty annoying generic question that can probably be answered by trial and error and/or research but it's a lot of effort to catch up on my amiga skills - really i did know once upon a time the ins and outs ;-)

Now I'm just marvelling at how my old games look when they're AGA enhanced. (well, arcade pool at least...) And can't wait to do some pixel by pixel art in AGA mode.

on a completely different topic - can those kickflash things accept a500 roms - meaning I can boot 3.1 from that?

I mean, it's a great old machine but really I don't have the deskspace as it is!

I'd still like to know peoples opinions though rather wearing my 'mint condition originals' as some collectors or the now defunct doommaster would refer to it

[Doobrey]

mrescher wrote:
on a completely different topic - can those kickflash things accept a500 roms - meaning I can boot 3.1 from that?

You mean you want the A4000 to use the A500 v3.1 rom image ??

It`s possible, but I wouldn`t recommend it.
There`s so many difference between the two, I doubt it`d be stable.
 Keep a look on Ebay, there`s often new 3.1 roms for an A4000 on there for £15-£20 (and always a relisting of from a guy hoping to get £80 for the roms and OS3.9 !!)

..or PM Cyberus, looks like he`s selling a pair (do I get commission Cyberus ?)

[cgutjahr]

mrescher wrote:
1 - the latest OS on the A4000 and stop using Amiga Forever.

OS 3.9 requires Kickstart 3.1 - you'd have to buy that first... it *is* possible to install 3.9 on an Amiga with 3.0 ROMs, but that's pretty tricky. If you're willing to buy 3.1 ROMs, you already have (pretty much) the latest version of the OS:

AmigaForever 6.0 comes with something that closely resembles OS 3.9. They couldn't get the license for 3.9, so they licensed most of the components of 3.9 from their original authors.

The problem is: I don't know what parts are missing in AF's version of 3.9. The most important things (for now) would be HDToolBox (Should be in Sys:Tools/, open a shell and type 'version sys:tools/hdtoolbox', report the results here) and NSDPatch (this is neccessary for HD's bigger than 4Gb, open a shell window and type 'version scsi.device', report the results here).

If these components are included and you have WindowsXP, you can simply connect the Amiga's HD to your PC and partition and format it under AF. Copy AF's SYS: partition to the HD and put it back into your A4000. AF's license probably forbids a stunt like this, but it's up to you if you call that "piracy".

2 - forgoing that, read CDs on the A4000 in 3.1

Download IDEFix from Aminet, this one patches the drivers for the internal IDE controller to support ATAPI (i.e. CDROM drives).

Download AmiCDFS from Aminet. This is a freeware CD file system.

Now you're able to read CDs.

3 - network the A4000 - maybe with serial cable - I don't want to spend anymore on hardware for now.

I think AmigaForever contains a tool called "AmigaExplorer" or something like that. This is probably the most comfortable solution and supports serial and parallel (IIRC) connections.

[mrescher]

Wow! thanks I guess that's 90% of what I need in one post.  I'll think about purchasing a ROM if I see them cheap on eBay but we really don't seem to get them out here (Australia) as often.  If need be I do have a 3.1 Amiga in the cupboard if it really needs a go.

I do use Amiga Explorer and honestly it is fantastic.  

What I meant by 'network' is 'get my Amiga on the internet' use my DSL connection over a null modem cable - has anyone tried this on Windows?  

I think I can figure the ins/outs on Linux but that machine is in another room so I'd have to do subnetting/routing to give my Amiga an IP address and not sure how to do this on Windows.

like this:

Code: [Select]

Amiga <-- Null Modem --> Windows PC <-- Ethernet --> Linux firewall <-- ADSL --> Internet

But since this is becoming a bit of an AlternativeOS question I'm fine to leave it here and go research 'dialing in' over null modem elsewhere...

Final question (for now, I promise) anyone care to suggest a lightweight (as possible) HTTP (web) server for AmigaOS?  Just has to serve HTML and images - but if it can do simple CGI stuff that would be great too.

Thanks for your suggestions!  Man, it is good to be back!

[Doobrey]

mrescher wrote:
 anyone care to suggest a lightweight (as possible) HTTP (web) server for AmigaOS?

Have a go at some of these from Aminet..

PowerWEB
ArexxWebServer
thttpd
Clarissa_httpd
hserv
Apache..OK, so it`s not exactly lightweight !

There`s also one called AWS, but the author`s taken it off his site.