Adding >4G support to OS3.1

[stefcep2]

I want to install OS 3.1 on an A1200 with a 20g hard drive.  Is there a step-by-step guide on how to do this?  I have no CDROM connected to the A1200

[marcfrick2112]

stefcep2:

How about giving the full specs. of your A1200? Without a CDROM, that rules out OS3.5 or 3.9 (at least, easily) That leaves NSDPatch, or SFS (maybe someone can verify) I used NSDPatch in 3.1 w/ 8.5 GB HDD for a couple of years, but OS3.5 or 3.9 is definitely easier, and more practical.

[stefcep2]

Yep thats OK I specifically do not want OS3.5 or 3.9 as i want a truly classic amiga and that to me means MagicWB, Magic menu, 8-colour speed, no doulble reset on boot and software that runs on AGA and video modes.  The A1200 has an Apollo 68040@40 MHz with 32 Meg fast ram.  What is NSDPatch? Where do I get it? How do i set it up?

[marcfrick2112]

Yep thats OK I specifically do not want OS3.5 or 3.9 as i want a truly classic amiga and that to me means MagicWB, Magic menu, 8-colour speed, no doulble reset on boot and software that runs on AGA and video modes. The A1200 has an Apollo 68040 @ 40 MHz with 32 Meg fast ram. What is NSDPatch? Where do I get it? How do i set it up?

Yuck....a lot to answer.... what do you define as 'classic Amiga' ? Allow me a little venting here, if you feel that OS3.5 and above are not 'classic', than how is a 20GB hard drive 'classic' ?  You will need to bring your Amiga up-to-date, one way or another to use this drive, 3.5 and above are just the easiest ways to do it, IMHO, even with the double-reboot (I have a P5 1260 @ 50Mhz, so I have even longer booting..

OK, NSDPatch stands for New Style Device, it's a hack to allow HDD's >4GB to be recognized. You can DL from Aminet. BUT, it's not for everyone.... it needs some setup (check the readme file from Aminet..Link
Also, it's not perfect.... A friend made a special boot floppy that has NSDPatch on it, in the event of a severe hard drive problem, (checksum error, etc) without this disk any partitions over the ~4GB limit don't show up, AT ALL....so any vital utils., put 'em on partitions below 4GB....
Second, you know about keeping your workbench partition below the 2GB area, right? Also, once you have a working hard drive greater than 4GB, you can no longer use most 'disk-salvage' or 'disk-optimizer' programs...

If needed I can post the SS from my old boot floppy, you can then modify it for your HD if needed........ :-P

[stefcep2]

marcfrick2112 wrote:

Yuck....a lot to answer.... what do you define as 'classic Amiga' ? Allow me a little venting here, if you feel that OS3.5 and above are not 'classic', than how is a 20GB hard drive 'classic' ?

 

The 20 GB hard drive is the smallest 2.5" drive I can get for $5.  A 4 GB would be more than enough but I can't find any.

What is the Classic Amiga? Interesting question, could be a thread on its own really.   For me, Classic Amiga has always been about look and feel NOT whether its 68k or PPC or x86 via emulation.  Anyway for me the Amiga classic look and feel is OS3.1 with MagicWB, MagicMenu MUI and a dockbar running.  Its fast on standard Amiga graphics chipsets, it boots fast, its clean, its uncluttered.  The icons are simple enough to let you immediately recognize what they represent, rather than being just place on the screen to click and requiring you to look at the icon name underneath: this is a vital point that seems to have been forgotten in the design of UI's.  Also I intend to use DPAINT, Brilliance and Scala mainly, all AGA software running on a 1084 but maybe NEC 3D if i get it repaired.  I just love the speed, simplicty and elegance of such software-the limit is my talent not the hardware or software.  Its interesting I think even in the PC world people are starting to appreciate simplicity: have you seen the eePCe or whatever they're calling it from asus with its cut-down Linux, built in Office suite, Internet suite  all accessible form a a custom simplified UI?

BTW I have OS3.9 on a A4000 68060 with CV64 graphics card.  It takes longer to boot than my A1200 and the glowicons take longer to draw on screen.  The additional colours and icon artwork just add to the clutter of the user-interface.  Its interesting: I have installed ClassicWB in all of its variations, Amigasys, and the big daddy Amikit: distracting 24-bit backdrops, start menus, task bars, png icons, bit-mapped window borders, complex animated file requesters is NOT what a classic Amiga means to me because whilst a screen-grab might look pretty, the essence of what the GUI is meant to be (a simple, fast responsive way to issue commands to the computer) is lost.  Just my two cents worth..

Second, you know about keeping your workbench partition below the 2GB area, right? Also, once you have a working hard drive greater than 4GB, you can no longer use most 'disk-salvage' or 'disk-optimizer' programs...

If needed I can post the SS from my old boot floppy, you can then modify it for your HD if needed........
 

That would be much appreciated

[matthey]

I like simple, fast, and responsive with my Amiga too. I think that is a big part of what makes the Amiga special. My Amiga is more responsive and doesn't slow down at times and over time like the 3GHz P4 XP machines I am forced to use all the time. That said, I use a 4000T, Cyberstorm MK3 '060, Mediator with Voodoo4, SFS and AmigaOS3.9 installed. This setup will make the standard glow icons in AmigaOS3.9 in 16 bit (~65k colors) *MUCH* faster than your AGA in 8 colors with FastFileSystem. There is no wait as the windows and icons appear with the biggest difference being SFS (and no CPU hungry IDE). I highly recommend SFS by the way if nothing else. Here's the link...

http://strohmayer.org/

SFS of course supports >4GB hard drives that you need. Be sure to backup any important data from time to time as there is not many recovery programs available but they are rarely if ever needed.

P.S.
I purchased an E-Flash4000 (flash ROM) to get rid of the double reboot of AmigaOS 3.9, speed up the bootup, and get rid of many of the patches on top of the AmigaOS. Also MagicMenu and MagicWB will work fine with AmigaOS 3.9. It's good to keep an open mind and try new things with the Amiga. You might just be pleasantly surprised sometimes ;-).
 

[SKAN]

just use IDEfix and SFS and you're done!

[rkauer]

 If you want to travel secure seas, use the TD64 patch, not the NSD patch.

 It works marvellously with WB3.0/3.1. SFS will do the job on the partitions over the 4Gb border.

[Thomas]

If you want to travel secure seas, use the TD64 patch

Where did you get this from ? I never heard of such.

There is a td64patch for OS 4.0, but it only works on top of NSD, not instead of it.


Note that neither NSDPatch nor "TD64 patch" (if it is similar to NSDPatch) give you access to the full 20 GB. You only gain another 3.8 GB giving you access to the first 7.8 GB of the drive.

You need a real replacement for scsi.device which uses LBA addressing on the hardware side and offers 64 bit commands on the file system side. IDEfix97 is one possibility, scsi.device V43 or OS3.5+ another.

In addition to that you *also* need a file system which supports 64 bit commands. SFS, PFS and FFS V43+ are possible file systems. Note that PFS only supports TD64 while FFS only supports NSD. SFS supports both.

Bye,
Thomas

[stefcep2]

matthey wrote:
 This setup will make the standard glow icons in AmigaOS3.9 in 16 bit (~65k colors) *MUCH* faster than your AGA in 8 colors with FastFileSystem. There is no wait as the windows and icons appear with the biggest difference being SFS (and no CPU hungry IDE).

 

I agree glowicons is fast on a system with RTG.  BUT IMHO its not worth putting it on a native display system.  PNG icons slow down ANY 68k system, RTG or not.  Has anyone installed OS3.9 using a MagicWB icon system?

I'll give sfs a go

[stefcep2]

matthey wrote:
My Amiga is more responsive and doesn't slow down at times and over time like the 3GHz P4 XP machines I am forced to use all the time. T
 

Just as an aside, i found that by using Advanced uninstaller pro for XP to remove "debris" and clean up registry, and defragmenting monthly (when you do this repeat a couple of times even though windows says the defragementing is complete and the drive doesn't need to be defragmented).  It made a huge speed improvement to me.

[Darrin]

marcfrick2112 wrote:

Second, you know about keeping your workbench partition below the 2GB area, right?

Errr... I don't.  Why should you do that?  I use large hard drives on my A1200, A2000 and A3000 running OS3.9 and typically divide them into 2 partitions:  DH0 and DH1 where DH0 is my system and wjork area and DH1 is used to just back up the DH0 partition from time to time.

[gdanko]

stefcep2 wrote:
I want to install OS 3.1 on an A1200 with a 20g hard drive.  Is there a step-by-step guide on how to do this?  I have no CDROM connected to the A1200

Use smart filesystem

[matthey]

I think all that is needed to get MagicWB icons to display correctly under AmigaOS 3.9 is to select "Set MagicWB Colors" in SYS:Prefs/Workbench. TweakWB has a very easy to use drag and drop MagicWB and newicon icon converter too.

I don't use any PNG icons. I convert all PNG icons to glow icons.

[lionstorm]

matthey wrote:
I think all that is needed to get MagicWB icons to display correctly under AmigaOS 3.9 is to select "Set MagicWB Colors" in SYS:Prefs/Workbench. TweakWB has a very easy to use drag and drop MagicWB and newicon icon converter too.

I don't use any PNG icons. I convert all PNG icons to glow icons.

and how do you do that ?