Amiga 600 -> PC link up...strange problems...?!?

[radiator]

Hi all,

First off, I'll apologise for my total n00bness.  I never owned an Amiga as a kid, and I've only just bought one.

Right, I picked up an A600 + 1Mb upgrade (kickstart v2.05 (37.350)), and also got a HDD for it (1.4Gb).

The first strange thing I noticed was that the HDD had WB3.1 installed, and after fitting the drive and turning on the Amiga (just to see what might happen) it actually booted up and appeared to run.  Is this right?  I was expecting some kind of error message telling me I had the wrong KS version (I thought that WB3.1 would only run on machines with KS3?)??

Anywho, I ended up formatting the drive as I didn't trust WB3.1 running with a KS2 ROM.

I then got hold of a Amiga -> PC kit, which consisted of a parallel cable, and the PC2AMIGA software.  The PC side of the software seems to run fine (and I've got everything setup correctly), but the Amiga software seems odd.

First off, there are 2 versions - one for KS2 and one for KS3.  I've tried running the KS2 version, but it doesn't seem to do anything (it reads from the disk, then just sits there doing nothing - no 'PCDISK' icon appears...I don't even get any error messages).  The KS3 version however sort of works...

Sometimes I just get error messages (something about not being able to receive packets), and other times I actually get the 'PCDISK' icon to appear, and can see my drives, but after trying to view the contents of the drive get the same packet error message.

Does anyone know exactly whats going on (ie, why could I run WB3.1 with kickstart2 ROM?  Why does the kickstart 2 version of PC2AMIGA not work, but the kickstart3 version does (sort of))

Do my programs think I've got KS3, when I havn't?!  Should I just bite the bullet and buy a KS3 ROM to see if it solves the problem?

Again, sorry if I'm being stupid.

If anyone has any idea what's happening, or how to make it work, I'd love to hear from you!

[blobrana]

 hi  radiator

Hum,
i don`t  know about your link problem but someone else here may know...

Anyway welcome aboard...

[IMHO , it perhaps would be better to upgrade your system to an (secondhand?) A1200 with 3.1 rather than buy new roms for the 600]

[DonnyEMU]

It sounds to me like the A600 was being "ram kicked" with the 3.x kickstart file then booted into OS 3.x off the hard drive. Commodore and later various other "Amiga" makers would make new operating system releases available for developer use that would read the new kickstart ROM into memory and write protect it, then reboot into the new OS.

A lot of Amiga software developers used this feature to test out new versions of the Amiga OS. The technique of how this is done changed over time (depending on what cpu and how much mmu function was in the machine).

Originally the Amiga 1000 didn't have a ROM based kickstart, it was loaded in via some firmware called the "writable control store" on the original A1000. Kickstarts got as big as 512K in size which took away extra memory with kickstart being loaded into and execute in RAM instead of rom, but the technique worked well and still does for software testing. Many users use it instead of installing a new ROM and opening their case.

The ROM upgrade became a big source of revenue to dealers and Commodore alike, so they nixed the idea of kickstart in RAM (and loading in Kickstart off a disk) because some of the computing press was worried about how stable the machine would look if they didn't have a rom versus an Atari ST for instance which needed much more in the way of rom upgrades that they never got...

You can still get software to kickstart an amiga from RAM on Aminet (Zkick Skick etc). You need to make sure you have legal access to the kickstart file itself and that maybe another issue..

[adz]

Right, I picked up an A600 + 1Mb upgrade (kickstart v2.05 (37.350)), and also got a HDD for it (1.4Gb).

The first strange thing I noticed was that the HDD had WB3.1 installed, and after fitting the drive and turning on the Amiga (just to see what might happen) it actually booted up and appeared to run. Is this right? I was expecting some kind of error message telling me I had the wrong KS version (I thought that WB3.1 would only run on machines with KS3?)??

Anywho, I ended up formatting the drive as I didn't trust WB3.1 running with a KS2 ROM.

WB3.x will work with KS2.x, I've done it via emulation and a real Amiga, although in order to install it, I had to use emulation and an Amiga formatted hdd, nonetheless it worked fine.

As for your main problem, sorry, I have no idea.

BTW...welcome to A.org :-D

[Varthall]

I also had this type of problems when I used Pc2Amiga some years ago. You will need to tweak the options to minimize these transfer errors. Try to raise the "retries before fail" value. I don't remember if there's a baud setting for parallel cable too, if so try setting it to a lower value.
Also, have you selected the correct cable in the settings (4- or 8-wires cable)? If your cable is the special 8-wire one you must be careful to plug the ends to the correct computers, one side is for the Amiga, the other for PC. I once have built one of these cables, but I couldn't manage to make it work, so I switched to a standard 4-wire laplink one.

The difference between the KS2 and KS3 versions should be explained in the manual, if you don't have it then download the program's archive from Aminet.

Varthall

[drHirudo]

Sometimes I just get error messages (something about not being able to receive packets), and other times I actually get the 'PCDISK' icon to appear, and can see my drives, but after trying to view the contents of the drive get the same packet error message.

Just press Retry. No data gets corrupted. But if it still insist - try tweaking with the settings on the both sides.

[radiator]

Thanks for all the help guys...

Right, after a bit of tweaking, I've managed to get the program working, and can see files on my PC's HDD.  The problem is I can't transfer them to my Amiga HDD.  I just keep getting packet errors (continuous) or the whole system crashes (the mouse point stops moving, the a software failure message flashes up, then the Amiga reboots).  This occurs whenever I try to drag-and-drop a file from my PC HDD to my Amiga HDD.

Now, when I check the PC2Amiga floppy disk (Amiga formatted) that came with the package, there are only 6 files displayed - the 2 versions of the software, an installer, "EasyTransfer" (for transfering files, but can't get it to work - I think it's serial only), "CreateADF" (for creating ADF files) and "Filer" a file manager type program - doesn't work though (software failure)).
The version of PC2Amiga I've downloaded though comes with a lot more files (manuals etc).
The problem is, I don't know how to read PC disk on an Amiga (when WB3.1 was installed on the HDD, it would read PC disks fine.  But as I've wiped the HDD, my only copy of WB is version 2.05, and I can't work out how to do it)...!?

Also, the Amiga software disk is bootable, but if I try and boot using my WB2.05 disk, swap disks, and then try and run the PC2amiga software, it doesn't work (I think the error is something along the lines of "Can't open IconX" (or something!?))

Gonna keep trying, fiddling, pulling my hair out, and see what happens...

(oh, and BTW, the cable is a standard LapLink one, and no, I don't want to upgrade to an A1200 (also just bought a motorbike so I'm a bit skint ATM!))

[radiator]

Right, I've tried the software on 3 different PC's now, so it's got to be the Amiga side of things thats screwing up...

Anywho, I've just bought KS3.1 and WB3.1...hopefully that'll fix the problems...