HD on 1200 won't boot anymore

Ok, I did something foolish. I tried to use my Amiga 1200 HD on my PC using Amithlon (Amiga XL) and I think either it or Windows altered the boot sector. My Amiga emulators see it and will boot but the real Amiga doesn't. Oh and another thing, I have no working bootable floppies for the Amiga (I just bought it off eBay). So basically I have an unusable Amiga 1200. Can I manually change the boot block using a HEX editor in Windows so that it will boot again? If there is any way to do this I would appriciate any information or links to such info. Thanks much!

[thomas]

IMHO it was Windows who damaged the RDB. You should never again run Windows with this HDD connected.

Use Amithlon and run HDToolbox. Does it see the partitions ? If not, use RDBRecov.

If it does see the partitions, there must be some more subtly damage. Perhaps only a few bytes changed. In this case write down the partition borders and reinstall the hdd with exactly the same partitions (or run RDBRecov, if you prefer).

At last it may be that there has been some change to the hdd's firmware. Perhaps forced it to another PIO mode or something. In this case I do not know how to repair it.

http://uk.aminet.net/aminetbin/find?rdbrecov

Oh, if you already own RDB-Salv, you'll probably prefer it over RDBRecov.

[Toni Wilen]

Windows 9x/ME? It can damage RDB-block but fortunately it can be easily fixed without lost data. Bytes at offset 220,221,222 and 223 should be zero. If not, clearing them should fix the problem.

This information was found from Linux RDB-partition support code. WinUAE uses this information to check for Windows corrupted RDB block and if detected, fixes it automatically.

Thanks Toni! I had no idea WinUAE fixed that automatically or I would just used it insted of Amithlon. I can tell you that as soon as I get that 1200 booted I'll be making a bootable WB disk right away!

Much thanks,
Brian Bagley
B&B Productions