How to install from 'floppy' to Hard Drive?

[The_Chugster]

So i recently discovered WinUAE via a youtuber who had a fully functional download set up with a hard drive with a load of games pre-installed, she also had a link to more games that were easily installed.

But there were still a few games that i had that werent on either of these, I was able to find floppy roms, that work fine in the emulator but I would like to know if I can install from these floppies to the hard drive?

My A600 never had a hard drive so I always ran straight from the floppy and i dont know how to install to a drive with workbench

[Nobby_UK]

Depends on the disks:

Some have their own installer
Others have to be copied manually (plus Assigns made)
Others are Non-Dos and need a WHDload Rip + Slave
Others have no Slave and can only be run by floppy

[The_Chugster]

Originally Posted by Nobby_UK

Depends on the disks:

Some have their own installer
Others have to be copied manually (plus Assigns made)
Others are Non-Dos and need a WHDload Rip + Slave
Others have no Slave and can only be run by floppy

Hmm, a lot of words that went over my head there...maybe ill just stick to using them from the floppy, like I did 30 years ago

[Zak]

In this thread there is a list of games that run from harddisk:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?...tallable+games

[Matt_H]

Originally Posted by The_Chugster

Hmm, a lot of words that went over my head there...maybe ill just stick to using them from the floppy, like I did 30 years ago

It's less complicated than it sounds.


Very, very few Amiga games were hard drive installable back in the day. WHDLoad is a tool that can force floppy-only games to run from a hard drive (among other magic). I assume it's already installed on the hard drive image you're using.


To use WHDLoad, you need a special installer for each game. Just download the installer archive for a given game, extract it, run the installer, and insert the floppy disks when prompted.


Since you're using disk images, note that the images need to be in IPF format or otherwise be uncracked originals. Cracked versions don't work with WHDLoad (although there are a few exceptions).

[Nightshft]

There are quite some games that can be copied to HDD though.
Remember that on the Amiga there are Dos disks, which content/files are visible from AmigaDos and there are NonDos disks. Which just directly boot and use their own trackloader. You can't see their contents from Dos so what you need is the former type of floppy/adf/game.

How to do it:
You boot from HDD, insert the floppy/adf and copy the contents of the adf to a hdd folder of your choice. Something like "DH1:games/name". If all works out, you can start the game from there.
Note that you could create an .info file to get an icon on Workbench, but often you have to start the game via shell/cli because not every program on the Amiga is compatible to being started via doubleclick on the icon. (There are workarounds to get an icon nevertheless, but that's a different story.)

To copy the contents you can use the shell and the copy command or tools like DOpus or Dirmaster.
Typically you omit the s folder and/or the startup-sequence. And if there is contents in folders like "libs" or "fonts" you sometimes need that on the equivalent folders of the target system too. Be careful to not overwrite libraries with older versions of them, you don't want that.

Sometimes you additionally need to do an assign, but that becomes less common these days.
It doesn't work with all the games, but quite some, especially younger ones and one-filers.

[Seiya]

some amigaDOS games have empty floppy disk, some games after copy by hand on HDD, with right assign not works because executable search floppy disk. Fortunately are few games that suffers this thing.

[Nonefornow]

HOL shows 1647 HD installable games.

https://hol.abime.net/hol_search.php?N_hd=yes

[hexaae]

Maybe he's talking about WHDLoad HD-installed games?
http://whdload.de/