I screwed up and got a A1200 on EBay...

[Chain]

mbueler wrote:
Are you using CF Card with an PCMCIA-CF Adaptor
or an IDE-CF Adaptor on the A1200?

this is probably crucial, as you cannot boot from PCMCIA, or CC0 (forget cc0 anyway its for sram card)

[KatManDEW]

Wow! Great information!

I've had a A2000HD since they first came out, but I'm new to A1200's and CF cards.

It is a CF Card with an PCMCIA-CF Adaptor.

I was able to hold both mouse buttons and boot from DF1,  with the internal hard disk connected. If I try to format the hard disk or the CF card, I get the "Not a DOS disk" error after formatting. The hard disk and CF card apear on Workbench, but if I try to copy something to them I get an error that the disk is not validated.

I'll try some of this new info this evening.

Thanks very much for all the help. You folks here on amiga.org are great!

[KatManDEW]

It's hard to do anything, like mount devices, when booting from a floppy :boohoo:

I need to get the hard disk working. Is there supposed to be a power connector on the hard disk, or just a ribbon cable. Mine has two pairs of empty pins.

Here's a pic of my hard drive.

[motorollin]

No power cable necessary. It's powered from the motherboard through the IDE cable. The extra pins are for jumpers.

Have you tried using HDToolBox to start again from scratch? Perhaps reinstalling a new RDB then creating a small partition less than 2GB in size, then try formatting it.

--
moto

[KatManDEW]

I thought about HDToolBox, but I'm booting from a floppy, and it's not on my boot floppy. Where can I get HDToolBox if I boot from floppy? Can I get it off one of the OS 3.1 install disks?

[motorollin]

Yes, it's on the Workbench install floppy. I can't remember whether or not you can boot from that disk. If not, just boot from your Workbench disk then swap it for the Install disk and run HDToolBox.

--
moto

[taunusand]

The Install disk is bootable, you can run HDToolbox from it.

[KatManDEW]

taunusand wrote:
The Install disk is bootable, you can run HDToolbox from it.

That worked! The hard disk is 15 gig, and I tried to partition and format it, but I got the "Not a DOS disk" error. I figured I was hosed because of the 4 gg limit.

I remembered that I had an old laptop drive laying on a shelf, so I stuck it in there, ran HDToolBox on it, and got it installed and working.

My A1200 has the 3.0 Kickstart ROM, so I didn't figure I could run the 3.1 Installation, right? I don't have 3.0 installation disks, so I took am Amiga Forever 3.0 Workbench ADF, and wrote it to a floppy with my Amiga 2000. Then I booted with it on the A1200 and Xcopied the 3.0 WOrkbench floppy to the A1200 hard disk, and - PRESTO! I booted from hard disk! Whoo hoo!

I ran that port test utility, and I didn't understand what I was looking at. So I'm going to get FAT95 and that CF device and see what happens.

At least I know my HD controller isn't hosed. If I could the the CF card working, I could install Classic Workbench on the A1200. That would be sweet...

Edit: I checked the Amiga OS website, and it turned out my Kickstart ROM is good enough for OS 3.1, so I got 'er on the hard drive now.

Whoo hoo!

[KatManDEW]

I got FAT95 and the CF driver installed, and now I can read CF crads! Yee Haw!!!

Next thing I gotta do is get DOpus on there (should be much easier with the CF Card. And then see if I can get Classic WB on there. I've never installed Classic WB on a real Amiga. I had a devil of a time getting it installed in WinUAE last weekend...

[NovaCoder]

KatManDEW wrote:
I've never installed Classic WB on a real Amiga. I had a devil of a time getting it installed in WinUAE last weekend...

If you have trouble you could always try AmigaSys.

[weirdami]

I screwed up and got a A1200 on EBay...

What were you trying to get instead?

[Methuselas]

Sounds like he just wiped the drive......You may just want to re-install 3.1 just to be safe. That's just me, though.

[mbueler]

Going by that screenshot you only have 2mb of Ram
If you atleast get a 8mb Memory expansion Card,
AmigaSYS4AGA will work and most importent WhdLoad&iGame will have enought ram to play almost all games.
AmigaSYS is very well setup and all thats left to add is:
Your own WhdLoad Key & all the Kickrom files(for Whdload)
this way you wont need the real 3.1 roms installed either to play some games.
And the kgwhd Game packs there about 1.5gb and contain more than 2500 Classic Games.Imoho its the ultimate Amiga gaming setup and Whdload is the best piece of software
I ever spent $20 on to register.

[KatManDEW]

weirdami wrote:
What were you trying to get instead?

I was hoping that I could install the internal floppy that was supplied with it, and that I could use the hard drive that was supplied wiht it.

But no data and power cables for the floppy were supplied, and the hard drive is 15 gig, so I can't use it until I get OS 3.9 (which I ordered weeks ago)

I was lucky that I had an external floppy, and an old laptop hard drive that I could use. I was also lucky to have my trusty old A2000 connected to my PC with a null modem cable, for getting files from the net and copying them to floppy to use on the A1200, until I got the CF reader working. The null modem link between my A2000 and PC isn't too hatefully slow since I have a GVP 040 in my A2000, with a high speed serial port, so I can run it at 115,200bps.

With the help of the nice folks here on Amiga.org, my A1200 is up and running. I can't do much with her because she doesn't have much memory.

I've been looking, and I can't figure out how to expand the memory without getting an accelerator?

I will definately need to get the Indivision video card because the screen is so sooo cramped on the 1084 monitor.

AmigaSYS4AGA looks awesome. I'll have to read up on that. I already registered WHDLoad, so I'm good to go there.

[KatManDEW]

Is there any way to add memory to a A1200 without adding an accelerator card?

WHDLoad is about worthless with no more memory than I have on my A1200 :boohoo:

I had never seen any AGA graphice in person, and the only way I've been able to see some is to boot a game from floppy.

[Ruud]

KatManDEW wrote:
Is there any way to add memory to a A1200 without adding an accelerator card?

You can add a fast ram upgrade in the trapdoor slot but you'll only be able to have 4mb if you want to use the pcmcia slot at the same time.  One of my 1200's is set up that way.  You can add ram using the pcmcia slot but afaik it's slow and of course uses up the slot you're using for the compact flash reader.
A decent 030 accelerator really would be the best thing.