Odd request: a raw image of a real (RDB) Amiga hard drive
 

I'm working on my Amiga file system browser software https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3C...ew?usp=sharing

While I have ADF and HDF files working fine, I want to add real Amiga hard drive support. To do this I need someone to dd image a real hard drive for me, preferably with at least a couple of partitions.

Thanks :)

WinUAE supports lots of different hard drive controllers, so you could (assuming you want to spend lots of time and get really bored) use the respective controllers' install/format/partitioning software to create your own image files.

The advantage of that is, there are many obscure/rare controllers. And transferring images from a real Amiga could be tricky for many people.

I intend to try using UAE to set up a real hard disk, I just wondered if anyone had a raw image ready made.

Ehm...?
Are yo sure you want what you say? When I transfered my data I just took my old drives, hooked them up to a scsi controller, and dd dumped them to files. The files were simply given hdf extensions and WinUAE accepted them just like that.
Shouldn't a drive created with WinUAE be the same?

My app can already read HDF files, but they have no RDB or partitions, so I need files with these things to test my code.

WinUAE has the original AmigaOS hard drive software so probably used that to read your disk images :)

I thought dd gave an image of a device, not a disk. So the image would contain the RDB.

And WinUAE can work with and create RDB images - and can even replicate and emulate bad sectors!

Yes, that's why I want a dd image :)

I have ADF images and I have HDF images (which are basically just large floppy disks).

What I need now is a raw disk image with the RDB, so I can test my ADF browsing app (linked to in the original post) with it. Once I can prove that works, I will then allow raw device access so it can read a real Amiga disk plugged into a Mac.

There are two kinds of HDF files: the traditional HDF is a large floppy disk and a HDF in RDB mode is a real harddrive which contains a RDB and possbily more than one partition.

Just click on "RDB mode" in WinUAE to get the latter one. Then you can initialise and partition it with HDToolbox.

You can also make a big file with the letters RDSK in the first four bytes, then WinUAE will automatically switch into RDB mode.

If you do the same with DRKS in the first four bytes you'll get a byte-swapped image as it appears with some Amiga IDE controllers.

For your program be aware that the RDB does not need to be in the very first sector of the harddrive but it can be located in any of the first 16 sectors.

Thanks Thomas! I will attempt to make an RDB disk image this way!

I hope I don't have to support byte swapped images... I would have to rewrite my code to cope with little endian data :-|

Check the RDB documentation.

In the course of testing various WinUAE controller emulation I created some HDFs.

Various Comspec SA1000 HDFs in this thread.
Some A2090A HDFs (The A2090 software doesn't follow the RDB spec, since the spec didn't exist when it was introduced. So you might want to ignore that.)
A2091/A590 HDF with A-Max (HDF created using HDToolBox)
Masoboshi MasterCard
On real hardware an image file created from an IDE drive may need to be byte-swapped.
Golem HD3000 (HDF created using HDToolBox not the original Golem software)

There may be others if you search for them.

Some controllers (AdIDE probably, don't know of others) scramble the data lines. That could mean that an image file created from a real Amiga-with-AdIDE's IDE hard drive (reading it connected to a PC) is scrambled as compared to an HDF you create in WinUAE/emulation.

AdIDE has a "CPRM" sector at the start of the drive, some info here.
AdIDE HDF with A-Max. ICD prep program creates non-compatible RDB.

Finally, I don't remember whether I uploaded an HDF, but GVP Series I with the original V1.0 ROM is "interesting" because it's almost RDB-compliant but different enough to not be bootable on any other controller, and vice versa.

I just want to thank you again! Using WinUAE, I built a 128meg HD image wih two partitions (8meg Workbench, 119 meg Work), it has a proper RDB so I can now add support for real Amiga hard drives!