Amiga 600 CF project gone bad

[Toni Wilen]

What IDE mode? CF card in IDE adapter = true IDE mode. CF Card in PCMCIA = not in IDE mode until software reconfigured as IDE.

If you mean removable: ROM built-in driver won't care.

Connect the card, boot standard WB disk, run hdtoolbox: do you see the drive. If not: hardware problem. Not all cards work with Amiga IDE (same problem with some real IDE drives too)

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

If you mean removable: ROM built-in driver won't care.

Yes, that's what I meant, and I thought it did matter if it was switched off or not.

Before ruling out the IDE or CF card being faulty I'd try a different CF-IDE adapter, these cheap things many times come faulty. I had one that refused to work in the Amiga but worked fine in my Toshiba Libretto, too.

[WarFaceChamp]

Thank you all.
I finally got it working!

In the end I think the problem was that i DIDn't use the same CF adaptor when I was installing on the PC with WinUAE.
On PC I just used an USB card reader.

The main difference was when I had used Diskpart and cleaned the disk.
Because when I startet the diskmanagement tool in windows it prompted to initialize the disk. This didn't happen when using the CF card reader.

Anyways. Here is what I learned to setup the CF card for Amiga 600 using WinUAE.

Tanks for all the help gyus!

SETUP CF CARD FOR AMIGA 600 (using Windows 7 and WinUAE)

Prepare disk

cmd admin rights
select and clean disk
Diskmanagment windows, initialize disk with MBR- add drive letter but no format

Winuae

start winuae -disableharddrivesafetycheck (with admin rights)
Settings:
68000 cpu, fastets possible, more compatible
full ecs chipset
3.1 Kickstart (a500,600,2000)
Add harddrive IDE0,Read/write
start

HD setup in workbench

Start HDtools
add system partition, bootable, standard file system, adv. options - 0x1fe00 press enter (or i dosn't save the setting)
add other partitions
restart
Install workbench to bootable partition

End.

[thomas]

Diskmanagment windows, initialize disk with MBR- add drive letter but no format

Don't initialize it. Although WinUAE accepts an initialized harddrive if it does not have partitions, it's better to leave it empty. And less work anyway.

start winuae -disableharddrivesafetycheck (with admin rights)

Admin rights is true but the -dis... switch is ignored since many releases.

68000 cpu

If you like slow computers and a lot of waiting, this is ok. I would rather use the high-end example quickstart or any other config with JIT enabled.

Add harddrive IDE0

Again this is ok if you like slow processing or really need maximum compatibility (maxtransfer, 4gb problem etc.). If you want to do it fast you should use UAE controller.

[WarFaceChamp]

Hi Thomas.
Please note that I am using the card on Amiga hardware. Just using winuae to set it up.

[thomas]

Yes, but the WinUAE config does not make any difference to the end result. If you configure the slowest and most accurate emulation, you can do everything on the real Amiga as well. There is no benefit in using WinUAE then. One uses WinUAE to have a comfortable environment and get results quickly. Therefore the config should be optimized for speed, not accuracy.

[WarFaceChamp]

Allright guys. Agian thanks for all you help starting me up.
Now. I've configured my CF card, installed WHDload + Reg key, also installed TinyLauncher.
With my system being an A600 I only have 1MB RAM. I was recommended early by Arnie to get an A604 mem expansion.
It seems there is no other way arround. Most of the games won't start even with TinyLauncher. Surely I just had to see it to my self before spending more Euro's :-)

Now. I have another problem.
I also bought Amiga Forever. I wanted to use the KickRoms with WHDload using this guide to rename and copy the ROMs:
http://www.whdload.de/docs/en/need.html

However, when loading games which require A500 kickrom i get this error?
DOS-Error #205 (object not found) on reading "devs:kickstarts/kick34005.a500".
But the file should be called kick34005.a500.RTB yes?

I noticed that when I copy files in WinUAE by mounting a Windows folder- the files dosn't show in the amiga drives before selecting "Show all files" Could this be the error?
How do I correct this?

[Amiga1992]

No, RTB is the relocation table. The roms should be called what it says.

In any case, you will get this error too if you do not have enough memory. Which you don't. There is no way you can softkick anything into the A600 RAM with just 1MB RAM.

Get an expansion, pronto.

[WarFaceChamp]

Ordered!

What about the files not showing?

"I noticed that when I copy files in WinUAE by mounting a Windows folder- the files dosn't show in the amiga drives before selecting "Show all files" Could this be the error?
How do I correct this?"

And another quick question.
How do I load the WHD games without preload? In WinUAE I am now running with 2MB ram, but still some of the games dosn't run because lack of ram.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by WarFaceChamp

What about the files not showing?

There is no problem there. Those files don't have an icon, that's why they don't show up. They are not supposed to show up in Workbench.

How do I load the WHD games without preload? In WinUAE I am now running with 2MB ram, but still some of the games dosn't run because lack of ram.

If you are using Tinylauncher, I have no clue. On Workbench, make sure the icon information doesn't have a PRELOAD tooltype.

Many games will just NOT run even with 2MB of RAM, specially those which use a kickstart image.

[CritAnime]

Yup yup that what i found with my own 600 project. Simply having 2mb ram is not enough to support most games. Also some will run slowly or simply freez on load due to processor constraints. Thats why I bought an accelerator. best purchase I made for my amiga 600, next to the HxC.

[alexh]

It is quite easy to free up that extra little bit of RAM that the OS eats during boot and get a much higher level of compatibility.

Reducing the hard drive buffers on the CF card.
Switching the OS to 1-plane using add36k

http://aminet.net/package/util/misc/add36k

[Doc Mindie]

@WarFaceChamp:

You do know that since you have Amiga Forever, if you8 ahve a serial port on the Winbox, you can transfer the Workbench3.1 disks from the AmigaForever onto real floppies and install the real Amiga with them, yes?

Personally, I never used WinUAE to install my real Amiga HD, I've always used floppies with adf2floppy or whatever the tool is called. TransADF works as well, IIRC. And a whole bunch of others.