prowler, could you send to me (/upload to The Zone) the images of those disks (possibly 2 copies of each, one dumped with your PC and the other with your Mac)?
I would like to try a thing or two... :nervous

The original A-Max cart that attaches to the external floppy port has an issue that disables the internal Amiga DF0: for my Amiga 1200 (it works once you get into Mac emulation). You are correct tho, the external floppy, DF2 (and I assume any others) still works fine.

It works fine on my A500 (nothing disabled).

I'm not sure if the A-Max card that plugs in has the same problem with the A4000???

We'll need Prowler to test this for us when he gets his set up and plugged in.

desiv

so the floppy problem is a hindrance rather than a problem if we got external drives

yes WHEN prowler trys amax I`ll have a little smile on my face, think we only been waiting a couple of months for him to try it hehehehhe and now hes got the hardware. Least I think he`s managed to do his sim sockets and install ks3.1 so it won`t be long now I`m sure

Hmmm, no, I'm 99.9999% sure the internal card has not the same problem...
They are completely different.

We waited AGES for him to try A-Max, ahahahahha! :lol :laughing

Hi desiv,

Are you saying that you either have a replacement IC5 (might possibly have been bundled with your A-Max IV disks), or know someone who might have one? :nervous

If the answer is "Yes", then I would very much like to borrow it one day if at all possible. :D

If you are right, and it is possible to find someone who offers GAL duplicating as a professional service, then I would be even more keen to borrow one of those replacement IC5 chips.

If I can't beg or borrow one of those chips, then I'll be looking for ways of doing just that.

Thanks for your detailed summary of the A-Max IV report in the November 1994 issue of the Italian Amiga Magazine. :bowdown :bowdown :bowdown :bowdown :bowdown :bowdown

I'm sure most of that information has appeared elsewhere, but it's very convenient to have it all available for reference in a single post in this thread. :great

That sounds very much like the 720K MFM disks produced by a Macintosh running System 7.1.x with the 720K Floppy Disk Formatter extension loaded. Those 720K A-Max disks from cosmicfrog seem to be something different, however... :(

Yes, of course I will upload them for you, but the copies dumped with my PC and Mac will be identical. I have already checked that they are equivalent.

Unfortunately, no... :sad

Although, I'm not sure why I got AMax IV disks since it won't run with the AMax cart.

I think I need to swing by that electronics shop again and double check their junk pile, just on the off chance (pretty remote, but) that there's a card lying around...

desiv

I thought I was pushing my luck, but I just had to be sure. ;)

That's perfectly understandable. I too probably would have bought them regardless. :D

:great And if that shop often has 'junk' like that for sale, I think you should make it one of your regular haunts! :agree

Has anyone dumped the disks to the zone?. I see a .zip with 5 disks, but i don't know if these are the dumps of the real disks or are cracked versions.
Somebody can help? :bowdown. Also want to know if it works in a plain vanilla 1mb 500.

Hi _ThEcROW,

That Zip file contains five real disk dumps. :)

Yep, should work in a 1MB A500, but unless you have an A-Max cartridge with Mac 128K, 512K or Plus ROMs, you will require a cracked version available from the Official A-Max home page:
http://crossconnect.tripod.com/AMAXHOME.HTML

BTW, the disk image files there are in .DMS format, not .ZIP. They have been renamed so they will download properly.

I can tell you for sure that A-Max version 1 - 2 work on a plain Amiga 500 with 1M. :spin

I am pretty sure I ran 2.5 on my A500 as well...

desiv

Hi Supamax,

I've uploaded to the Zone a zip archive containing dumps of cosmicfrog's A-Max IV 720K formatted MacWrite II and System 6.0.2 disks.

I have also included the same disk images deinterleaved, which makes them more closely resemble a Macintosh formatted disk image, though this does not fix them.

Please bear in mind that these images are known to be infected with the Mac OS viruses as detailed in the report attached here.

In fact, these are the very disk images I submitted to VirusTotal for analysis.

I remember previous occasions when you "tried a thing or two" in this thread which led to significant developments, so I'm eagerly looking forward to the results of your latest tinkering! :D

What I don't get is...
If A-Max IV allows your Amiga drives to read/write Mac floppies....

Why create another format?

Either tell people it's Mac only and convert from the old format, or support Mac and the old format, but I can't see any use for the new format?

If you can't get the old format to work, then use only Mac format?

I don't get the new format.. ;-)

desiv

Hi desiv,

You're not the only one! :crazy

Not one contributor to this thread has been able to get a cracked version of A-Max IV emulation working properly, and cosmicfrog sent me three A-Max disks which have an unusual 720K format which is thought to be that A-Max IV 'new' one.

These are the two reasons I bought the A-Max II Plus card and then asked if anyone had original A-Max IV software they could upload. These are also the reasons why I am seeking information about the IC5 chip upgrade for A-Max IV.

This seems to be the only way we're going to be able to make any progress on this.

I don't get it too :(.
I suppose the answer may be found in the sentence I reported in my previous post: "In order to transfer files between an Amiga equipped with DD drive and a Mac equipped with a SuperDrive (DD/HD), ReadySoft implemented a special format: the low-level data are written in PC format (720 KB) while the disk structure is in Mac format (HFS filesystem)".

So it would seem it was probably created in order to facilitate Mac<-->Amiga transfers.

However, I don't get another thing: Amiga+A-Max IV can format/access disks having this new format... and Mac is supposed to be able to read/write them too.
Prowler could easily image cosmic's disks, but couldn't access their content (if I remember well). So I would conclude that those disks are not in the new A-Max format (*) (which - I repeat - was meant to be easily accessible by the Mac).

And another thing is pissing me off: I don't understand why in H*ll they discarded compatibility with the old A-Max format!!! :mad

(*) unless it was done with variants. I don't think so

Yes, that would seem to be the only possible reason for implementing this 'new' format. :agree

Those disks do seem to be the correct type, i.e. low-level data written in PC format (720 KB) while the disk structure is in Mac format (HFS filesystem), but there's something not quite right nonetheless. I am wondering whether the virus infection has damaged the filesystem. Even an interleaved format would be okay, provided the disk was 'mapped' properly.

I don't understand that either, unless the revised floppy disk format was introduced hurriedly (and, as a consequence, botched) in order to gain an advantage over the competing Emplant product.

:D Thanks mate, I would like to discover something new from those disk images but, given your big experience with Macs and disks restoration, I doubt it :(. I'll try, though!

Damn, you could be right about the infection... do you know/remember if that virus type/variant is able to ruin files only or even the disk fat?

How did you deinterleave them? There's a Mac utility created for that purpose? :confused
And... what do you mean exactly with interleaving in this case (floppies)? I only know of ROMs interleaving... :o

We have a saying: "Sometimes you can't see the wood for the trees", which covers situations where experience counts for nothing. What's often needed on these occasions is a fresh approach, and that's where you may have an advantage in this instance. :)

When formatting floppy disks, it is usual to write track 0 side 0, followed by track 0 side 1, track 1 side 0, track 1 side 1, and so on, but these disks seem to have been formatted in the sequence track 0 side 0, track 1 side 0, track 2 side 0, etc.

That is, they are not written cylinder by cylinder, but track by track, side by side, but the disks have been imaged as if they werre formatted normally.

To deinterleave the images, I just put the tracks in the appropriate order.

All I know about viruses affecting filesystems is what Toni Wilen stated in this post:
http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=632988&postcount=2

:D We have something very similar! I don't remember exactly how they say it in Italy, but it's something like "Riesci a vedere gli alberi ma non la foresta".

How, "by hand"? :bowdown Imaging the disk and then moving filepieces (corresponding to tracks) here and there? I hope not... :shocked
I hope you use some utility...

The program I use is called SPLICE.EXE, a multi-parameter command line utility for DOS. It enables sections of a file to be removed from one file and inserted into another, and much more.

To do jobs like interleaving, I usually invoke the utility repeatedly from a batch file, so in that sense it's automated.

:great:great:great

Damn that virus!!!
It's like the last time I tried to download some of those images, when you uploaded them to The Zone: my Avast! antivirus alerts me and deletes the .zip file as soon as I download it.
I'll have to temporarily disable it every time I have to access those images :(.