Cant get my old Amiga 1200 Disks to read on Amiga 500

[jazzee]

I used to have an Amiga 1200 back in the day.I sold it but kept all my disks (tunes).I have now bought an Amiga 500 and when i insert my disks i get "not a dos disk".I know just a little why it does this,it is because when i saved them to disk the disks were formatted a different way allowing extra space on the disk.Not a program cruncher just a disk which formatted so many k bigger.Anybody know what i mean? because i cant remember how i done it as it was that long ago but i am wanting to read the disks on the 500 i have.Is there a way to do this.

Thanks if anybody can help!

Jazz

[KThunder]

a1200 disks with os3.0 can be formatted with ffs and directory caching this allows 879kb  and faster disk directory access but is unreadable on amigas with preos3.0 software. older amigas use ofs format and no directory caching.
you could get them copyed over by someone, or upgrade the os to 3.1

[kd7ota]

Maybe your internal drive on the Amiga 1200 was High Density?  Probably not if you never opened it up before.  Usuaully one format works with all the Amigas. Unless you used some kind of utility to compress the disk or use something like Quarterback, then there shouldnt be a problem.

Also, maybe age and some kind of magnetic field ruined the disks?

Possibly.... Your disk drive in the Amiga 500 could have went bad or is bad...  :-)

Just my thoughts.

[amigagr]

if the disks that you format with a1200 are formated with the FastFileSystem (FFS) of amiga os 3.0 or 3.1 but your amiga 500 can only read disks formated with the OldFileSystem (OFS). you have 2 choises: 1)upgrade the a500 to 3.1 kickstart http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=25&products_id=157&osCsid=da48e2bad0562dbcf27d5d5614b948af
(gasp!) or 2) find a friend with an a1200 and convert them there.



-edit-
but how the ... can be done this trick with links?

[jazzee]

Wow,talk about quick response & you just got my brain cell working again.You are right about the ffs.I remember now & many thanks for the help! much appreciated.I know somebody with a 1200.Dumb question but how do i copy the stuff from the disks.I am totally totally braindead from back then yet i used to program on the thing! lol no joke & the good old spectrum too:)

[amigagr]

if the a1200 has a hard drive move the files of the floppys to the hard drive floppy by floppy,(keep somewhere the names of the disks to restor ok) format all the floppys with plain format (don't select FFS International mode and directory caching) and finaly move the files back to the new formated floppys... quite boring task.

[jazzee]

Thanks and i gotta say,..awesome forum! i have never known any so quick in responding.

[amigagr]

yeah, we moving faster than our shadow :-)

[InTheSand]

Another alternative is to ask your A1200-owning friend to download XFS and install it on to a bootable Workbench 1.3 disk (you'll need to remove some of the extras on the WB disk to allow XFS to fit). One of XFS's features is that it sets up an FFS disk handler, allowing 1.3-based Amigas to read/write such disks.

 - Ali

[amigagr]

@InTheSand: cool :-)


aminet seams not to working...  :-?

[InTheSand]

OK, so who broke Aminet?! :-)

You can find it on the German Aminet mirror (which appears to be a bit out of date, but still contains the last version of XFS) here: http://de.aminet.net

 - Ali

P.S. This is my first post on A.org using a REAL Amiga! (A3000, 68060, OS3.9, Sana2 network card). All those smileys take FOREVER to load in AWeb!

[amigagr]

InTheSand wrote:
P.S. This is my first post on A.org using a REAL Amiga! (A3000, 68060, OS3.9, Sana2 network card). All those smileys take FOREVER to load in AWeb!

good for you :-)  today arrive the pcmcia that i order from amikit and i hope that i'll serfing with my amiga too from tommorow :-)  and with the a3000 in a week, depents on the pci configuration of the prometheus that came too:-)

[zefiro]

I think the easyest way to do the OFS/FFS convertion is ReOrg.

You will find it on aminet, there is also a patch.

This is a part of readme:

"In addition to optimizing a disk, ReOrg can also convert
the filesystem of a disk during the optimization, e.g. from OFS to DC-FFS"

I hope this help, let me know.

[jazzee]

So do i just copy my workbench disk & delete some stuff off it then add that file then sorted?

Thanks 2 u all

[zefiro]

Some time ago I do something like that, ReOrg works "on the fly", I don't remember about mem requirement. Just try to be sure.