Question regarding A500 and HDD/Storage

[trydowave]

Hi. I'm extremely skint (that means poor for anyone outside the UK) and I’m on a mega budget. So far I've managed to get an A500 with 1mb, 3 external drives and a whole box of floppies, games, joysticks and other goodies for free. I also got a nice CRT TV for nothing. The only things I’ve spent cash on is an RGB to scart lead, A parallel cable for adf transfer and a Null modem serial cable.
The last lot set me back around £23.

All I need now is a Hard Drive and my set up will be complete! But, I've noticed these things are not exactly cheap or widely available.
I've been looking at the other options such as the ACA500 card and SCSI adapter for connecting IDE drives and zip discs but these are also expensive.

So, on the cheap, is there any way I can get a HDD on the A500. For example. Can I use the serial cable and somehow, with some software, navigate my laptops hdd from the Amiga side and drag files from there when needed? Doesn’t matter how clunky or slow it is as long as it works.
For example: I recently tried to copy some samples into the RAM disk. The idea was to load up Octamed and take the samples from there. Unfortunately they're not visible from the ram disk in workbench. I tried the same thing with an iff. The file was not visible either in workbench but was visible when I loaded from Dpaint. I imagine the sample would be visible from octamed when I load it from there too.(I think workbench needs an info file for you to view it?)

Last problem. Octamed V4 Pro (CU amiga coverdisk version) won’t load from workbench. I think this maybe related to memory but im not sure. It does load from boot however. Problem is I need workbench to load first in order to activate aexplorer to communicate to my pc to drag the files into ram disk!
If anyone can help me accomplish this or if anyone knows of another way to do all this (On a budget) please can you let me know? I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks alot

Tony

Amiga500
1mb
ks 1.3

[Jope]

Yes, wb1.x requires an icon (the info file) for the file to be visible in the workbench. Use the CLI or shell instead. Dir and list are the commands that will help you, perhaps also cd and info might be worth using.

To start aexplorer, just type its filename into CLI. Naturally you must be in the right directory, else you will have to specify its full path.

You should save up for a RAM expansion next if you really intend to do anything productive with the machine, but in the time being, learn to use the shell and forget Workbench.

[trydowave]

Jope. Couple of questions...

1: How do I create an info file for a particular file?
2: How do you use Shell outside of workbench?
3: What kind of memory upgrades?

[demolition]

Originally Posted by trydowave

Jope. Couple of questions...

1: How do I create an info file for a particular file?
2: How do you use Shell outside of workbench?
3: What kind of memory upgrades?

1. Find a .info for another similar file, make a copy of it and rename it to the new file. Easiest done with CLI. I think 'copy oldfile.info newfile.info' should do it.
2. I'd make a backup copy of a workbench disk and comment out lines in the startup-sequence of everything that I don't need, particularly loadwb. You might want to keep assigns and paths, but the more you comment out, the more memory you will have available.
3. Cheapest I can think of is one of Kipper2k's expansions, if you're a little handy and don't mind taking apart your Amiga:
http://kipper2k.com/amigaforsale/
$39 for 4MB, $49 for 8MB.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by trydowave

Jope. Couple of questions...

1: How do I create an info file for a particular file?

Copy it from some other file like demolition suggested, or there's an icon editor on the extras disk.

As said, there are different types of icon.. disk, tool, drawer, project, trashcan. The icon you're copying should match the filetype for them to be useful.

directories - drawer
data files (such as your samples) - project
executables - tool

Then again, no point in making icons for your samples - why would you want to look at them in a workbench window? You'll be looking at them inside your tracker's file selector, the icons are just a waste of disk space and need effort to maintain whenever you get new samples.

2: How do you use Shell outside of workbench?

Look at the startup-sequence and user-startup.. There's something like

mount newcon: from devs:newcon-mountlist

Then you can open a new shell by saying newshell.

I forget the exact mount command, haven't used 1.3 actively since 1992.

3: What kind of memory upgrades?

Something that plugs to the Amigabus connector on the left side of the machine. 8MB is the maximum you can have there.

[trydowave]

Sorry to be a pain. But your going to have o treat me like a completle n00b here (even though ive owned an amiga for years lol). I never did much with it outside of gaming.

To Demolition:
1: I think I've got the first point. Ill try that later and come back to you.
2: I've made a back up of workbench but i dont know how to comment out lines.
3: Probarbly won't bother with that for two reasons. 1: i've got no money whatsoever and 2: I dont really want to pull the cpu out, id rather add a side expansion.

To Jope:
1: Think i understand. But is the step necessary if im going to do it outside of workbench?
2: Does the amiga have a start up sequence? Are you talking about the bit where theres the hand holding the disc?
3: Look into that memory upgrade when i got some cash. A GVP HD8+ if i can find one.

Any chance one of you can give me a step by step walk through of the process of running shell outside of workbench... if you have the time.

Thanks in advance
Tony

[Jope]

Originally Posted by trydowave

1: Think i understand. But is the step necessary if im going to do it outside of workbench?

I don't know what "it" is in this case, but it definitely isn't necessary to have an icon for any file if you don't intend to start it (tool) or the program that created it (project) from Workbench.

2: Does the amiga have a start up sequence? Are you talking about the bit where theres the hand holding the disc?

s/startup-sequence is the script that gets run when the amiga boots from a bootable volume, such as your workbench disk.

Any chance one of you can give me a step by step walk through of the process of running shell outside of workbench... if you have the time.

Look for that mount command in your s/startup-sequence or s/startupii files (I said user-startup before, but that doesn't exist in 1.3). You can use the type command to look inside the files.

If you want to interrupt the startup-sequence when the computer is booting, just press ctrl-d and it will break out to a cli.

Did you get a manual with your computer? As far as I remember, it had some info to get you started.

It's sort of beyond the scope of a forum thread to teach how AmigaOS works, but there's a lot of books written about it, I'm sure quite a few of them have been turned into etext. You can hopefully find them with google. Keywords like using amigados or amigados guide or amigados manual might get you something from the 1.x era.

[desiv]

Less expensive "hard drive" options:
http://www.simon.mooli.org.uk/AF/art...DWIN/GW03.HTML
(scroll down a bit)

If you have a PC with a parallel port, that's generally preferred to serial as it's faster.
And you'll most likely be making/finding your own cables.
They are not always "standard" so be careful with cables.

That said, I believe Kipper is working on a CF/RAM expansion too....

desiv