English Amiga Board - View Single Post - Please test this possibly-bootable CD image with your SCSI controller

mark_k · 16 February 2013, 11:06

Hopefully I'll write some more-detailed instructions shortly. In the mean time you could try modifying the 32MB CD image I uploaded. The easiest way is with WinUAE, but it should also be possible with a real Amiga too.

Add the image file as a hard drive in WinUAE, making sure to enable RDB mode and set the block size to 2048. You'll probably want to un-check the Bootable option so as not to boot from it. Then boot your emulated system and the ~32MB FFS partition should show up on Workbench. Add whatever files you want and edit the startup-sequence. After you've finished exit WinUAE and burn the now-modified image file to a CD.

One other change you might want to do, is to use HDToolBox to set the partition's boot priority higher. Otherwise, depending on the boot priorities of your Amiga's hard disk partitions, you may need to use the boot menu to manually choose the CD each time you boot.

You can test booting the modified image file in WinUAE before burning it to disc, to save wasting a disc if you made a mistake. Make sure you un-check the Read/write option to make it read-only. That will catch any accidental writes to the disk, which obviously won't work when booting from CD.

You can also test it in an emulated CD drive if you enable WinUAE's A2091 or A3000 SCSI emulation. Click Add SCSI/IDE CD Drive and select the image file. (Note: that feature is in the latest WinUAE beta version, 2.6.0b7 at the time of writing.)

I can also create and upload some larger empty bootable CD images, which would allow more files to be put on them.

The test image I uploaded has FastFileSystem 40.1 in the RDB. That's the last version of FFS which is compatible with Kickstart 1.3. It might be possible to use PFS3 (the version on Aminet that supports Kickstart 1.3) instead of FFS but I haven't tried that yet.

16 February 2013, 11:06	#18
mark_k Registered User Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Posts: 3,343	Hopefully I'll write some more-detailed instructions shortly. In the mean time you could try modifying the 32MB CD image I uploaded. The easiest way is with WinUAE, but it should also be possible with a real Amiga too. Add the image file as a hard drive in WinUAE, making sure to enable RDB mode and set the block size to 2048. You'll probably want to un-check the Bootable option so as not to boot from it. Then boot your emulated system and the ~32MB FFS partition should show up on Workbench. Add whatever files you want and edit the startup-sequence. After you've finished exit WinUAE and burn the now-modified image file to a CD. One other change you might want to do, is to use HDToolBox to set the partition's boot priority higher. Otherwise, depending on the boot priorities of your Amiga's hard disk partitions, you may need to use the boot menu to manually choose the CD each time you boot. You can test booting the modified image file in WinUAE before burning it to disc, to save wasting a disc if you made a mistake. Make sure you un-check the Read/write option to make it read-only. That will catch any accidental writes to the disk, which obviously won't work when booting from CD. You can also test it in an emulated CD drive if you enable WinUAE's A2091 or A3000 SCSI emulation. Click Add SCSI/IDE CD Drive and select the image file. (Note: that feature is in the latest WinUAE beta version, 2.6.0b7 at the time of writing.) I can also create and upload some larger empty bootable CD images, which would allow more files to be put on them. The test image I uploaded has FastFileSystem 40.1 in the RDB. That's the last version of FFS which is compatible with Kickstart 1.3. It might be possible to use PFS3 (the version on Aminet that supports Kickstart 1.3) instead of FFS but I haven't tried that yet.