My Amiga 2000...

[schlubadub]

I was an avid Amiga user from the age of 14 (20 years ago now) until my early 20's. I started off with a second-hand Amiga 1000, and then upgraded to a second-hand Amiga 2000... before I finally switched to a PC through necessity. I still kept the Amiga 2000, but it has been in storage for a number of years.

Being a kid, and lacking the Internet as we know it, I cobbled together my knowledge of the Amiga platform as best as I could. At the time knowledge was only obtained by word of mouth, and I knew slightly more info than most of my friends - so what I'm trying to say is that my technical knowledge is somewhat limited, so please bear with me

Anyway, I'll cut to the chase... my Amiga 2000 has been stored in a variety of sheds for the past 10+ years and I've finally gotten around to setting it up again. With fingers crossed I powered it on and to my surprise it all started working. I grabbed a disk and even they still work, although I have yet to test them all. The only issue is that the harddrive is making a kind of ticking noise, so I've disconnected it in the meantime.

I've never really looked inside the Amiga so I thought now would be a good time to see what's inside, besides a huge amount of dust.

Contents:
* Amiga B2000-CR, Hayne/Fisher, A/W 312723 Rev 4.3
* A25000 2 MB RAM Zorro card
* Internal 3.5" Amiga floppy drive
* External 3.5" Amiga 1010 drive
* Western Digital 61-000222-00 8-bit ISA HD Controller - I have since found out this is a "MFM" harddrive controller. I had never even heard of MFM drives before as IDE has been around for most of my life dealing with computer hardware.
* 5.25" Microscience HH-825 20 MB MFM HD - this is the HD making a ticking noise... I am hopeful that I am able still to recover *something* from it.
* A2088 XT Bridgeboard - I used to boot into DOS and use rudimentary programs... the PC side is now pretty much useless.
* 5 1/4" floppy drive connected to the bridgeboard

Everything else looks stock... I did notice the battery had started to leak (definitely not as bad as some of the photos I've seen) and so I have now removed it and cleaned that part of the board. I also removed a huge amount of dust from the motherboard and from the power supply. It's looking quite good now.


My aim at the moment is to backup all of my disks... which I estimate to be around 700. I probably won't do all of them as I already have hundreds of downloaded disk images that I have been happily using with WinUAE to satisfy my Amiga cravings.

My issue now is how to make backups of my disks. I have been trying to use Amiga Explorer via a null-modem cable without success. No matter what I try or what combination of cables and adapters I use I can't get it to connect to my PC. I may have to build my own cable as it doesn't seem my standard commercial serial cables and null-modem adapters are cutting it. There is one last solution I can try that involves typing a program into AmigaBasic to start the Amiga side of things (instead of using Amiga Explorer to send it) and I just so happen to have my original Workbench 1.3 + extras disks (assuming they still work). It's a bit of a pain so this method is shelved at the moment.

So abandoning the null-modem cable idea I've seen that it is plausible to use an 8-bit ISA network card in conjuntion with the 2088 bridgeboard (and the potential issues). I just so happen to have a suitable network card - it's a "HE-205" card that has a jumper to make it NE2000 compatible. The main chip is "Winbond W89C904AXF". It has RJ45 and BNC connectors, so I can connect it to my existing network. I have learnt that I need to use Etherbridge or similar, but that is where I am stuck as I have no way of getting the files to my PC! :madashell:

I do have an old serial modem lying around - I could potentially dial into my ISP (if they'll let me, as I have ADSL2+ broadband) and download the file by FTP. The main issue with this is that I've completely forgotten how to dial modems on my Amiga and use all that PPP or SLIP nonsense even though I used to do it all the time :/ Ugh too much effort! :mad:

I know that I used to be able to do a lot of that stuff when I booted into my hard-drive (with a disk labelled "T-Disk Boot" ?!), but I suspect the MFM drive has failed and I'm not willing to try to boot it up without some method of getting all the data off the drive as quickly as possible (if I even can). I know that the HD was partitioned so that 10 MB was for the Amiga to use and 10 MB for the bridgeboard PC. I used to have to boot into the Amiga HD side to then launch into the PC side. I have a bunch of disks with Janus stuff if I really need them. Although I really couldn't care less about using the PC XT side - I am only keeping the bridgeboard in the hopes of getting a network card running on the Amiga side.

I could also potentially install a CD-ROM (connected to my 2088 bridgeboard I'm guessing?) but I feel that is probably opening yet another can of worms...


So basically I am not sure what direction I should be going to connect to my machine - maybe I should just bite the bullet and buy a null-modem cable made to connect between the Amiga and PC, even though there's no guarantee it's going to work :/ I would really prefer to get ethernet up and running as that's a bit more practical and faster than the serial crud.

If anyone can assist or point me in the right direction I'd appreciate it. Sorry for the long brain-dump first post... :laughing:

[ElPolloDiabl]

Ticking hard drive means it about to die. Back up anything and toss it.

[schlubadub]

Any idea how I can do that? It has PC and Amiga partitions on it. I'm really only interested in the Amiga partition. Getting data to / from my Amiga is my major issue atm :/

[scuzzb494]

I use Parnet to connect my PC with the Amiga. Not sure if thats what you are doing. You have to set the software up on the PC and the Amiga and use the suitable cable... which is I think what you have. I also have ZIP disk drives on my Amiga and PC and so with 100MB per disk it covers most of my Amiga software.

Good to hear the 2000 is up and running. Great machine and pretty bullet proof as you have discovered.

scuzz

[JimS]

Here's what I did...
I got an old Macintosh external SCSI hard drive. (a buck at the salvation army store). Hooked it up to my pc, which already had a scsi port, and formatted it as a PC hard drive. Took it over to the Amiga & mounted it under CrossDos. Then I used transdisk to make ADF files of all my floppies onto the hard disk. For good measure, I did a zip of my Amiga's HDs as well. When all that was done - no simple task - I took the HD back over to the pc where I had a CD burner....
These days it might make more sense to invest in a USB card for the Amiga and just use a flash drive.

[TomJ]

what kind of ticking noise a lot of old hard drives make noise. does everything run fiine or maybe seem a little slow because its old and thing ran louder back then. I still agree back up everything asap though.
 
if you don't like the parnet idea you can get a copy of amiga forever and a null modem cable or go to there website to check out the options get the http://www.amigaforever.com/tutorials/migration/

[TjLaZer]

If you have a running system the first thing I would get is another HD and make a backup of your Workbench.  Make two partitions, one for WB and one for Data.  Then I would boot off the new HD and ADF all your disks to the Data partition.  Once you are done, you can transfer them to the PC as recommended (format a drive in DOS and mount it, but that would be hard for a n00b) or you can sneakenet it and you can transfer one disk image at a time by first Zipping the ADF (making a zip file less than 720k) then copy the Zipped image to a 720k PC disk and thus making the PC able to read that disk!  This would take a long time though!  Or if you can get a null modem cable to the PC that is another option.  Another one is to get a Zip drive or such and mount a PC formatted zip disk and go that route.  Check Aminet for DOS drivers for a Zip drive!  Good luck!  You have some retro fun ahead of ya!!!

[Tenacious]

What are you ultimately going to do with your A2000?  If you are going to standardize it (find an inexpensive 2091, SCSI HD, SCSI CDwriter, SCSI ZIP drive, newer OS, etc), simply compress and move everything to the larger HD.  You can then find the best Amiga to PC transferr method at your leisure.  

On newer larger HDs, make lots of partitions.  Make some the size of CDs (700MB) for things like: Applications, MyFiles, Archives, CDimage (a place to organize data before writing CDs).  Make a handful of 100MB partitions for: SYS:, a backup of SYS:, an alternate SYS:, Internet Apps: (iBrowse and mail programs generate tons of small files).  You could also make a 32 MB MSdos partition.

If you like to control how install scripts behave, don't name any partition WORK:.

[schlubadub]

I use Parnet to connect my PC with the Amiga. Not sure if thats what you are doing. You have to set the software up on the PC and the Amiga and use the suitable cable... which is I think what you have. I also have ZIP disk drives on my Amiga and PC and so with 100MB per disk it covers most of my Amiga software.

Good to hear the 2000 is up and running. Great machine and pretty bullet proof as you have discovered.

I hadn't heard of Parnet before. It looks like it needs another custom cable so it's probably just as good/bad as the Amiga Explorer solution via null-modem cable. I have no idea why my standard cables aren't working so I'll need to track down a multimeter and go from there.

The ZIP drive is a good idea - I found a bunch of ZIP disks in my shed just the other day. There is supposed to be an external drive that goes with the disks but I don't remember if I gave it away years ago. I see more searching in my shed in the near future... :lol: The main issue is going to be getting drivers to my Amiga.

I feel like I am in a egg before the chicken situation - I need to connect to my Amiga to get drivers so that I can connect to my Amiga

[schlubadub]

Here's what I did...
I got an old Macintosh external SCSI hard drive. (a buck at the salvation army store). Hooked it up to my pc, which already had a scsi port, and formatted it as a PC hard drive. Took it over to the Amiga & mounted it under CrossDos.

I don't like idea SCSI mainly due to the scarcity and/or expense of the hardware. I have absolutely no SCSI stuff so I would have to buy, find or scavenge all the necessary bits - and that will involve finding out what I actually need and whether its even going to work.

However, I do have a pile of IDE drives ranging from 100MB to 13 GB that are just sitting around collecting dust...

CrossDos looks interesting, but it seems to be OS 2.1+. I only have WB 1.3.2. Actually that stirs up some memories of using a Kickstart 2 disk (softkick?) and then booting into WB 2... I have just scoured through all my disk boxes to no avail. I know I have it somewhere. Gah, I need to do more searching in my shed! :lol:

I need a solution that doesn't need extra software to be downloaded / copied over first. Once I can get data to / from the Amiga then I'm in business. I see there is a way with null-modem cables, but that isn't working so far.

I had a look at USB cards as you suggested (as that would be great) but I'm not sure that will even work with a stock 2000 running WB1.3

[schlubadub]

what kind of ticking noise a lot of old hard drives make noise. does everything run fiine or maybe seem a little slow because its old and thing ran louder back then. I still agree back up everything asap though.
 
if you don't like the parnet idea you can get a copy of amiga forever and a null modem cable or go to there website to check out the options get the http://www.amigaforever.com/tutorials/migration/

Maybe more of a metallic tinking sound that the normal reading noise of a HD. It's really loud and doesn't sound healthy. The MFM drive had heads that needed to be parked after use. I used to do it religiously on the PC side, but I don't think I ever did it on the Amiga side (if that was even a separate step?). I am not game to try to boot up with the HD in place until I have a working method to get everything off it, if I can at all.

I have been trying to use Amiga Explorer and the null-modem cable to no avail... I think the next step is to test the standard cables I have and possibly make a custom one if necessary.

[schlubadub]

If you have a running system the first thing I would get is another HD and make a backup of your Workbench.  Make two partitions, one for WB and one for Data.  Then I would boot off the new HD and ADF all your disks to the Data partition.  Once you are done, you can transfer them to the PC as recommended (format a drive in DOS and mount it, but that would be hard for a n00b) or you can sneakenet it and you can transfer one disk image at a time by first Zipping the ADF (making a zip file less than 720k) then copy the Zipped image to a 720k PC disk and thus making the PC able to read that disk!  This would take a long time though!  Or if you can get a null modem cable to the PC that is another option.  Another one is to get a Zip drive or such and mount a PC formatted zip disk and go that route.  Check Aminet for DOS drivers for a Zip drive!  Good luck!  You have some retro fun ahead of ya!!!

Another MFM drive? A quick look on ebay shows that I can only source them from the US for around $100 including shipping for a 20-40 MB drive... which is ridiculous. I would expect around $20 tops for a 20 year old drive!

I guess I can look down the path of getting an IDE controller and using one of my many IDE HD's. When you say 'transfer them to the PC' do you mean for the bridgeboard PC side I have in the Amiga or into any modern PC I have? How do you read Amiga partition info from Windows, or possibly maybe even Linux if I absolutely had to

Is CrossDos the only way to get data to/from PC-formatted 720k disks? I am looking at the null-modem solution at the moment.

If I can't get the null-modem cable to work I think my options are:
* Try to get ethernet working - tricky without any drivers
* Find local amiga users who can sort me out with either the right drivers or hardware.
* Look at getting an IDE card of some kind. I have seen the Buddha cards mentioned a fair bit?
* Is a catweazel card of any use to what I am trying to achieve?

I'll keep trying... hopefully before my attention span gives out :lol:

[schlubadub]

What are you ultimately going to do with your A2000?

Ultimately, I'm not sure. I love using the old hardware as it makes me feel nostalgic and it gives me an excuse to use my Amiga joysticks At the moment my focus is on preserving what I currently have.

If you are going to standardize it (find an inexpensive 2091, SCSI HD, SCSI CDwriter, SCSI ZIP drive, newer OS, etc), simply compress and move everything to the larger HD. You can then find the best Amiga to PC transferr method at your leisure.

I don't think I will go down the SCSI path - I would prefer an IDE HD. I was thinking I could also put an IDE DVD drive in there, but it's more to fill the gap where the 5 1/4" drive is, that for anything useful - I rarely have a need to use a DVD drive, and I have plenty of PC's and consoles for those times.

Hmmm I'm not sure if I would upgrade to the latest OS without a specific purpose in mind. I can't see myself using the Amiga as an everyday machine again, in much the same way as I can't with my Commodore 128 At the moment I'm just happy to use the programs that have always worked on it. Sure I can use WinUAE for those too, but it's not the same

On newer larger HDs, make lots of partitions. Make some the size of CDs (700MB) for things like: Applications, MyFiles, Archives, CDimage (a place to organize data before writing CDs). Make a handful of 100MB partitions for: SYS:, a backup of SYS:, an alternate SYS:, Internet Apps: (iBrowse and mail programs generate tons of small files). You could also make a 32 MB MSdos partition.

What is the purpose of having those small partitions, as opposed to just leaving it as one big filesystem? I gave up partitioning my drives in the PC world over 10 years ago as I was sick of having to shuffle files around and resize partitions...

If you like to control how install scripts behave, don't name any partition WORK:.

I'll make sure I'm more creative in the naming of my partitions and won't be using "WORK:". Work on an Amiga? Never! :laughing:

I've just found a few diskcopy utility disks that still work, so I at least have the option of booting the possibly defunct MFM harddrive and attempting to copy files to amiga floppy disks.

[CSixx]

If you already have Amiga Explorer and a null-modem cable, you can't be too far from getting it to work. It really is a good solution.

How far have you gotten? Did you use the setup feature to send the AE client to the amiga? Did that part work?

Have you set the packet size to 512 and set the baud rate low?  9600?
Also, what version of Windows are you using? XP works well with AE.

Maybe describe the problems you are having with AE.

[scuzzb494]

I hadn't heard of Parnet before. It looks like it needs another custom cable so it's probably just as good/bad as the Amiga Explorer solution via null-modem cable. I have no idea why my standard cables aren't working so I'll need to track down a multimeter and go from there.

The ZIP drive is a good idea - I found a bunch of ZIP disks in my shed just the other day. There is supposed to be an external drive that goes with the disks but I don't remember if I gave it away years ago. I see more searching in my shed in the near future... :lol: The main issue is going to be getting drivers to my Amiga.

I feel like I am in a egg before the chicken situation - I need to connect to my Amiga to get drivers so that I can connect to my Amiga

This site still exists...  

http://www.graner.net/parbench.htm

scuzz