Using real Amiga HD with WinUAE

[Ami_GFX]

I not only use real Amiga drives in Winuae, I have also used Winuae to format, prep and install the system and software on drives for my Amigas. I have used USB, Firewire and SCSI external cases. You need at least OS3.5 for the harddisk toolkit to work right. You also need a fairly recent version of Winuae. I recently took an old 3.2 gb laptop hard drive, put it in a USB case, started Winuae from a command window with the [disable saftey check] bypass switch so it would regognize the drive, partitioned it and formated it in OS 3.5,restarted winuae with the now RDB Amiga drive as the hard disk and 3.1 install adfs loaded int the virtual floppy drives, installed system 3.1,ejected the virtual floppies, rebooted to the Amiga drive with a fresh 3.1 install to check things out and then added a couple of Winaue hdf volumes to the hard drive list, rebooted again and copied a lot of software onto the hard drive from the virtual volumes and then installed it in my A4000D and booted it. It is a lot less tedious than swapping floppies. There is also a function in Winuae to directly image Amiga drives and this is fantastic for backing up Amiga drives and then you can use these images to set up a winuae emulation of your real Amiga.

[shirsch]

Quick followup:  I rebuilt a 2.4.25 kernel on an ancient RedHat 8 box to include (a) affs support and (b) amiga partition support.  It recognized the RDB immediately and I was able to read data without any problems.

A SuSE 10.0 kernel did not recognize the RDB, so it's either broken or possibly built without the partition support.

I'm going to try including affs in the initrd image to see if having the filesystem driver available during boot makes a difference.

[rdolores]

I've never done it with an IDE hard drive, but I have done it with SCSI hard drives from my Amiga 2000's successfully.

I not only got WinUAE to recognize the SCSI drive on my WinXP machine which has an Adaptec SCSI controller, but also was able to boot from it.

Make sure your IDE drive is connected to one of the 4 IDE ports inside your computer. I don't think you'll be able to do it via an external USB connection.

[a3000]

Hi, can we start with "started Winuae from a command window with the bypass switch so it would regognize the drive, can you explain how you did did this" Are you talking about the "disablesafety check command? Thanks

[Ami_GFX]

Are you talking about the "disablesafety check command?

Yes that's it exactly. The thoughtful Winuae programmers didn't want you to casually wipe out your windows drives. Once this switch is enabled, all your windows hard drives will be recogognized by Winuae, Including every external box I have tried--scsi, usb, firewire external hard drive boxes and zip drives.

[a3000]

This is the command I am using. "C:\amiga2005\Emulation\WinUAE\winuae.exe disableharddrivesafetychecks
exit" I then get the AF menu window. I still get told that there is no RDB or amiga disc connected? Somethings not right as it used to work, but what?

[vic20owner]

I was never able to get Winuae to see a USB drive no matter what I tried.  I finally got it to see a hard drive installed inside the machine by REMOVING it from the bios... why, I dont know... but if I removed it, it worked... if it was there in the bios, windows would see it first and it would not!

[Piru]

@a3000

To work the option must include the hyphen, and it must be spelled 100% correctly.

"C:\amiga2005\Emulation\WinUAE\winuae.exe -disableharddrivesafetycheck" not "C:\amiga2005\Emulation\WinUAE\winuae.exe disableharddrivesafetychecks"

[a3000]

thanks I'll try it & let you know how I get on. thanks

[a3000]

I have just tried it with the dash & s removed. Small progress I get a pop wich says the safety check has been disabled & HD * are visible. When I click on the drop down menu it can see a 37 GB drive wich I presume is the PC drive. It still doesn't see the 1.2 GB drive. Any ideas why not. the jumper is set to bootable. Any further suggestions? Thanks

[stefcep]

I just installed ubunto 7.04.  It does have a partitioning tool which shows up during the installation wizard.  I wonder if this might work better than Suse

[Ami_GFX]

Yes, you must include the hyphen. This is a standard DOS command line way of including command line switches.

I was never able to get Winuae to see a USB drive no matter what I tried.

There might be issues with the particular USB controller/driver combination in your system. Or perhaps a BIOS issue. My experience is that if Windows recogninzes a drive on the system, Winuae will recognize it as well. If you put an Amiga formatted drive in a USB case and it is not recognized, I would check it with the Windows disk managment utility--Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Storage/Disk Management. It should be recognized as an unpartitioned disk. You can also try mounting a Windows USB disk and then starting Winuae with the disable saftey check switch and seeing if the drive is recognized. I only use PC laptops and installing an Amiga drive inside is not an option. I have had no problems connecting external Amiga drives to the built in USB and Firewire ports of my Compaq laptop and I use an Adaptec Slim SCSI PC card controller with an external SCSI drive box for Amiga SCSI drives.

[a3000]

I tried your suggestion. It still cannot see the Amiga drive thru windows with the safetycheck disabled. Itried a Flash drive & it could see it thru the control panel & through WinUAE config hardrives dropdown panel.What is perplexing me is that it used to work. When it didnt I used to put the AF CD in & boot up with it, then go back to EP & it would work. So somewhere something has been turned off, just what I'm not sure. Thanks for your help.

[Ami_GFX]

It sounds like Windows doesn't recognize the 1.2GB drive at all. You can see if it is recognized on the hardware level in the device magager: Right click the My Computer icon either from the desktop or start menu depending on how your system is configured and select Properties. The third tab should say hardware and the the first option should be the device manager. Third from the top should be a list of hard drives on the system and the 1.2gb drive should be on the list. If it is not, the drive is not recognized on a basic hardware level. I would check the jumper setting on the drive and change it to slave or CS(cable select) and see if these jumper settings make any difference. If the physical drive is on the list, then it is a software issue and I would check the Windows disk managment utility and if it is listed there as an unpartitioned drive, then it might be an issue with the Winuae version you are using and I would try downloading a newer version.

[a3000]

Hi, I can confirm that XP does not see the external drive either PC or Amiga. I have tried changing jumper settings but that does not help. I have downloaded winuae plus the 1.4.2a version. It will not install(the 1.4.2a) I have 2 amiga drives (Quantum) the PC drive was a Maxtor. Maybe the case I am using is stuffed? any sugestions. Thanks

[Ami_GFX]

I would try a different case. Some times there are hardware incompatibilities between the IDE to USB interface in the external case and the USB controller on your computer. It could also be a driver issue. I would check to see if there are updated drivers for you computer. You should check the computer makers website. You might find newer USB drivers. And sometimes Windows will install a Microsoft generic driver for the hardware when there are better drivers available for download from the manufacturer.

In any case, it looks like a Windows problem and not a Winuae or Amiga problem.