External 6-in-1 USB Card Reader

[Weemus]

I have seen the External 6-in-1 USB Card Reader at the Amigakit site and wondered if anyone has tried it or used it to create Amiga disks from PC adf files. Does it work? Should I buy it? It looks quite interesting. Thanks.

[prowler]

The External 6-in-1 USB Card Reader + EasyADF (£10.20 inc. VAT) can be used to transfer ADF files from your PC to your Amiga directly, but only if you have a USB port on your Amiga. The EasyADF software will facilitate writing back the ADF files to floppy disk.

If you don't have a USB port on your Amiga, then it cannot be done directly, but you can use a PCMCIA or IDE port with an appropriate adapter to read CF or SD cards on your Amiga once you have transferred the ADF files onto them using the USB card reader in your PC. Again, the EasyADF software will let you write the files back to floppies.

[Weemus]

Will any old adapter work? I found a couple of cheap IDE Drive to USB 2.0 adapter converters on sale at several places. Thanks again, prowler!

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Weemus

Will any old adapter work? I found a couple of cheap IDE Drive to USB 2.0 adapter converters on sale at several places.

Now you're talking about something different.

An IDE drive connected to a USB port on your PC would have to be formatted as an Amiga hard drive in order to be able to share files between your PC and Amiga.

The hard drive would either have to be pre-formatted on your Amiga and then mounted in WinUAE, or else mounted as an unformatted drive in WinUAE and then partitioned and formatted under emulation.

However, I'm not sure that WinUAE can mount IDE drives connected via USB.

Another method which I know does work would be to mount a CF card via a CF-IDE adapter to the IDE to USB 2.0 converter and format it in Windows, then copy your .ADF files to the CF card and finally read them in your Amiga with the CF card mounted in the PCMCIA slot in a CF-PCMCIA adapter, but this method requires two more adapters.

It's definitely not a simple task either way.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by prowler

However, I'm not sure that WinUAE can mount IDE drives connected via USB.

WinUAE won't care. It works if Windows detects it.

[Eclipse]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

WinUAE won't care. It works if Windows detects it.

As Toni says it works. I have a compact flash card as my HD in an A600, I can take it out and put it in a multi card usb reader and mount the drive no problem under WinUAE.

[prowler]

Thanks for clarifying that, guys!

[Weemus]

Can I make disks with an Amiga floppy drive hooked to my PC with the External 6-in-1 USB Card Reader? I thought that's what it does. Thanks.

[sneeker]

Its just a card reader, nothing more.

The idea is you copy the adf's to a memory card, stick it in a pcmcia adapter, then mount that on the amiga and use the easyadf software to write it back to floppys on the amiga.

Without a kyroflux or a catweasel a pc cannot read or write amiga discs.

(There was a hack using 2 drives years ago, but Im not sure if that still applies)

[prowler]

Originally Posted by sneeker

Without a kyroflux or a catweasel a pc cannot read or write amiga discs.

Wrong.

Originally Posted by sneeker

There was a hack using 2 drives years ago, but Im not sure if that still applies

Yes, it does, and here it is:
http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi/

And there's another method which was recently brought to light here on EAB:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=63532