Copying Amiga disks using Floppy drives on a PC.

[hamster]

Has anyone ever tried copying the contents of their old amiga files (notes, projects... etc) to the PC?

I have been stumped until I came across this last night - DISK2FDI.ZIP

It's a shareware tool that requires you to boot up into a pure dos environment and allows you to read amiga floppy disks and copy the contents across to a 2nd floppy disk (and save it as a .adf - HD/DD) to use in your fave Amiga emulator.

You need to ahem... borrow another floppy drive and connect it temporarily to the same floppy drive cable (assign it B and put your destination disk in there and put your amiga original (write protect it!) in A:. Boot with a dos disk and run the disk2fdi file above (ignore the warning - it's means that you can't create an actual Amiga disk copy with this version - but you can create the .adf file - after which through the WinUAE emulator you can extract the files across to Windows (through a hardfile disk file for example).

This is great since I have many old files (paint files, 3D Construction Kit Projects etc which I haven't seen since 1993). T'is great!

Just wondering if anyone has does this already??? I'm going to try next weekend. Up to now I assumed you need a CatWeasel device to do this. The reason you can't read amiga natively, besides other things, is because the Amiga floppy drive rotated at 300rpm and the PC ones at 360rpm. The other thing is that the PC drive waits for a signal pulse before a read while the amiga one didn't which made a few bytes of a difference....

I have attached the program here if you want to try... again you need 2 floppy drives... read the readme in the .zip. It's the way it works. Also I pasted the main bit you need from the readme to do this too. By the way you use this program for the old commodore floppies and Apple disks too... but I'm only concerned with Amiga 3.5" disks.

Please let me know if you have tried it!

[Toni Wilen]

PC and Amiga drives are standard 300RPM drives. It is PC floppy controller that prevents reading/writing Amiga formatted floppies. (without disk2fdi hack but unfortunately writing is still impossible)

[hamster]

Hi Toni,

If the hack even just to read the contents of the floppy to generate the .adf file I will be delighted if that works.... I'll see how it goes next weekend... hopefully.

[Kodoichi]

Originally Posted by hamster

Has anyone ever tried copying the contents of their old amiga files (notes, projects... etc) to the PC?

Yes.

Just wondering if anyone has does this already???

Yes.

Please let me know if you have tried it!

Works perfectly for cracked games and own files on disk. Just make sure you don't overwrite your data because of the two drives...

[Toni Wilen]

FDI2.0 format also works with (most? all?) copy protected disks but of course it is not possible to check if the image is 100% properly working or not. (without completing the game..)

[fiath]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

of course it is not possible to check if the image is 100% properly working or not. (without completing the game..)

I'd say you don't really know even then, though it is a good indication.

[the wolf]

Originally Posted by hamster

Has anyone ever tried copying the contents of their old amiga files (notes, projects... etc) to the PC?

I have been stumped until I came across this last night - DISK2FDI.ZIP

Please let me know if you have tried it!

Oh yes. And it works perfectly (for cracked and dos disks! )
I have transfered all my floppy collection (more than 800 disks) in about a week. I found 7 or 8 faulty disks, but it's all here in ONE CD!!!

Oh, of course I haven't played all games till the end, after I've used this program, but I handled these games for a long time checking trainers, bootblocks, loading problems, etc... I'm almost sure they are all ok!...

[hamster]

An update...

Well, I tried copying my old amiga floppies today and I have had success! All my old files came across. I did a couple 3D Construction Kit games in 1992 and spent 6 months between two of them. I wanted to try them out. It's amazing I never thought I see them again.

No luck with the non-dos disks.. but I'd really try.. fyi I entered "disk2fdi b: <name of disk>" for ever disk I tried. Worked fine for dos disks (eg Amiga Format collection).

On another note, I found my old Amiga power supply. Pluged the A500 in and put in workbench 1.3 and it started booting up... looks like it works! There are 2 snags however...

1. I can't find the tv modulator (no way to get a picture now)
2. No amiga mouse

My current PC has a parallel port and I'm using winuae and have nearly ever Amiga game/utility/PD tool under it. Is it possible for me to communicate to the Amiga via the parallel or serial port? and blind on the Amiga side ?

[thomas]

and blind on the Amiga side

Erm, no. At least you have to start the commiunication software. I doubt you can do this blindly.

However you can connect the chinch plug next to the Amiga video output to your video recorder or TV with a normal chinch cable (e.g. one half of a stereo audio cable). Then you have a picture. It is grey, but you can read.

The mouse pointer can be moved with the keyboard: hold down the left Amiga key and use the cursor keys to move the pointer. Use the Alt keys as mouse buttons.

Originally Posted by hamster

An update...

Well, I tried copying my old amiga floppies today and I have had success! All my old files came across. I did a couple 3D Construction Kit games in 1992 and spent 6 months between two of them. I wanted to try them out. It's amazing I never thought I see them again.

Nice to see you got your old personal files back - I know the feeling when you lose many of them so, it's good for you that you recovered & preserved them.

Now are you gonna be brave and post your 3D Construction Kit games into the zone ?

[hamster]

Thanks Thomas! I thought that was mono sound... even though there was the stereo outputs as well.

I got it hooked up to a small monitor via a phono cable. I'm quivering with excitement so I'm not thinking too clearly right now!

I'll load up some faqs on how to communicate to the PC via the serial or parallel port. But would you recommend the parallel port if its faster, easier or more compatible to communciate to the PC (Win XP)? ie, could I access the amiga from the PC or would I be better to access the PC from the Amiga?

Sorry for the impatience.... I'll going to look up the faqs now...

[hamster]

Originally Posted by Jim

Nice to see you got your old personal files back - I know the feeling when you lose many of them so, it's good for you that you recovered & preserved them.

Now are you gonna be brave and post your 3D Construction Kit games into the zone ?

Thanks Jim! I guess it the least I can do for the amazing help I receive from here.

Actually do I need permission to access the zone?... because I get:
"hamster, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons..."

Once I get around this I'll do this gladly!

[BippyM]

you need to turn on Zone access in your user-config

[hamster]

Originally Posted by bippym

you need to turn on Zone access in your user-config

Cheers Bippym. Uploading now....

The info on the 2 games...
Contains 2 3D Construction Kit games I made in 1992. Hunter and Citadel. I guess they look pretty slow and childish now (and down right unfair to solve). For a head start in Hunter, I do know that the key is in the garage (on the right of house). Use right click to activate/examine objects).

Citadel is a biggie and probably even more unfair. Still I had fun making it. A bit like SEUCK I guess but I enjoyed the condition statements you could add to objects....

Try with a 1Mb A500. It autoboots Hunter independent of the 3D Kit program. I haven't tried Citadel yet but I guess you will need to access it via the workbench. Failing that try the other floppy which contains the source of these games and run them from the 3D Construction Kit proper.

[hamster]

With regards to Citadel... it seems more polished that hunter and is much bigger. I'm stuck in my own game already... I can't get out of my own prison!


If you try any of the two, I'd recommend Citadel, it's also faster as a lot is indoor if I remember. Citadel is best run by loading workbench 3.1 and then load citadel off the floppy. Hint: Right eveything. And.... in your starting room... check out the nearly invisible grey misaligned patch on the wall.... I told you that this game was unfair!

[Adeptus]

Originally Posted by hamster

Hint: Right eveything. And.... in your starting room... check out the nearly invisible grey misaligned patch on the wall.... I told you that this game was unfair!

Sounds like Crimson Room

[onkelarie]

Wow.... I still had this pile of amiga disks lying around, thank goodness I didn't point them the direction of the trashcan!

I finally recovered some music I made from my 90-93 period... Believe me, I'm a happy camper now that I can convert my disks....! Great stuff, that disk2fdi program!

Onkelarie,

I'm confused a bit. So if you convert your old Amiga disks to a PC disk, then how do you use the data? Are you using an Amiga emulator on the PC to play the disks? I have a lot of old Amiga disks too and have been trying to get my A2000HD working with no luck. The purpose was to go through my disks and see if anything could be saved. If this program works, then maybe I don't need the 2000 to work after all.

[onkelarie]

Unfortunately, I don't have my original Amiga anymore, but I do still have all my disks.

On my PC I run winUAE and made several configs (harddisk, for games, for 1.2 kickstart, etc). With two floppydrives installed (A: and B I now can convert my amiga disks to .ADF files so they can be used in winUAE.

Do keep in mind that the program won't run under winXP. I use a bootable dos disk instead with disk2dfi already installed on it. A bit cumbersome to convert many disks, but it works

hamster, man thanks for replying. I wasn't sure if you were still around since the last post on this thread was sep 2004.

Question: I have some old DOS computers so I think I could make this work, but does winUAE run on an XP and if it does what exactly is it going to do for me? If I can convert my old 3.5 amiga floppies to .ADF, can those old games (e.g., Zak McCracken) then run on the IBM dos machine?

Just wondering if it's worth trying to figure out how to use this conversion program since the .txt files on the .zip file looked over my head.

Thanks,