Copying from Mac to Amiga via serial cable

[Vortex]

Well, almost half a year later...

I've been doing loads of stuff, including rebuilding my bathroom (everything new) and what not. Amiga has been gathering dust...

Anyway, last two weeks I've been trying to copy stuff from my mac to the Amiga using a serial cable. I had mixed results. Smaller files (including one of my own demos, which was fun to see again after so many years) worked okay, but I had no luck moving ASMOne 1.20 (Got it from the Flame Arrows website) to the Amiga. Even tried moving it in 8 seperate parts, then joining the 8 files again on the Amiga. That seemed to work for a brief moment, but then the program goes kaboom! raising some fatal error followed by guru med.

Any ideas? I'm sort of wondering if I want to spend more time on this...

Cheers,

Lars

[Graham Humphrey]

I split this post from this thread

[Vortex]

Good idea

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Vortex

Anyway, last two weeks I've been trying to copy stuff from my mac to the Amiga using a serial cable. I had mixed results. Smaller files (including one of my own demos, which was fun to see again after so many years) worked okay, but I had no luck moving ASMOne 1.20 (Got it from the Flame Arrows website) to the Amiga. Even tried moving it in 8 seperate parts, then joining the 8 files again on the Amiga. That seemed to work for a brief moment, but then the program goes kaboom! raising some fatal error followed by guru med.

Any ideas? I'm sort of wondering if I want to spend more time on this...

Cheers,

Lars

Hi Lars,

You don't say exactly how the copying via serial cable is being done, so it's difficult to come up with any ideas based on what you've told us so far.

Have a look at the Amiga Explorer on Mac (Virtual PC) thread, where maybe something similar is being attempted:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=44571

Good luck.

prowler

[Vortex]

He he, I admit there's not a lot info in my post.
Let me explain what I have done so far.

I have a USB to serial (9 pins) cable connected to my Macbook Pro (necessary driver installed on mac and working).
Next I soldered a cable myself to connect the USB to serial cable to the A500.
3 Wires only (connecting TXD with RXD and vise versa plus ground (GND).

I use ZTerm on the mac to send data. (19200 baud, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit no parity).
On the Amiga I type the following in the CLI:

type ser: to ram:filenamegoeshere

Settings on the Amiga match the settings on the mac (see above), and I start the transfer on the Amiga side first so to not miss any data.

Not the most sophisticated way of communication, but I was quite happy data was going back and forth to begin with (haven't actually tried sending stuff from Amiga to MAC, but I assume this will sort of work as well ).

Like I said, this works ok for smaller files ( < 50k would be my guestimate).
Stubborn me ( ), I used split in mac terminal to split the ASMOne file I have into 8 smaller files.
I then transferred these 8 files as described above.
On the Amiga I then used JOIN to glue everything back together...
Next I started ASMOne, which seems to work sort of. It even asked me to insert the disk named: "SOURCES". But after I click either Cancel or insert a disked named: "SOURCES" it goes Fatal error on me...

Looks like my DIY method is a little too eh... DIY

[AmigaFriend]

Originally Posted by Vortex

It even asked me to insert the disk named: "SOURCES". But after I click either Cancel or insert a disked named: "SOURCES" it goes Fatal error on me...

The "sources:" is an assign that is missing from your amiga configuration side.

You could try if it has an install script to install to HD that usually makes an automatic assign, if not you have to do it yourself.

[prowler]

I think you've done very well to get as far as this! It seems that you are about 95% of the way there.

I would guess that the CLI command
type ser: to ram:filenamegoeshere
could be subjecting the transferred file through some sort of text-filtering. However, everything else seems to be working fine.

Have you tried using the copy command in this configuration instead?

[Vortex]

@xpect: I don't have a HD. Just df0: and df1: but I assume that will work the same? I will have to read some more about the ASSIGN stuff (my Amiga knowledge is still rusty as best).

#prowler: Thanks... It looks like type works ok. It's also the command that's suggested here in the FAQ somewhere. (http://adfsender.stoeggl.com/adfsend...l/methods.html)

I assume you mean: copy ser: to ram:filenamegoeshere ?
Will give it a try but I have a feeling it won't really matter.

One more thing, when using the type ser: stuff, you'll usually end up with too many bytes in your file (because of serial buffer stuff).
I use an amiga basic program ( ) to strip of access bytes, cause there doesn't seem to be something like a split command on the Amiga.

I do this will all files I transfer, and again the smaller files work just fine.

I successfully copied lha to my Mig so I could transfer the 'zipped' files, only to discover it needs arp.library which is 100k big (small)... Chicken and the egg...

Oh well, perhaps I should pick up gardening...

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Vortex

#prowler: Thanks... It looks like type works ok. It's also the command that's suggested here in the FAQ somewhere. (http://adfsender.stoeggl.com/adfsend...l/methods.html)

I assume you mean: copy ser: to ram:filenamegoeshere ?
Will give it a try but I have a feeling it won't really matter.

One more thing, when using the type ser: stuff, you'll usually end up with too many bytes in your file (because of serial buffer stuff).
I use an amiga basic program ( ) to strip of access bytes, cause there doesn't seem to be something like a split command on the Amiga.

I do this will all files I transfer, and again the smaller files work just fine.

@Lars:
Thanks for the link to the FAQ.

Yes, thats the copy command line I had in mind.

Your mention of the "too many bytes in your file because of the serial buffer stuff" sounds like what I refer to as "text-filtering", and so if it's possible to use the copy command to transfer these files instead, then this should circumvent that particular problem.

It is always worth bearing in mind that Mac OS tends to treat files without resource forks as plain text files. However, it seems like the Amiga BASIC program you are using to reverse the text filtering is working with the smaller files, so using the copy command as an alternative is unlikely to solve the problem for the bigger files.

But, hey, it can't hurt to give it a try!

The only other comment I would make is that with binary files it is sometimes non-trivial to reverse the effects of text filtering. This is caused by the reversal process recognizing certain byte sequences as erroneous data when, in fact, they are present in the file quite legitimately. And if this is the problem you are having with the larger file, then it will certainly be worth giving the copy command a try.

[Vortex]

Little update:

I wrote a little command line utility on the mac that calculates a simple checksum for a file, and something similar in Amiga Basic (no really, what evil contraption is that?! ) as well.
It looks like one of the files didn't make it across without errors, so I'm resending that file now and will keep u posted.

Perhaps my wicked caveman approach does work after all?

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Vortex

I wrote a little command line utility on the mac that calculates a simple checksum for a file, and something similar in Amiga Basic (no really, what evil contraption is that?! ) as well.
It looks like one of the files didn't make it across without errors, so I'm resending that file now and will keep u posted.

Thanks for the update, Lars!

Originally Posted by Vortex

Perhaps my wicked caveman approach does work after all?

I'm sure it does. It just needs a little polishing!

[Vortex]

Copied the corrupt file again (I need to try this at higher speed, 19200 baus is reaal... ), did the hocus pocus bits and found the checksum to be same now as on the MAC side. Joined all files again (join a b c d e f g h AS ASMOne) and typed: ASMOne in the CLI.

Guess what, I am now staring at a working Assembler...
Next step is to make a zillion copies cause I hate to go through this exercise again. Masochism only goes so far...

Anyway, if any one is interested I'm happy to post a 'how to copy stuff from mac to a500 the silly way' tutorial...

On startup it did complain about a reqtools.library not found, but I'll just pretend i didn't see that for now...

[prowler]

Hi Lars,

It's great to know you got it working!

By the way, that tutorial would be a nice addition to the thread.

Well done, mate!

prowler

[Vortex]

Okies, will post a step by step guide in the coming days. First I want to figure out the Assembler. Working with Code Warrior and now XCode for all these years sort of made me spoiled rotten

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Vortex

Okies, will post a step by step guide in the coming days.

Thanks! That'll be a great start for you on EAB!

[Vortex]

I promised to post the 'step by step' guide, but I'm still tinkering and trying to improve it (read: make it more userfriendly... ).
So, unless somebody really needs this bad give me some time...

[prowler]

No problem, mate!

Accuracy is always far more important than speed where retrocomputing is concerned. Take your time and post it whenever you're ready.

[straycat]

hey guys, first post here.
i'm an old amiga 500 user (92) and despite i don't use the amiga now, i won't ever sell it.
i would like to retrieve all the graphics and mods i made back in the day in protracker, octamed and dpaint, and maybe some games (transfering about 400 floppies must take the rest of my lifetime).

did vortex every published his tutorial?
i also seen the virtual pc solution for mac thread which i'm aiming for since i own a macbook pro.

can anyone suggest on the cables i should buy?
i have 2 options for each:

serial cable 1

serial cable 2

usb to serial adapter 1

usb to serial adapter 2

i also checked amiga forever's page on the best quality serial cables being the belkin one of them. i could still use your opinion.

about the usb to serial, both state they support mac osx 10 but the brand i know better is iogear.

thanks for keeping up this community. i think that in every computer class they should teach the amiga computers history with the "ahead of their time" credit they deserve. and all the sinclairs and c64 and amstrads and whatnot.

cheers.

[Ed Cruse]

There's really only one way to do what you want. Archive your files using zip or something, and then tranfer using some error free transfer protocal. You should be able to find a Mac and an Amiga terminal program that support the same transfer protocal.

You are using a 3-wire serial cable so there is no hardware flow control and you can't use software flow control because you are sending binary, which means you can over run the receive buffer and lose data. Transfer protocals send blocks of data and use hand-shaking to resend a bad block or send the next block. This prevents receive buffer over run and insures error free, how good depends of the verification method.

The reason for archiving is two fold, first it reduces the files size and you can combine many files together into one, secondly archive programs verify the contents of the archive.

Over the years I've transfered many files from computer to computer using the serial port and believe me this is the best way. Once you find the correct programs to do it, the transfers are reliable.

[ppill]

You guys might want to check out Hombre (link below). It supports ZModem transfers.

And yes, you should really use cables that support hardware flow protocol (RTS/CTS).

Can you do something like this using the mac's shell console?

receive
'cat /dev/ttyS1 >/home/ppill/test.adf'

send
'cat /home/ppill/test.adf >/dev/ttyS1'

That's all it takes to copy ADFs.Of course you need to make sure the serial settings are exactly the same on both machines. Works fine on Linux.