Mounting ADF's

[Arnie]

Inspired by a script for mounting ADF's from Thomas I came up with an Idea to be able to mount and unmount adf's.

Enjoy....

edit: Forgot to mention that it requires a 020 cpu or better.

MountADFv3 is the latest

Drives now remain mounted with the ability to eject the adf.

Empty drives are scanned to insert the next adf.

User selected path to adf files on first startp.

Up to nine drives (subject to available memory) can be mounted.

[Arnie]

Here's one for use with 68000 cpu's

EDIT: New archive uploaded, please download again.

[Peter]

So, on an Amiga I can use this to just view the contents of an ADF rather than having to write it to a floppy - it's that's correct it's great - thanks for sharing Arnie!

This is really useful to me.

[Retrofan]

This must be a REALLY useful program. I think you should talk with Thomas and upload it to Aminet (and/or his web), but perhaps you should improve where it searchs for adf's files.

[Amiga1992]

Any file device can mount an ADF. I use XFS. You can mount as many ADFs as device names you want to make up in a mountlist (as is what this script does). It's not a "program" per se.

By the way, the A500 verison will not work as the mountlist has not been changed and is still mounting the devices using "diskimage.device" instead of "filedisk.device"

[Arnie]

Originally Posted by Peter

So, on an Amiga I can use this to just view the contents of an ADF rather than having to write it to a floppy - it's that's correct it's great - thanks for sharing Arnie!

This is really useful to me.

Thomas wrote the original to mount the WB disk for Installing to a HD. I added the rest to enable mounting/unmounting any ADF (DOS).

Originally Posted by Retrofan

This must be a REALLY useful program. I think you should talk with Thomas and upload it to Aminet (and/or his web), but perhaps you should improve where it searchs for adf's files.

What have you in mind?

Originally Posted by Akira

Any file device can mount an ADF. I use XFS. You can mount as many ADFs as device names you want to make up in a mountlist (as is what this script does). It's not a "program" per se.

If XFS works for you

By the way, the A500 verison will not work as the mountlist has not been changed and is still mounting the devices using "diskimage.device" instead of "filedisk.device"

It does work. The mountlist is not used to mount devices.

If you are using WB2 or WB2.5, you will need requestfile from aminet.

I hadn't thought about requestchoice. Is there an alternative anywhere?

[Amiga1992]

The mountlist is used to mount the devices. It's the description of each device that is contained within. In your case, it's called "drivelist" and the definitions contained within call for "diskimage.device" and hence will only work if you have diskimage.device, which isn't included in the package (filedisk.device is included instead)

No matter how you call it, doens't need to be caleld "mountlist" to be a mountlist. You are creating a mountlist in ENV called "device" and that is what you mount. As it is, unless you have diskimage.device, this doesn't work.

[Arnie]

Originally Posted by Akira

The mountlist is used to mount the devices. It's the description of each device that is contained within. In your case, it's called "drivelist" and the definitions contained within call for "diskimage.device" and hence will only work if you have diskimage.device, which isn't included in the package (filedisk.device is included instead)

No matter how you call it, doens't need to be caleld "mountlist" to be a mountlist. You are creating a mountlist in ENV called "device" and that is what you mount. As it is, unless you have diskimage.device, this doesn't work.

You've got the wrong end of the stick, My mountlist is not used to mount devices. If you even bother to try the program, mount a ADF and use SysInfo, you will see that ADF0: uses filedisk. Instead , as always, you are too quick to dismiss something.

Obviously this "program" is crap and you should steer well clear of it.

[Amiga1992]

I tried it and couldn't get it to work. I never said that any of this is crap, I said that I thought it didn't work, because I looked inside the script, which USES the "drivelist" file you included, a file which has references to diskimage.device.

Alternatively, the script also calls for "RequestChoice" and "Requestfile", neither of which are found in the archive or in my Amiga 600 system

Now, if you want to be a jerk calling me things I do not deserve, so be it. It's full of jerks in the Internet. But your script doesn't work.

[Arnie]

The reason it dose not work is because anything below WB2.1 does not include RequestChoice or Requestfile and the C:mount does not work with Isomount.

I'll upload an updated archive with RequestFile & RequestChoice found on Aminet. I'm looking for a replacement C:Mount.

I apologise if you thought I was calling you things but, poking around the script and proclaiming it's the "mountlist" without checking the facts is annoying. The fact is that the script does work but not on WB2.05 or lower at the moment. I'll work on it some more but, as it stands, it works on WB2.1 and above.

[Retrofan]

I want to know what Thomas thinks about this. I'm sure he's got some ideas to make it better. He just made it very fast to install WB using adfs for a guy with problems with his floppy drive, but a program to avoid using floppys is a great idea.

[prowler]

Something like this would be ideal for mounting/unmounting DiskSpare ADF images on the fly.

I'll see if I can come up with something similar based on work I did recently to unpack DiskSqueezed DiskSpare disk images without using a floppy disk drive.

[thomas]

Well, knowing that it is not possible to really unmount a DOS device and that using assign dismount and then mounting the same device again is just a big waste of memory, I would put ADF0 etc. into Devs/DosDrivers and run DiskImageCtrl (or DiskImageGUI if you use the newer V52 diskimage.device) from WBStartup and forget the script completely.

You can remove the ADF from the virtual drive like you remove a floppy disk from a real drive. You don't need to unmount the virtual drive like you don't disconnect the real drive every time, either.

The difference between the script and using DiskImageCtrl directly is that with DiskImageCtrl you first select a drive and then select an ADF which you insert into this specific drive. With the script you only select an ADF and the script then inserts it into any drive it finds.

I could imagine a combination of both: make a "mount" script which lets you select an ADF and insert it into an empty drive or mount a new drive if none is empty. And an "eject" script which lets you choose from a list of all inserted ADFs the one which you want to remove. I don't like the "unmount" part for the reason mentioned above.

Probably a more "real" programming language is needed for the eject part (ARexx for example). It needs to extract the ADF file names from the list which DiskImageCtrl outputs.

One should be able to run the mount script as default tool for ADF files so that you can mount them by double click. And unmount them if you double click again... just brainstorming ;-)

[Retrofan]

I like that idea, with a "Mount" (or Insert) and "Eject". Easy and useful

[Arnie]

@Thomas

The main reason that I made this script was to combine mount/unmount scripts into one easy to use script that tries to be as user friendly as possible for new users.

If I could write in ARexx then that is the path I would have taken.

A default tool for ADF's would be a great idea.

Anyway, I'm by no means an Amiga programmer and this script is meant as an easy option to mount/unmount adf's.

@Prowler

A DSQ/Diskspare mounter would be great.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Arnie

@Prowler

A DSQ/Diskspare mounter would be great.

What I have in mind won't mount DiskSqueeze archives; only DiskSpare-formatted ADF images with 12 sectors per track (983,040 bytes).

There were some Amiga User International and other coverdisks formatted in this way, and disk images of these have been uploaded to the EAB File Server as DiskSpare-formatted ADF images.

Mounting those images is what I was talking about.

DiskSqueeze archives of both standard- and DiskSpare-formatted disk images can be extracted to ADF using Toni Wilen's UAEUNP 0.8 utility - available from the WinUAE downloads page.

[Arnie]

I have used Diskspare in the past. As far as I can remember there are 2 different sizes of disk, 960kb and 984kb, depending on the version of diskpsare you use.

I would imagine you could mount DS0: and then Insert the image the same as ADf's, or is that being too naive?

I've tried DSQ's but never quite got to grips with the GUI.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Arnie

I have used Diskspare in the past. As far as I can remember there are 2 different sizes of disk, 960kb and 984kb, depending on the version of diskpsare you use.

I have only seen the 960K size with 12 sectors per track instead of 11 (hence DiskSpare). The only images I have seen in the 984K size turned out to be padded with 24K of zeroes at the end!

Originally Posted by Arnie

I would imagine you could mount DS0: and then Insert the image the same as ADf's, or is that being too naive?

Yes, you can use diskspare.device to mount a real floppy drive in your Amiga, and later versions of WinUAE support mounting DiskSpare-formatted ADFs, but I used FMSDisk.device to mount a file as DS0: using an old version of WinUAE which doesn't support Diskspare-formatted ADFs directly because I didn't want to use floppy disks. It is this technique which I am thinking about using to mount image files in a real machine without using floppy disks, but tailored to use scripts in a similar way to your ADF mounter/unmounter.

Originally Posted by Arnie

I've tried DSQ's but never quite got to grips with the GUI.

It's cetainly not an easy tool to use. That's why UAEUNP is so useful.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Arnie

The fact is that the script does work but not on WB2.05 or lower at the moment

The archive says "MountADF A500". How many chances are there of an A500 with KS3 or WB2.1?? You dont even mention Kickstart/Workbench requirements in the original post

Also, again, you are wrong, as I am running WB2.1 on my A600. Who is the one who isn't "checking the facts"? You assumed I was doing things wrong and saying this doesn't work "just because" and decided to vent on me for no good reason and without justification.

Your script does not work except on your configuration.

[Arnie]

Originally Posted by Akira

The archive says "MountADF A500". How many chances are there of an A500 with KS3 or WB2.1?? You dont even mention Kickstart/Workbench requirements in the original post

Also, again, you are wrong, as I am running WB2.1 on my A600. Who is the one who isn't "checking the facts"? You assumed I was doing things wrong and saying this doesn't work "just because" and decided to vent on me for no good reason and without justification.

Your script does not work except on your configuration.

Try the new archive, it may work, then again it may not.