ADF --> RAM --> floppy disk

[lesta_smsc]

Hello folks,

Been trying lots of different ways around this but now looking for your expertise.

I've got a A500 with Amiga Forever on PC. I can write ADFs using Amiga Explorer without problems but as you can imagine it is SLOW!

My A500 has 1MB RAM in total. Amiga Forever Amiga Boot Disk allows me to use MS-DOS disks (720k). Now what I want to do is:

Have the zipped ADF (ADZ or similar) on the MS-DOS disk but a script to 'extract' in parts, i.e. enough to 'fill' RAM and write to ADF and then swap again to 'fill' RAM with remainder of the tracks that have yet to be written.

I don't mind being able to do this via splitting the ADF too, as long as the script/program is aware there is still more data to be written but does it in this order:
ADF/ADZ on MS-DOS disk --> RAM --> floppy disk to be written (no matter how many swaps needed but likely only 2 for any given disk if NOT compressed)

Any ideas?

[atonal]

I use Commodore Amiga ADF-Transfer-Kit Amiga for my 500.
a software-only adf transfer i got from ebay(germany) for a few euros. it works but involves quite some diskswapping of course.
if you get that and have initial trouble with it i could help.

there is no compression going on i think, but the 880 kb amiga disk/adf is splitted and transfered via two 720 kb pc disks each time. no matter if you go from pc-adf to amiga floppydisk or from amiga floppydisk to pc adf.

once you get its quite easy to transfer adfs from a pc onto a amiga floppy or bring amiga games onto the pc as an adf but takes about 5-10 minutes per game or even a bit more if you consider all preparations and stuff. that is why i consider getting me a used 1200 and buy an PCMCIA transfer Kit with CF for faster transfer.

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by atonal

I use Commodore Amiga ADF-Transfer-Kit Amiga for my 500.
a software-only adf transfer i got from ebay(germany) for a few euros. it works but involves quite some diskswapping of course.
if you get that and have initial trouble with it i could help.

there is no compression going on i think, but the 880 kb amiga disk/adf is splitted and transfered via two 720 kb pc disks each time. no matter if you go from pc-adf to amiga floppydisk or from amiga floppydisk to pc adf.

once you get its quite easy to transfer adfs from a pc onto a amiga floppy or bring amiga games onto the pc as an adf but takes about 5-10 minutes per game or even a bit more if you consider all preparations and stuff. that is why i consider getting me a used 1200 and buy an PCMCIA transfer Kit with CF for faster transfer.

Hmmm if it takes that long. I'm guessing the serial is better lol.

EDIT: I think ADFDump is what I need to use. Just need a program to split and join files accordingly but unsure about the actual file sizes needed for the split.

[OddbOd]

Although what you propose does work just fine it's still pretty slow. The ADFDump package includes scripts to do the splitting and joining automatically on both PC and Amiga, no need to worry about what size the pieces are.

What I'm really curious about is why you don't just buy one of ikonsgr's parallel transfer kits? For 15 quid you can't beat it with a stick.

[Arnie]

I would go for a halfway split 0-39, 40-79. You could archive each split and unpack them one by one as needed, deleting the previous archive when the disk has been written to.

I think transdisk/transwrite, (I can't remember at the moment which one) allows writing split tracks.

Obviously memory is a huge problem and unpacking the archives may use too much memory so you could use two 720kb disks for the swap.

I used to have a boot disk for this very purpose, I'll have a dig around over the coming week and see if I can find it.

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by OddbOd

Although what you propose does work just fine it's still pretty slow. The ADFDump package includes scripts to do the splitting and joining automatically on both PC and Amiga, no need to worry about what size the pieces are.

What I'm really curious about is why you don't just buy one of ikonsgr's parallel transfer kits? For 15 quid you can't beat it with a stick.

Simply because it requires a parallel port which laptop does not have and apparently usb-to-parallel port adaptors tend not to work.

I can't find the PC side programme to do the splits?

Originally Posted by Arnie

I would go for a halfway split 0-39, 40-79. You could archive each split and unpack them one by one as needed, deleting the previous archive when the disk has been written to.

I think transdisk/transwrite, (I can't remember at the moment which one) allows writing split tracks.

Obviously memory is a huge problem and unpacking the archives may use too much memory so you could use two 720kb disks for the swap.

I used to have a boot disk for this very purpose, I'll have a dig around over the coming week and see if I can find it.

Yes I was thinking it might be better for a 2-disk swap approach with the proper ADF as opposed to an archived file being the best solution (as somr archives may not fit on single floppy anyways and it will allow lower RAM sizes to cope.

That would be great if you could find your bootdisk. I don't mind using CLI to conserve as much RAM as possible. However if its going to be a 2-disk swap I can afford to use more RAM e.g. via a GUI.

[OddbOd]

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

I can't find the PC side programme to do the splits?

As long as you're only dealing with "normal" 901120 byte ADF files then any split utility will do as long as you can get 2 equally sized halves. Hjsplit is probably the simplest, just set the split size to 440k, copy each half to 720k DOS floppies, rename both files to tmpdsk and use the LoadADF_1M script on the ADFDump disk to write them back.

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by OddbOd

As long as you're only dealing with "normal" 901120 byte ADF files then any split utility will do as long as you can get 2 equally sized halves. Hjsplit is probably the simplest, just set the split size to 440k, copy each half to 720k DOS floppies, rename both files to tmpdsk and use the LoadADF_1M script on the ADFDump disk to write them back.

Thank you. I'll try that.