Reading AmigaDOS-formatted disks ?

[GreatLor]

Hey I am new in here and I have a question;
Is there any program for pc that reads AmigaDOS formatted disks ? I'm VERY desperate for a possible such proggy, I have an Amiga 500 at home (and I DONT have a PC at home, so messydos or crossdos is useless - unless someone can post them/it to me, PHYSICALLY that is) and want some of my old games/demos/proggs back, please please please tell me there is a possibility !

Thanx in advance !  :-)

[jj]

unfortunatley no, due to a bug or whatever in the firmware of pc floppy drive controllers you cant read amiga disks on a pee cee.  You would need to buy extra hardware.One such solution i believe is the catweasel.

[GreatLor]

uhhh, I suppose the only possibility then is to have messy-/cross-DOS then right ? jut wonder how on earth I can get one of them !  :-(

[Piru]

http://www.amigaforever.com/kb/3-118.html

This is the easiest and far cheapest solution, if you really must read floppies:
Disk2FDI

@JJ

It's not a bug, but a feature. The PC floppy controller requires gaps after each sector on track, whereas amiga uses only one gap per track (all sectors are written in one go). PC controller is unable to read continuous track without the gaps.

Disk2FDI requires a 2nd fdd being connected for the reading to work.

[jj]

allright then not bug, just crap design

[GreatLor]

Yes, piru I have read one of those sites you linked me, but the problem is that I dont have a PC at home, so if the PC absoulutely cannot read amiga-disks then all my hopes are to be relied on the CrossDOS or something, oh my Kickstart is 1.3, so I wonder if any CrossDOS version works with that ?

[Piru]

@GreatLor

You have a problem then.

The only way to get this thing going is that someone sends you required tools on a amiga floppy.

AFAIK CrossDOS requires Kickstart 2.0+, but XFS should work with 1.x. Remember that you need someone to set up a bootable floppy with what you can read PC floppies and write ADF images back to amiga disks, and ship copy of floppy to you.

AFAIK that is the only way, if you don't have 2nd computer at home.

[Jope]

The older versions of CrossDOS work with 1.x too.

[Homer]

Maybe one of our local ppl could help you directly ? Which side of the planet are you on and what sort of beer do you have there ?  :pint:

[Noster]

Hi

@Piru

> AFAIK CrossDOS requires Kickstart 2.0+...

No, I own a CrossDos version (CrossDos+ Version 5.0) that do work with Kickstart 1.3, I have used it often with my A1000 back that days -- the Amiga drive was able to read several MSDOS-disks that were too bad for the PC to be read :-)

@GreatLor

Do you own a modem and terminal software for the Amiga ? Any modem will do it even an old 2400 baud modem. In that case you may be able to get the required files via the phone-line.

Noster

[Thomas]

The CrossDOS version which comes with WB 2.1 or better works on Kick 1.3 either. The only difficulty is that these floppies are formatted with FFS which cannot be read on Kick 1.3. So you first have to use a Kick 2.0 Amiga to read the disks and copy the required files to OFS floppies so Kick 1.3 can read them.

Bye,
Thomas

[GreatLor]

Piru wrote:
Remember that you need someone to set up a bootable floppy with what you can read PC floppies and write ADF images back to amiga disks, and ship copy of floppy to you.

Uhh, I would appreciate further elaboration, I got a little confused, by "floppy" you mean "disk" right ?

Homer wrote:
Maybe one of our local ppl could help you directly ? Which side of the planet are you on and what sort of beer do you have there ?  :pint:

I live in Gothenburg, Sweden !
Oh there all kinds of bear here, however I dont consume much due to terrible headicks  :-)

Noster wrote:

@GreatLor

Do you own a modem and terminal software for the Amiga ? Any modem will do it even an old 2400 baud modem. In that case you may be able to get the required files via the phone-line.

Noster

Unfortunately not, yeah, I can imagine that this would be a nice option too !

Thomas wrote:

The CrossDOS version which comes with WB 2.1 or better works on Kick 1.3 either. The only difficulty is that these floppies are formatted with FFS which cannot be read on Kick 1.3. So you first have to use a Kick 2.0 Amiga to read the disks and copy the required files to OFS floppies so Kick 1.3 can read them.

Bye,
Thomas

 :-?

 :-D

Seriously, that was a little braintwisting, hehe !

[Thomas]

Uhh, I would appreciate further elaboration, I got a little confused, by "floppy" you mean "disk" right ?

The correct term for the medium is "floppy disk" and the term for the machine is "floppy disk drive". "Floppy" usually refers to the medium but sometimes also refers to the drive, you have to look at the context. "Disk" can also refer to a CD or a ZIP or JAZ medium. Again you have to see the context in order to decide if a *floppy* disk is meant.

Bye,
Thomas

[GreatLor]

I want to let you know that I have a progg called "Dos2Dos" with which I formatted some disks in ms-dos format, I also have cross-dos, first time I tested it, it didnt seem to work properly, but now obviously it does, anyway I copies an amiga text-file to one of those disks, and now I'm sitting in front of a pc, and obviously it works, so now comes the question: when I copy lha files to the disks (I have the LHA decruncher) and then at home pack the files up, how do I then copy the content to a disk, not as a file but just copy the file as if it was a disk, cos as you know most amiga-games arent dos-readable, so can you help me ?

*Edit*

Oh and hey, is the "zip"-format the same format as "lha" ? I think I read somewhere that it was the same thing !

[that_punk_guy]

You can still write a non-dos floppy, with one of the various command line utilities that are available on the net (Aminet's a good place to look). It doesn't matter that AmigaDOS doesn't  the disk because the disk-writing utility does all the necessary work.

Edit: No, zip and lha are different formats. Although they do a similar job, you can't perform actions on zip files with lha or vice versa.