Question regarding ADF to Amiga Floppy using DMS application

[Kenan]

I've found this little tutorial at amiga.org:
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost...8&postcount=27

My questions are:

How do I format a 1.44MB floppy disk to be used with Amiga? Can this be done inside WinUAE enviroment in Workbench ie. would WINUAE recognize PC Floppy drive and format the media (floppy) inside the WINUAUE Workbench?

How would I then unpack the game.dms file I copied onto the newly formatted blank Amiga floppy, using a Shell command perhaps?

I would like to do all of this in the emulator (WINUAE) in case I don't have a Workbench disk with my Amiga, basically to setup the whole ADF to Floppy process inside WINUAE and basically after it's all done, plug the disk into Amiga and play.

Thanks in advance.

[thomas]

The tutorial you linked only describes how to create the game.dms file on a PC. It does not mention how to transport this file to your Amiga or how to handle it on the Amiga.

1.44MB floppy disks can be formatted in Windows Explorer. You don't need an emulator for that.

1.76MB floppy disks can only be formatted on a real Amiga (or with a Catweasel or similar hardware). Your Amiga needs a high density floppy drive to read 1.76MB floppy disks.

The linked tutorial speaks of 720K floppy disks. These can be read by normal (double) density drives. You need a Workbench disk and a Storage disk on your Amiga to activate PC0 and read 720K floppy disks.

Without a disk which boots your Amiga you are lost. There is no way to write to Amiga floppy disks without a booted Amiga. (Except for the hardware expansions mentioned above).

[Kenan]

^^Thanks for the reply.

Ok. so how does that all relate to the 1.44MB floppies (as those are available for purchase in my local PC stores) as I don't have or plan to use neither 720k nor 1.76MB floppies. If the 1.44MB floppies were to be formatted using Windows Explorer, could they then be read by a real Amiga (as a normal, formatted floppy)?

And..since I don't have "real" Workbench and Storage disks, could I use the ADF versions of those in WinUAE to convert the ADF to Amiga floppy and then use it on a real Amiga?

[thomas]

Actually there is no 1.44MB floppy. There are HD (High Density) and DD (Double Density) floppy disks. HD disks format to 1.44MB on the PC and to 1.76MB on the Amiga. DD disks format to 720KB on the PC and to 880KB on the Amiga. HD floppies are labelled as 1.44MB because this is de facto standard since more than 15 years.

A standard A1200 has a DD drive and thus can only read 880KB or 720KB disks.

You can format a HD disk as DD in the Amiga's drive. If you cover the second hole (by which the drive identifies a HD disk) you can do this in a PC drive, too. However, since XP Windows does not allow to format DD disks in the GUI any more. You have to use the command line.

The challange is to store a 880KB file on a 720KB disk.

The tutorial shows one way. But it is not reliable, though. DMS by default only stores sectors of the disk which are marked as occupied in the file system's bitmap. There are games which show as empty in the file system but have required data in the unoccupied sectors. Those games will be mangled by DMS if you don't specify options to copy all sectors.

A better (and easier) way is to compress the ADF file with ZIP or LHA. Then all sectors remain in the image.

And..since I don't have "real" Workbench and Storage disks, could I use the ADF versions of those in WinUAE to convert the ADF to Amiga floppy and then use it on a real Amiga?

No. As mentioned above, a PC can only write 720KB disks and the Amiga can only read 720KB disks if you run software. If you are not able to boot your Amiga, you cannot read any disk. You need at least one bootable Amiga floppy disk with CrossDOS or similar software, otherwise you are lost.

Once you have a means to transfer ADF files from the PC to your Amiga, you can create real floppy disks from all ADFs you have, including Workbench and related disks.

The only way to create Amiga floppy disks on a PC is additional hardware like Catweasel or Kryoflux.

[lesta_smsc]

What about using ADZ format?http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/TransADF - can be used to write these back without requiring much memory and can work directly from zipped disks!

BTW do you have any proper Amiga disks with Workbench on them e.g. DPaint?

[Kenan]

^^No I don't. I ordered one of NOS Petro's Amigas 1200 (June delivery). But..in the meantime I found a very cheap (and working) A600 with 100 disks, 2 joysticks and all the basic equipment..so I was thinking, if I get that A600 (in the meantime), of finding a way to add more ADF games to play on it. I could get a PC floppy drive and can also buy HD disks..I don't know if the guy who's selling the Amiga has Workbench disk in the games pack so I wanted to cover all bases in case he doesn't.

[lesta_smsc]

Might be worth asking the guy... then you will be all set. As for HD disks (just cover whole on HD disk and format in PC as 720KB disk) then use to transfer files onto Amiga (provided you can read on Amiga side)

[Cymru]

As I recall, a DD floppy is 1 MB and a HD floppy is 2 MB. The "way" the data is organized and the amount of "error correction" determine the final storage capacity There was an old Amiga program that could get over 900K out of a DD disk, but it didn't "catch on." The Aminet programs, ReadKwik and RiteKwik (found in DosKwik.lha) got close; also they got quite a good speed of transfer, but these were not "random access."

[lesta_smsc]

A similar program called MaxiDisk was available on PC
"In addition to normal DOS disks, MAXI Disk will also format special DOS compatible extended capacity disks which give you 420k on a 360k disk, 800k on a 720k disk, 1.4 meg on a 1.2 meg disk, 1.6 meg on a 1.44 meg disk, and 3.2 meg on a 2.88 meg disk.

MAXI has many advanced disk copy features, such as copying to and from disk image files (making multiple copies a snap), as well as the ability to copy non-DOS disks, such as Macintosh 1.44 meg and many CP/M and other non standard types."

I wonder if Amiga disks could be copied in this way?

[Amigan123]

I have a basic 1mb Amiga 600, the best way to transfer stuff is to setup an amiga HDD either get an old IDE drive or CF Card Adapter.

You can format and Install workbench on your PC using WinUAE - can be a bit tricky, getting all the setting right to detect the drive.

Once its setup you can load into Workbench and install a Compact Flash PCMCIA driver and get a cheap PCMCIA CF Card Adapter and an old CF Card.

You can then transfer .adf files from your PC to Amiga using a CF Card.

Then on the Amiga use a utility called tracktool to write the .adf back to floppy disk.

[Cymru]

There are other ways to ADF and Un-ADF images using a PC. My problem is that my current PC (5-years old) lacks a FDD controller and I STUPIDLY put Win 7 64-bit on it precluding the use of a Catweasel MK3/4 and a tonne of other programs useful for my Amy. I did slip in a PCI parallel card for direct ADF transfers and simulated Amiga FDD using MPDOS.

[lesta_smsc]

You would be better off with setting up dual boot and having XP as the other OS.

[Kenan]

Originally Posted by Amigan123

I have a basic 1mb Amiga 600, the best way to transfer stuff is to setup an amiga HDD either get an old IDE drive or CF Card Adapter.

I plan on buying only one CF card from AMigakit (setup for A1200) so I'm considering getting one of those old IDE drives you mentioned (for my basic A600). They should be compatible with A600 regardless of their capacity or?

Do the newer PCs still have IDE drive connectors at all?

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Kenan

I plan on buying only one CF card from AMigakit (setup for A1200) so I'm considering getting one of those old IDE drives you mentioned (for my basic A600). They should be compatible with A600 regardless of their capacity or?

Do the newer PCs still have IDE drive connectors at all?

The IDE drive should support PIO Mode 0, which all old ones should. I used a 370MB one in my A600 before I replaced it with a CF card. The CF card is a lot bigger, faster and quieter, so I'd go with one of those. You should keep the size below 4GB for FFS (or 8GB for PFS3).

New PC motherboards generally do not have IDE connectors. They started to disappear about 2-3 years ago.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by demolition

New PC motherboards generally do not have IDE connectors. They started to disappear about 2-3 years ago.

Of course they are still available on a small range of them, as are PS/2 keyboard/mouse ports and FDD controllers.

[Kenan]

In the end, looks like my best bet is to wait for my CF IDE hd to arrive and then use it to transfer ADFs to Amiga floppy. One question though: I'm planning to use TransADF as it seems fairly simple to use. However, I'm not sure when to go for the default 79 tracks when copying ADF to floppy and when to change the number of tracks to a higher value?

How can I tell which game ie. ADF has a certain number of tracks and how does this relfect the available space on an amiga formatted floppy disk?

Thanks.

[prowler]

The number of usable tracks will always depend on the ADF image being written to the disk.

For example, you cannot write an 80-track ADF image to a disk previously formatted to use 82 tracks and end up with two more free tracks than the original (80-track) disk had.

Additional note: In order to use more than 80 tracks (0-79) on an Amiga floppy disk requires an updated trackdisk.device (such as that included with AROS 68k) and a revised mountlist.

[Kenan]

^^Thanks for the explanation.
Is there, however, any way of knowing ie. doing some sort of diagnostic (tool?) of the ADF to see how many tracks does it have before using TransADF or similar software to store it on a floppy?

Can this trackdisk.device, if neccessary, be updated for WB 2.0/2.1+ ?

I know it's lot of questions but..bear with me..

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Kenan

Is there, however, any way of knowing ie. doing some sort of diagnostic (tool?) of the ADF to see how many tracks does it have before using TransADF or similar software to store it on a floppy?

You can tell the number of tracks fronm the image size.

A standard 880kB floppy disk image is 901,120 bytes. This disk has 1,760 512-byte sectors, 11 sectors per track, 80 tracks per side.

Thus, an 82-track disk image is 2x82x11x512 = 923,648 bytes, and has 1,802 sectors.

Originally Posted by Kenan

Can this trackdisk.device, if neccessary, be updated for WB 2.0/2.1+ ?

I know it's lot of questions but..bear with me..

You can try using the trackdisk.device from the AROS 68k distribution with Workbench 2.0/2.1 and up, but you will need to create an appropriate mountlist for 82 tracks based on that for DF0: and call it something like EF0, then mount it.

Then, if it is working, you will be able to use the AmigaDOS Format command on the device EF0: to produce your 82-track disks.

[Kenan]

Thank you for your time and the info provided Prowler!