Fastest,Easiest,Cheapest way to transfer adf images between PC and Amiga(mostly 500)

[lesta_smsc]

Here you go:
PC2Amiga
http://uber-leet.com/index.php?page=network

[prowler]

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

Here you go:
PC2Amiga
http://uber-leet.com/index.php?page=network

Wow! Thanks, Lesta!

That'll save me some time!

[trydowave]

sounds good. should be easy enough getting or making a p1 pc. but.. any idea where i can lay my hands on the cable? or do i have to make it?

cheers
tony

[prowler]

I bought mine some years ago complete with the CD from eBay, so it was probably made by the seller.

The Amiga's parallel port is not wired the same way as a PC's parallel port, so no standard cables will do the job. Proprietary cables like this always have to be made by someone, and there is just not sufficient demand for them to be worth selling, so you'll either have to make your own or modify another parallel cable, provided the D-type plugs are not encapsulated.

[trydowave]

don't think ill bother now... i'm on ks 1.3. i do have a busted a600 in the other room so i could take its rom chips. but, all this for octamed? not really worth it. i think ill just get an a1200 instead late on and stick to floppy storage for now on the a500

[prowler]

I ordered one of ikonsgr's ADF Transfer kits a couple of days ago - mainly because I wanted a PCI parallel port card. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see what it can do.

It should be arriving here in a week or so.

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by prowler

Wow! Thanks, Lesta!

That'll save me some time!

lol - no problem. It was literally a quick google search, so I'm not sure if there's a later version, although it appears that this is the authors site?

[clenched]

Originally Posted by prowler

The Amiga's parallel port is not wired the same way as a PC's parallel port, so no standard cables will do the job. Proprietary cables like this always have to be made by someone, and there is just not sufficient demand for them to be worth selling, so you'll either have to make your own or modify another parallel cable, provided the D-type plugs are not encapsulated.

Cables such as this used to be available at your typical office supply store, electronics store, etc so don't have to be custom made. This is the type I use with PC2Amiga. There is a schematic to build an even faster cable but since the standard cable is so much faster than serial, I find it satisfactory.

[prowler]

Thanks, clenched. I wasn't aware that a standard Laplink cable could be used to connect an Amiga and PC via the parallel ports.

TBH, I would have been reluctant to try it without knowing for sure that it wouldn't damage either machine. Can you remember how you discoved it would work?

[clenched]

Sure. From PC2Am.guide

LAPLINK

Four-wire parallel LapLink cable is also known as parallel-nullmodem
cable. It can be bought in computer store (it is commonly used between PCs,
e.g., Microsoft InterLnk/InterSvr can use it).

Bear in mind I can use KS2, hard drive and plenty of RAM so the other kit may still be better for a lesser equipped A500. BTW it didn't take anywhere near 2 hours to get it working for me.

[prowler]

D'oh! I hadn't checked the PC2Am308.lha file yet!

And I still have the 'bare-wires' Laplink cable I made years ago for networking PCs using InterLnk/InterSvr!

[ikonsgr]

Prowler, i guess you are "prouxler" on ebay right? :-)
Well i think you will be satisfied, as paradise is actually a command line multi-attribute dos utility which let you transfer any file/dir/adf at any direction between amiga and a pc!
Unfortunately the "problem" with these "faster than serial" transfer methods is that they CANT function under any modern OS ,that is,anything after windows 95/98!
I just saw that pc2amiga is also "win 95/98 only".
So, what i actually done with the adf transfer program is make paradise function under ANY modern OS even windows 7/64bit!
The "trick" to do that, is mainly to use a special version of dos box which have native support for parallel ports (official megabuild dosbox doesn't have that). I guess it's not unlikely pc2amiga could also work under windows xp/vista/7 the same way! ;-)
So, even if you have windows 7/64bit on your pc you can execute paradise utility commands through dos box to transfer almost anything at any direction!
Thankfully, the good guy who made paradise utility was kind enough to fully documented it, so if you read the paradise manual (included in the adf transfer folder) it's pretty easy to make almost any data transfer ;-)

[ikonsgr]

Originally Posted by trydowave

when i transfer by serial it says 3 minutes, but it feels a lot longer, is it really 8 minutes then? Just got this cable delivered today and it is indeed a lot faster.
can it transfer other things than adfs?
cheers
tony

Actually, to be precise, is 7minutes and 50 seconds (~470sec). That is, time to transfer and adf image to amiga disk, using a serial cable and an amiga 500.
I can assure you, you can't do anything faster than that (19200bps....) ,at least using an amiga 500 (500+/600 can usually do faster than this at 38400bps => ~4minutes/disk) i have transferred in the past, more than a 100 disks using serial cable !
And yes you can transfer anything between pc and amiga, using paradise utility "directly" e.g through amiga shell and cli window on win 32bit pc or svn_daum dosbox on win64bit. For more detailed info read the paradise manual to see what command you must use to do that.

[trydowave]

Originally Posted by ikonsgr

Actually, to be precise, is 7minutes and 50 seconds (~470sec). That is, time to transfer and adf image to amiga disk, using a serial cable and an amiga 500.
I can assure you, you can't do anything faster than that (19200bps....) ,at least using an amiga 500 (500+/600 can usually do faster than this at 38400bps => ~4minutes/disk) i have transferred in the past, more than a 100 disks using serial cable !
And yes you can transfer anything between pc and amiga, using paradise utility "directly" e.g through amiga shell and cli window on win 32bit pc or svn_daum dosbox on win64bit. For more detailed info read the paradise manual to see what command you must use to do that.

is it possible for the amiga to look at the pc (providing im using ks2.0) thus turning my pc into a harddrive for my a500? the adf transfer tool you supplied seems to have an amiga to pc option aswell as the pc to amiga option. i have a 32bit pc, P4 XP.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by trydowave

is it possible for the amiga to look at the pc (providing im using ks2.0) thus turning my pc into a harddrive for my a500?
.. i have a 32bit pc, P4 XP.

The PC2Amiga program mentioned several time above should do just that..
It won't autoboot, but should allow you to use the PC drives as Amiga hard disks..

desiv
(Haven't used it, just what the website info says..)

[ikonsgr]

I agree, only there is a "small" problem...PC2AMIGA works only on win 95/98 machines!
BUT, judging from my experience with paradise (which also is a "dos/win95/98 only" utility) and how i manage to make it work in the end, maybe in the same way you can do PC2AMIGA works on a win xp machine, that is, use it through svn daum dosbox!

[trydowave]

cheers.
now time to buy a rom switcher so i can keep the 1.3

[desiv]

Originally Posted by ikonsgr

I agree, only there is a "small" problem...PC2AMIGA works only on win 95/98 machines!

Ouch..
Didn't think of that..
Perhaps this also might help???
http://www.35thchamber.com/content/u...rts-windows-xp

desiv
(Also, something I haven't used.. ;-)

[ikonsgr]

Well,i use port talk to grant access of parallel port to paradise utility. It's very easy to use through cli, and that's how you can do transfers manually with paradise (actually this is what the adf transfer program also do, it executes small batch files which contain the cli commands you need to write) . But again, this only works under 32bit OS. For 64bit windows none of these utilities could be executed from cli window. For this, you must use svn daum dosbox ,configured for parallel port you need to use (it's all in the dosbox.config file about how you can do that).

Finally,some last note: as both paradise and pc2amiga uses parallel port to link amiga with the pc, don't expect "super fast" speeds. Using an amiga 500 you will probably get ~20kb/sec at most. That is, if you want to transfer 20mebaytes of data it would take about 20minutes! Of course with faster amiga models you will probably gt more than that, but in any case i dot think speed would ever exceed 50kb/sec "barrier". I remember many years ago, that this was about the max speed i got using a "null modem" parallel cable and norton commander for transfer files between 2 pc's! ;-)

[prowler]

Originally Posted by ikonsgr

Prowler, i guess you are "prouxler" on ebay right? :-)

Right! (eBay wouldn't let me have 'prowler' for some reason, so I chose 'prouxler' instead, but I reckon they're pronounced the same way. )

Originally Posted by ikonsgr

Well i think you will be satisfied, as paradise is actually a command line multi-attribute dos utility which let you transfer any file/dir/adf at any direction between amiga and a pc!
Unfortunately the "problem" with these "faster than serial" transfer methods is that they CANT function under any modern OS ,that is,anything after windows 95/98!
I just saw that pc2amiga is also "win 95/98 only".
So, what i actually done with the adf transfer program is make paradise function under ANY modern OS even windows 7/64bit!
The "trick" to do that, is mainly to use a special version of dos box which have native support for parallel ports (official megabuild dosbox doesn't have that). I guess it's not unlikely pc2amiga could also work under windows xp/vista/7 the same way! ;-)
So, even if you have windows 7/64bit on your pc you can execute paradise utility commands through dos box to transfer almost anything at any direction!
Thankfully, the good guy who made paradise utility was kind enough to fully documented it, so if you read the paradise manual (included in the adf transfer folder) it's pretty easy to make almost any data transfer ;-)

Right again! I will be satisfied, because I'm actually running Win95 on the only machine I want to network to my Amigas! (My other PCs can transfer files via CF card to and from the PCMCIA ports.)

Thanks for all the information, though, as I'm sure it will be of interest to other users and probably to me as well, eventually.