Installing AmigaOS using WinUAE

[alexh]

I very rarely re-install my big-box Amiga's. In fact I think all were installed 10 years ago the most up to date being AOS3.5

Anyhow I've got a new IDE hard drive for my A4000D and just need an ickle bit of advice to install AmigaOS3.9 + all patches using WinUAE.

• As long as the hard drive I want to use has no partitions do I still need to start WinUAE with a command line switch winuae -disablehardrivesafetycheck to activate block level HDD write access?
• Do I need to set the IDE max transfer level during the partitioning phase of formatting & installing AmigaOS3.9?
• Can WinUAE boot from emulated CD? Or mount the CD as a hard drive? Or will I need to install AmigaOS3.1 from floppy first?
• Eventually I'd like to have one partition >4GB formatted in SFS. Any idea how I can set this up when I install AmigaOS3.9? I just need to put SFS in the RDB before installing AmigaOS? I have a Deneb which should be able to patch to KS3.9 and overcome any partition limitations.
• As well as installing AmigaOS3.9 + BB1 + BB2 + (unofficial) BB3 are there any other "must have" OS enhancing applications?
  
  I was considering :
  
  LZX 1.21r + Patches
  MUI 3.8 + Classes
  AfA_OS 4.6
  Directory Opus 5 Magellan II 5.82
  XFD 1.38
  XPK 5.2a
  WHDload 16.9
  Picasso96 2.1b
  VisualPrefs 1.5k
  Ixemul library 62.1
  LhA 2.12
  MCP 1.46
  reqtools.library 39.3 Rev2
  
  Any more??

[thomas]

Originally Posted by alexh

[*]As long as the hard drive I want to use has no partitions do I still need to start WinUAE with a command line switch winuae -disablehardrivesafetycheck to activate block level HDD write access?

It does not matter how many partitions there are. The presence (or absence) of an MBR is what matters. You can use the DiskPart command line tool and its subcommand CLEAN to remove the MBR if you want to avoid the switch.

[*]Do I need to set the IDE max transfer level during the partitioning phase of formatting & installing AmigaOS3.9?

OS 3.9's HDToolbox defaults to 0x1fe00. Older versions need manual adjustment.

[*]Can WinUAE boot from emulated CD? Or mount the CD as a hard drive? Or will I need to install AmigaOS3.1 from floppy first?

You can add the Emergency-Disk directory on the CD as a harddrive to boot from. But then you should first make an emergency floppy and edit the CD driver to use uaescsi.device. The reason is that Windows marks all files on a CD as write protected and these protection bits are copied to the HDD causing all kinds of weird problems. Also if you have a first-edition CD, all files on the CD are shown upper case which causes another bunch of problems. Using the emergency floppy is a good way around this.

[*]Eventually I'd like to have one partition >4GB formatted in SFS. Any idea how I can set this up when I install AmigaOS3.9? I just need to put SFS in the RDB before installing AmigaOS? I have a Deneb which should be able to patch to KS3.9 and overcome any partition limitations.

Just put SFS into the RDB when running HDToolbox. You can use SFS for all partitions if you like.

[*]As well as installing AmigaOS3.9 + BB1 + BB2 + (unofficial) BB3 are there any other "must have" OS enhancing applications?

I was considering :

LZX 1.21r + Patches
MUI 3.8 + Classes
AfA_OS 4.6
Directory Opus 5 Magellan II 5.82
XFD 1.38
XPK 5.2a
WHDload 16.9
Picasso96 2.1b
VisualPrefs 1.5k
Ixemul library 62.1
LhA 2.12
MCP 1.46
reqtools.library 39.3 Rev2

Any more??

Your choice. I don't use any of these. Only MUI and P96 where needed.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by thomas

It does not matter how many partitions there are. The presence (or absence) of an MBR is what matters. You can use the DiskPart command line tool and its subcommand CLEAN to remove the MBR if you want to avoid the switch.

Only mounted partitions matter since 2.0.

[Minuous]

Originally Posted by alexh

I was considering: reqtools.library 39.3 Rev2

Already included as part of BB3.