New 1200, old Jumpdisks

[toronto]

Hi all,

I've been away from the Amiga awhile, about seven years without one. I recently decided to get back into it and got a 1200 off ebay.
The first thing I tried to do was to put all my old Jumpdisks on the HD. Bummer, most have errors, as I should have expected. Some are sector errors, but most say:

"Error while copying 'J'"
"file is read protected"

I've never seen an error like this on any machine. How could a read-protected file ever be used?

Does anyone know of a utility that might correct this, or has anyone seen ADF's of Jumpdisk anywhere? I've found tons of games online, and even a bunch of applications, mag cover disks, and PD collections over at zophar, but no sign of Jumpdisks anywhere.

[Hewitson]

Go to information (Right Amiga+I) and fix attributes of file, or in CLI use protect command.

What are jumpdisks?

[Andec]

Jumpdisk = Workbench?????

If so, it is against the rules to ask for them as they are still copyrighted and being sold.

BTW, Welcome to EAB

[Graham Humphrey]

Jumpdisk sounds like some sort of PD collection...

[DDNI]

jumpdisk maybe just a local name for floppies...?

[mark_k]

Originally Posted by toronto

I've been away from the Amiga awhile, about seven years without one. I recently decided to get back into it and got a 1200 off ebay.
The first thing I tried to do was to put all my old Jumpdisks on the HD. Bummer, most have errors, as I should have expected. Some are sector errors, but most say:

"Error while copying 'J'"
"file is read protected"

I've never seen an error like this on any machine. How could a read-protected file ever be used?

Does anyone know of a utility that might correct this, or has anyone seen ADF's of Jumpdisk anywhere? I've found tons of games online, and even a bunch of applications, mag cover disks, and PD collections over at zophar, but no sign of Jumpdisks anywhere.

You probably know about the AmigaDOS "rwed" protection bits. Before Kickstart 2.0, AmigaDOS mostly ignored them, meaning that even if the "r" (readable) bit was clear you could still read the file.

In Kickstart 2.0 and later that was changed, so files which do not have their "r" bit set cannot be read. You need to make such files readable before being able to opening or copy them. Do that using the Workbench Info menu, or from the CLI using the Protect command, e.g. Protect #? +r

If you're backing up your original disks, instead of writing to them (which is what read-enabling files on them requires) I suggest you do this:
- Create an ADF file for each disk, and archive it for safekeeping.
- If you want to access a particular disk, either create a copy from the ADF file, or copy the ADF file to RAM: and mount it with fmsdisk.device or similar (much faster).
- You can then read-enable all necessary files on the copy before using it

To others: Jumpdisk was a (monthly?) disk magazine, containing mostly PD software. In the UK, it was distributed by George Thompson Services, who used to advertise in various magazines.


-- M

[Andec]

Originally Posted by mark_k

...
To others: Jumpdisk was a (monthly?) disk magazine, containing mostly PD software. In the UK, it was distributed by George Thompson Services, who used to advertise in various magazines.

Ok. Cool.

I thought that perhaps they might be Workbench disks because I have heard people refer to (MSDOS) boot disks as jumpstart disks

[toronto]

Originally Posted by Braddo

Go to information (Right Amiga+I) and fix attributes of file, or in CLI use protect command.

What are jumpdisks?

Thanks for the tip. It turned out to be certain .info files. I had been draging the drive icon to a drawer on the hard drive, so the error box would say the whole disk ("J") was read protected.
I had to open the disk, use Show All Files & Select Contents, and Shift-drag to the new drawer. Then the error would name a specific drawer or file.
The Information box would show these as read enabled though. When I opened the Shell and listed the directory I realized there are .info files that don't show up, even with Show All Files. I made copies of a few disks and used "protect #?.info +r" for the disk or a drawer. So far this seems to clear it up and allows me to copy the disk.

Originally Posted by mark_k

You probably know about the AmigaDOS "rwed" protection bits. Before Kickstart 2.0, AmigaDOS mostly ignored them, meaning that even if the "r" (readable) bit was clear you could still read the file.

In Kickstart 2.0 and later that was changed, so files which do not have their "r" bit set cannot be read. You need to make such files readable before being able to opening or copy them. Do that using the Workbench Info menu, or from the CLI using the Protect command, e.g. Protect #? +r

If you're backing up your original disks, instead of writing to them (which is what read-enabling files on them requires) I suggest you do this:
- Create an ADF file for each disk, and archive it for safekeeping.
- If you want to access a particular disk, either create a copy from the ADF file, or copy the ADF file to RAM: and mount it with fmsdisk.device or similar (much faster).
- You can then read-enable all necessary files on the copy before using it

To others: Jumpdisk was a (monthly?) disk magazine, containing mostly PD software. In the UK, it was distributed by George Thompson Services, who used to advertise in various magazines.


-- M

Thanks for the info, that clears up a mystery. Back in the day I use to copy programs and drawers to their own work disks and never ran across a "read protected" error. But these were last used on my 500 with WB1.3. When I had a 3000 I never really bothered with them much.

Yeah, Jumpdisk was a monthly disk magazine with original and PD programs and articles. It was published by Richard Ramela in Chico, Ca., US, from August 86 to late 94. It probably wasn't known much outside N.America. I think at it's peak it had about 6500 subscribers.

I found out two more things too. The menu system and most of the programs don't like running from a drawer (they keep asking "Insert volume J") and they don't like WB3.x. So I'm going to follow your advice and make them ADF's. I got TransADF over from the PC and already converted a few. Then I'll try Degrader and fmsdisk, or take them back to the PC and use UAE set up as a 500.
I'd still like to get more of them. I'll repost a request in um, Requests.

[Hewitson]

If the program wants volume J assign it. For example you try to run work:gamedir/game and it asks for J: "ASSIGN J: Work:Gamedir". Also use SKick to kick up 1.3 if wont work in 3.1.

[mark_k]

Originally Posted by toronto

Thanks for the info, that clears up a mystery. Back in the day I use to copy programs and drawers to their own work disks and never ran across a "read protected" error. But these were last used on my 500 with WB1.3. When I had a 3000 I never really bothered with them much.

Yeah, Jumpdisk was a monthly disk magazine with original and PD programs and articles. It was published by Richard Ramela in Chico, Ca., US, from August 86 to late 94. It probably wasn't known much outside N.America. I think at it's peak it had about 6500 subscribers.

I found out two more things too. The menu system and most of the programs don't like running from a drawer (they keep asking "Insert volume J") and they don't like WB3.x. So I'm going to follow your advice and make them ADF's. I got TransADF over from the PC and already converted a few. Then I'll try Degrader and fmsdisk, or take them back to the PC and use UAE set up as a 500.
I'd still like to get more of them. I'll repost a request in um, Requests.

Maybe I'm too picky, but I *never* write to my original disks, and always keep them write-protected. (Workbench, especially WB 1.x writes to disks even if you just open the disk's Window.) It's not like originals can be easiy replaced these days, and in the event of a hard crash while writing a track, at least 11 sectors would be damaged/destroyed. So backing up to some kind of disk image format is the way to go, not to mention being way faster than file-by-file copying.

Instead of fmsdisk.device, another possibility is the XFileSystem package on Aminet (http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/xfs). That contains file.device which is similar to fmsdisk.device, but importantly here it aso contains a multi-filesystem handler. XFileSystem can handle Amiga OFS/FFS disks, as well as MS-DOS (FAT), Mac HFS and others.

If you use the FILE0: mount file from the XFS package, you can mount ADF files, but instead of using the Kickstart ROM filesystem to access the files on them, XFileSystem will be used instead. Why's that of any use? Well, I'm not certain, but if XFileSystem allows you to read read-protected files, you could then access the ADF files that way, without needing to boot Kickstart 1.x.

Come to think of it, XFS also comes with mount files for floppy disks. So you might be able to use it to access read-protected files on your (write-protected) original disks directly.

I have a few original JumpDisk issues here *somewhere*. Bug me enough and I might find and upload them!


-- M

[toronto]

Thanks for all the help. There sure are a lot of options. Unfortunately, these older issues are tied pretty close to WB1.3, which is why I stopped using them after getting a 3000. It's not just the read-protection thing. They need a lot of things in certain locations that changed in 2.0+. One of their biggest dependencies is Amiga Basic which is unpredictable after 1.3. The later issues switched to using Hisoft Basic and compiling everything. I think I sold those with the 3000.

I don't mind having to use WB1.3, really. The Jumpdisks are just for nostalgia's sake anyway so using 1.3 will be even more so. I posted a list in the other thread of what I have and would still like. If anyone else is interested in these I'll start putting them in the Zone a few at a time.

[DigitalQuirk]

Greetings. I have registered here for one reason: I'm after Jumpdisk images. I maintain a web site geared towards the preservation of Jumpdisk here:

http://digitalquirk.ca/amiga/jumpdisk/index.html

As you can see, my collection is incomplete. I would like to have it complete with every Jumpdisk ever issued, for the benefit of the Amiga community. After all, it was things like Jumpdisk that made the Amiga great; it would be a shame if it were to disappear into obscurity.

[Bamiga2002]

And instead of fmsdisk.device and XFileSystem, i recommend DiskImage. It works in similar way as fmsdisk.device but it's much more reliable and better in general. I found XFileSystem kind of messy to set up.

[toronto]

DigitalQuirk,
I've tried to get to your site the last few days and can't connect. I get the error:

The connection has timed out
The server at 72.141.130.33 is taking too long to respond.

I'd love to see which ones you've got and upload/send any missing that I have. Let me know if your site is still up or moved. Meanwhile, I've uploaded a few to the Zone, starting with the 86 & 87 issues I had. I'll add more later when I have time.

To others: if you check out these early issues, don't be put off by how crude they are. They were pretty rough. They start getting a lot better with the '88 issues.

[DigitalQuirk]

That's odd; must be a bad DNS somewhere...

The direct connection to my server is actually at:

http://99.253.2.30/amiga/jumpdisk/

Sorry about the delay in responding!

[toronto]

I was able to get to your site. Great write-up about Jumpdisk. I loved getting that little package every month. I subscribed to a lot of Amiga disk and paper magazines, and PD disks, but there was nothing quite like Jumpdisk. It had great personality. The only other things I felt came close were Info, the paper magazine, and Fender Tucker's Loadstar, the C64 disk magazine. I originally thought checking the issues out again would just be a nostalgia trip, but I'm finding there's several things on each issue that are still pretty cool. I am starting to upload all the issues I have to The Zone.

[mark_k]

Hi,

The original jumpdisks I have are:
March 1987 (Vol. 2, Issue 3)
April 1987 (Vol. 2, Issue 3) [misprint, should be Issue 4 of course]
May 1987 (Vol. 2, Issue 5)
January 1988 (Vol. 3, Issue 1, No. 18)
February 1988 (Vol. 3, Issue 2, No. 19)
March 1988 (Vol. 3, Issue 3, No. 20)
April 1988 (Vol. 3, Issue 4, No. 21)
June 1988 (Vol. 3, Issue 6, No. 23)
July 1988 (Vol. 3, Issue 7, No. 24)

I also have some kind of Jumpdisk sampler issue/disk somewhere.

I have uploaded disk images of these issues to The Zone (JumpDisk.tar.gz):
May 1987
Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, Jun, Jul 1988

Based on examining the track lengths of the original disks using WWarp, I *think* all those have never been written to since new; please correct me if that's wrong (e.g. if any disk-modified or .info file datestamps seem strange)!

-- M

[toronto]

Thanks, I don't have some of those. Just uploaded all of '89, the first complete year I have.

[Jim]

Just exploring different parts of the Forum.
And I have stumbled upon an old posting, where some folks are talking about JUMPDISKs. but they appear to have got it wrong.
here is a few samples that illustrate what they looked like...
I was just talking about these last week, on a different section.