Amiga questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask

[Jope]

Floppy drive buffers will go into Chip RAM.

[Thomas Richter]

In this generality, no. The trackdisk.device has a track buffer for each unit, but the buffers of the file system for the floppy are as of Kickstart 2.04 no longer required to reside in chip memory. The trackdisk.device can decode and encode MFM data fine from fast memory. Thus, there is no BUFMEMTYPE kludge needed for the trackdisk.device anymore, since quite a long time.

[Jope]

Good that it's fixed. With 1.3 you still need the kludge if you wish to mount FFS floppies. :-)

[dgurv]

Is it possible to connect an extension cable to the side expansion port of an Amiga 500 to locate an expansion card such as ACA500plus more discretely out of sight?

If so, what type of cable would I use? Thank you!

[van_dammesque]

Originally Posted by dgurv

Is it possible to connect an extension cable to the side expansion port of an Amiga 500 to locate an expansion card such as ACA500plus more discretely out of sight?

If so, what type of cable would I use? Thank you!

I doubt it as there would be significant interference being picked up and thus disrupting the signals. I maybe proved wrong though!

[dgurv]

Originally Posted by van_dammesque

I doubt it as there would be significant interference being picked up and thus disrupting the signals. I maybe proved wrong though!

Thanks. I hadn’t considered interference. Happy to find out otherwise if it’s not the case. I’m just weary of something wedged out the side (not that it will stop me buying one)

[Daedalus]

There are a few factors at play. The longer the cable, the more susceptible it would be to noise and signal degradation and the less likely it might be to work. Also, devices using newer technology grafted onto these old systems tend to be less tolerant of noise and degradation than devices from back in the day, so you might find that an extension works fine with an A590 for example, but not the ACA.

I've extended the expansion bus of an A1200 (which is much faster than the A500 expansion bus) using around 10cm of ribbon cable to relocate an accelerator. This works just fine with my Blizzard 1230, but I haven't tried it with any modern devices.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by alkis21

You need to press '0' on the keypad. But I don't remember if it works in the Amiga version.

Thanks...I've tried it, but no dice. I think this trick is actually for the Fate Of Atlantis, in the Last Crusade you just have to git gud or something (sigh).


New question: is there any way to control the overscan colour in Workbench? I don't know if it's really "overscan" but I'm struggling for terms.

Let's say my WB (40.42, I think it's ClassicWB, am using it on MiSTer+CRT TV) itself has some desktop colour and that's all good, but the area outside the active field (the one where I can move the mouse) is black.

And on my real Amiga, some other WB (I think standard 3.1 from ACA500+) has grey colour in that area.

[duga]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Thanks...I've tried it, but no dice. I think this trick is actually for the Fate Of Atlantis, in the Last Crusade you just have to git gud or something (sigh).


New question: is there any way to control the overscan colour in Workbench? I don't know if it's really "overscan" but I'm struggling for terms.

Let's say my WB (40.42, I think it's ClassicWB, am using it on MiSTer+CRT TV) itself has some desktop colour and that's all good, but the area outside the active field (the one where I can move the mouse) is black.

And on my real Amiga, some other WB (I think standard 3.1 from ACA500+) has grey colour in that area.

You mean Borderblank?

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by duga

You mean Borderblank?

Umm..no idea, maybe?


I mean the area between WB's active field and WinUAE's border. Here (ClassicWB) it's black:





And here (standard WB) it is grey:





I'd like it to be grey - or some other colour if possible - in the ClassicWB too.

[Daedalus]

Normally the overscan is whatever colour 0 is set to, but there are various patches that turn off the drawing in the overscan area (which is a feature that came in with ECS), effectively turning the border black. ClassicWB (and most other preconfigured environments) include lots of patches that you'll need to look through to see if you can disable it. BorderBlank is a stand-alone utility that does this, but it could also be in MCP or other multipurpose patches.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

ClassicWB (and most other preconfigured environments) include lots of patches that you'll need to look through to see if you can disable it.

Thanks, but I wouldn't have a first clue as to what to look for or how to disable it...my WB mastery ends at opening drawers and clicking on icons

Actually, now that I know this is normal behaviour I'm more ok with it. I was just worried it might be something wrong with the way MiSTer displays Minimig on a CRT TV.

[Nightshft]

I took a quick look at ClassicWB Lite.

- s:/user-startup calls c:BorderBlank
which can be disabled by just putting a ";" at the beginning of the line

- in WBStartup there is "Copper". The CopperDaemon which generates the background color gradient. In its IconInfo there is a tooltype "BordBlank" which can be deactivated by putting brackets around it, like "(BordBlank)". Dont forget to push <Enter> and Save.

However there seems to be at least a third tool that activates BorderBlank as the border still is black

[dgurv]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

There are a few factors at play. The longer the cable, the more susceptible it would be to noise and signal degradation and the less likely it might be to work. Also, devices using newer technology grafted onto these old systems tend to be less tolerant of noise and degradation than devices from back in the day, so you might find that an extension works fine with an A590 for example, but not the ACA.

I've extended the expansion bus of an A1200 (which is much faster than the A500 expansion bus) using around 10cm of ribbon cable to relocate an accelerator. This works just fine with my Blizzard 1230, but I haven't tried it with any modern devices.

Thanks Daedalus, good to get your experience.

[dgurv]

If I add a hard disk drive to Amiga 500, either in the form of ACA500plus or PiStorm, will I be able to boot from a floppy if I have one inserted at power on?

Will I have a convenient way of seeing the insert floppy disk screen?

[Jope]

Per default it will attempt to boot an inserted floppy before booting from hard disk partitions. This is related to your partitions' boot priorities. DF0 is pri 5 and usually your bootable hard disk partition is pri 0, unless you have manually changed it.

If you are running kickstart 3.0 or newer, you can use BootCtrl to hide your hard disk partitions. That would probably be the most convenient way of seeing the insert floppy screen.

Under kickstart 1.3 you need to physically disconnect or power down the hard disk or edit your partition table to remove bootable flags from your partitions if you want the insert disk screen.

In practice we usually don't bother with this, at least I personally just insert the disk I want to boot from and reset the Amiga.

[dreadnought]

I'm trying to create a hdf using this "Minimig hdf creation" guide. It's a bit old but mostly ok, I had used it before and successfuly made some hdfs.

But now I get stuck on the step where you're supposed to Partition Drive. I delete the existing partition. Then try to drag the slider to fill the one big partition, but every time I get past 1GB, it gets a bit weird, size starts counting from zero and I'm unable to create that whole partition (only some fractional ones).

I'm totally stumped since this hasn't been happening before. I have some hdfs bigger than 1GB which were made using this method, so not sure what's up (I'm using WB 3.1 disk for HD toolbox).

[slaapliedje]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

I'm trying to create a hdf using this "Minimig hdf creation" guide. It's a bit old but mostly ok, I had used it before and successfuly made some hdfs.

But now I get stuck on the step where you're supposed to Partition Drive. I delete the existing partition. Then try to drag the slider to fill the one big partition, but every time I get past 1GB, it gets a bit weird, size starts counting from zero and I'm unable to create that whole partition (only some fractional ones).

I'm totally stumped since this hasn't been happening before. I have some hdfs bigger than 1GB which were made using this method, so not sure what's up (I'm using WB 3.1 disk for HD toolbox).

I thought Workbench 3.1 only supported 1GB of space for the first partition. The others after the first can be larger. Though that might be that it'll only boot on partitions that are 1GB or smaller.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

I'm totally stumped since this hasn't been happening before. I have some hdfs bigger than 1GB which were made using this method, so not sure what's up (I'm using WB 3.1 disk for HD toolbox).

The HDToolBox from 3.1 and the file system of 3.1 are completely unable to handle partitions larger than 4GB, or reach any data beyond the 4GB boundary. To get around this, you need at least 3.9 which can do that (albeit in a kludgy way) or 3.1.4, which supports larger partitions and drives out of the box.

[dreadnought]

I know about the 4GB limit, but the image I'm creating atm is only 1.5GB. I also made some ~1.5GB -2.5GB images in recent months and I'm pretty sure it was using exactly this guide/method (though it's possible I'm missing something simple).

Is it true that WB 3.1 can only make a 1GB partition + the rest, not a one big one?

Do you know any other guide, preferably written, on how to make hdfs?