Many many years have passed... it is good to be back

[Malakie]

Hi,

Just logged in for the first time.

I have been away from the Amiga for many years...  I used to work for Commodore.  After all that transpired, I needed to let it go for a while... just did not think it would be this many years!  LOL

I went from the US Navy to Commodore and Amiga (I was the main technical person out in the field based in Chicago at the time) to running an Amiga software and hardware development company to law enforcement.. hows that for a life change! :-D

Anyhow, I am now out of the military and law enforcement due to injury in the line of duty and have come back to computers.. and now for the first time in many years, my favorite system still, the Amiga.

It is amazing how it is like riding a bicycle.. A couple moments of trepidation trying to remember how to work it then suddenly it all clicks into place. :idea:  

I do have one question if anyone knows.. The two machines I never owned out of every system we produced was the Amiga 600 and Amiga 1200.  I own both a A1200 now and an A4000.  In fact I saved both of these systems from the junk pile so I am piecing things together to make them work.  I have no disks, no cables, no nothing so it has not been easy but I have managed to get the Amiga 1200 (thanks to WinUAE and the workbench .adf files I was able to tranfer to floppy to create system disks) running with a IDE hard drive..

My question is this.. now how can I hook a CD drive to this baby?  I know the IDE port accepts two devices but what needs to be done to have the system recognize the second drive as a cd drive.

Actually I have one more question ... how do I get the PCMCIA slot working??  It recognizes a card when I use the prep tool (using a compact flash memory card) but it will not format it or access it when I try.

Anyhow, it is good to be back... I look forward to getting up to speed on the Amiga community again and seeing what has happened out there.

Malakie

[jj]

welcome back

which version of AOS are you running?

to hook up a cd drive, you can just use your normal run of the mill two device ide cable.

you will need to move cd1 from storage to devs

i would recommend getting a powerflyer or scsi as inbuilt ide on a1200 is slow.

[Jose]

Welcome aboard. To get a CD rom working off the A1200 IDE port you're advised to get an adapter to make the port buffered as the A1200's isnt. Then it's just a matter of getting the right filesystem. I recomend CacheCDFS, available on Aminet. BTW, don't run the CD Rom's  power off the A1200 motherboard, you'll risk burning it.

José

[amigakit]

Welcome back!

[meega]

Welcome. There are some good and very knowledgeable people here.

You might find that some extra juice from a bigger power supply would be useful for the cd drive.

EDIT: see Jose above.

[Piru]

You can test the CD-ROM pretty easily with IDEFix.
You just need 2.5" <-> 3.5"-ide adapter (and preferably separate power for the drive, they tend to suck quite a bit amps).

To use the CF with PCMCIA:
disk/misc/cfd.lha

[Malakie]

Hi all,

Thanks for the replies!

I am currently running OS3.1 as I do not have 3.5 or 3.9.  Perhaps someday but not today! If anyone has the disks or CD and they want to donate them to a good cause (ME!),
please feel free to do so! :-D

I will try the CachCDFS system mentioned and see what transpires.  I already have the CD cabled to the IDE port second to the HD I have now working.

I did try just mounting the CD0: devs device but that does not do anything.  As for power, I am running both the hard drive and the CD drive on a separate power
supply unit.

BTW, where can I find an adapter to hook a PC keyboard to an Amiga 4000?  As mentioned in my first post, the other unit I saved from the junk pile was an
Amiga 4000.  I have been able to get it operational!  However there is no keyboard.  I have plenty of PC keyboards so I figure that is the way to go.

Thanks again...

Malakie

[Amiduffer]

Cool, a guy who actually worked at Commodore. Who were the most interesting people that you worked with there?

Take a look at www.amigakit.com for all the nifty stuff you can use to get that A4000 going. They have the adaptors plus other cool geek gear to make your Ami the envy of the neighborhood.  :-)

Welcome back and stick around.

[justthatgood]

As some of the people around here would say, "Nah, you don't need anything past 3.1, because all it is, is a bunch of fluff" Well too me OS 3.9 is nice.

As a more important note, thank you very much to your service to your country. Very few people will admit to that, but I admire it (as an ex-military brat myself).

[Malakie]

Hi again..

One last item.. I was not able to locate CacheCDFS on the aminet site as someone suggested... is there another location it can be obtained from?

Malakie

[rkauer]

Wellcome back to Directory Opus, oops, Amiga comunity.

In order to use a peecee kb, you must use this hack.

BTW: bookmark http://aminet.net in your browser, is the BEST file repository for Amiga on the .net. DIY hacks, programs, utilities, demos, music, wallpapers, etc. All for free. :-D

[Malakie]

Hi,

Thanks for the comments.  Serving my country was an honor although I do not at all agree with this governments politics.

Yep a real live ex-CBM person here.  As for the people I remember the most... Dave Haney and Gail Wellington are two off the top.  There were many others including many in the field offices like Fernando Bargioni etc.

I thank every for the help.  I have the A1200 machine up and running with an HD, CD and CF card/Microdrive setup.  So cool!  Now for the A4000 system!

I have also been running AmiKit on my PC.  Too bad that is not usable on the Amiga easily!  Nice setup for sure.

Well, back to my Amiga.. Need to see what I still have laying around in some boxes..  Hopefully some floppy disks.. so far, the 20 or so I have tried are all bad.. read write errors up the wazoo..  

Malakie

[Agafaster]

@Malakie,

Jose wrote:
Welcome aboard. To get a CD rom working off the A1200 IDE port you're advised to get an adapter to make the port buffered as the A1200's isnt. Then it's just a matter of getting the right filesystem. I recomend CacheCDFS, available on Aminet. BTW, don't run the CD Rom's  power off the A1200 motherboard, you'll risk burning it.

José

He's right you know - I had a 3.5" HDD and an external CDROM attached to my A1200's 2.5" IDE port via a two way adaptor cable, and fried the Julia Chip, and half the chip RAM ! luckily it was '97 so I could take it to a shop in Wolverhampton who still handled Amiga repairs. next thing I ordered IDEFix'97 (EIDE drivers for CDROM and a 4 device buffer board) from Power, as it happens.
that board was never quite right, but I never killed it again!

its not the power drain that kills em (my external IDE CDROM was self powered) but its power spikes and over current down the IDE port from big IDE devices that kill unprotected motherboards.

Amigakit.com can supply all you need !

[Malakie]

Agafaster wrote:
@Malakie,

Jose wrote:

its not the power drain that kills em (my external IDE CDROM was self powered) but its power spikes and over current down the IDE port from big IDE devices that kill unprotected motherboards.

Amigakit.com can supply all you need !

Yuppers..  Will have to do something about that but for now its direct connected via a straight adapter.

The one bummer is we Vets do not get much from our esteemed government when they retire us due to injuries... trying to live on VA benefits while under care is proving to be something you would not believe.  So that buffer IDE thing will have to wait for now... hopefully I will not blow something until then.

Malakie

[meega]

Malakie wrote:

BTW, where can I find an adapter to hook a PC keyboard to an Amiga 4000?  As mentioned in my first post, the other unit I saved from the junk pile was an
Amiga 4000.  I have been able to get it operational!  However there is no keyboard.  I have plenty of PC keyboards so I figure that is the way to go.

Thanks again...

Malakie

Where are you? I have an Amiga keyboard with PS/2 plug on the end of its lead. Don't know if that's what you want, and postage might be unreasonable - but it is very clean. I am sure there must be suitable genuine keyboards available from somewhere.