amigaXfer: Fast agentless serial port transfer tool. Bootstrap Amiga w/o floppies.

[admiral]

Originally Posted by ovale

If I'm not wrong, pin 46 on the A500 expansion port is _BERR. Maybe it is easier than open the computer.

I do have a connector wired to a breadboard, where I only need to press a switch to BERR. I can also NMI.

If it was actually easier, or if the connector was actually common and purchasable in any electronics store (it isn't) I'd recommend that. But without a connector, it's actually much harder. It does not help that the BERR signal is on the lower face of the board edge.

Ultimately, only users who do not have any bootable floppies do need this method, and they need to open it anyway to figure out board version and check for possible varta barrel batteries. Most users have Workbench, and can just use amigaXfer with loadwb -debug method.

[admiral]

I have re-issued 1.0.1 release zip.

Win7 apparently has trouble unpacking zips packed by advcomp.

Aminet takes time until they manually handle uploads. Github already has the new version.

[admiral]

amigaXfer 1.1.0 now available.

Highlights:

• There's an important bugfix for floppy tool not working at all with "FCh" error on some configurations.
• The floppyless bootstrap should now work on all kickstarts.

Full list of changes on the links below.

https://github.com/rvalles/pyamigadebug/releases/
http://aminet.net/package/comm/misc/amigaXfer_win32

[Jope]

Nice! I gave it a brief whirl between my Linux laptop and A600 + ACA620EC and the 512k transfer speed works quite well.

[LIV2]

Tested in my A2000 with kick 3.1 works great

Very cool how you were able to make the crash bootstrap work with other kick versions!

[admiral]

Originally Posted by LIV2

Tested in my A2000 with kick 3.1 works great

Yay. Nice to hear user success stories! Thank you very much for the testing.

Very cool how you were able to make the crash bootstrap work with other kick versions!

Yeah... ultimately what I had to do is what I had been lazy to: Just make my own resident table entry. The normally never reached code I use in <v36 just isn't there anymore in newer kickstarts.
In its place, there's an empty infinite loop after setting background color to 0xF0F.

[admiral]

Originally Posted by Jope

Nice! I gave it a brief whirl between my Linux laptop and A600 + ACA620EC and the 512k transfer speed works quite well.

Thanks for testing! FWIW the 512k transfer speed works even on my plain A500 with 512KB C00000 expansion.

The limiting factor that makes it not work everywhere is that the PC serial port only does 115200, so typically the faster speed is only reachable with a usb-serial and a short cable.

[admiral]

amigaXfer 1.1.1 now available.

Highlights:

• Bugfix for setpatch'd AmigaOS 2.x crashing on Dos Tool.
• Filetransfers can now be cancelled.

Full list of changes on the links below.

https://github.com/rvalles/pyamigadebug/releases
http://aminet.net/package/comm/misc/amigaXfer_win32

[Jope]

Cool stuff! Keep on keeping on. :-)

[lesta_smsc]

Just messaging here as this thread is more appropriate than my own where I heard about this, but if I use that bootable (HelloAmi) does it achieve the necessary debug menu for optimised transfer the same way?

[admiral]

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

Just messaging here as this thread is more appropriate than my own where I heard about this, but if I use that bootable (HelloAmi) does it achieve the necessary debug menu for optimised transfer the same way?

As long as you get into the debugger, it doesn't matter by which method you did. AmigaXfer uses the debugger to take over the system. Serial transfers will run with interrupts disabled, so they are very fast.

There's a caveat; if dos.library is initialized you get filetransfers, otherwise (e.g. via debug bootblock) you don't, but that's about it in practice. AmigaXfer will still be very useful in reading/writing floppies (e.g. workbench) for you.

HelloAmi's loadwb (which doubles as icon.library) enables the debug menu, like loadwb -debug does. But beware HelloAmi doesn't have the RAM: device, so it's less than ideal for file transfer. It should still be possible to transfer files to an already formatted floppy (including helloami's itself). I mention it because it's a legal download that will get you to workbench and won't require purchasing or otherwise obtaining AmigaOS.

[ppill]

So cool! In the Hombre package I've included every worthwhile way of transferring files from the PC I could find back then, but this is on another level.

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by ppill

So cool! In the Hombre package I've included every worthwhile way of transferring files from the PC I could find back then, but this is on another level.

Update possible maybe? I've used Hombre a lot back from when I started using serial again for transfers before PCMCIA days lol.

[admiral]

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

Update possible maybe? I've used Hombre a lot back from when I started using serial again for transfers before PCMCIA days lol.

If I did this, it would be by including the "debug" tool I bundle with AmigaXfer, and making it resident and accessible via some keyboard shortcut and menu.

Perhaps I'd also use AmigaXfer's optdebug bootblock.

Originally Posted by ppill

So cool! In the Hombre package I've included every worthwhile way of transferring files from the PC I could find back then, but this is on another level.

Yes, I also used hombre back in the day. Thanks for your work!

[Overdoc]

Just a stupid question:

To be able to access WB in debug mode, I need to add the -debug parameter to the loadWB command in startup-sequence of my Workbench disk?
Does it then change anything else in Workbench? Or can I just always leave it in debug mode, without any other restrictions?
And when I load Workbench in debug mode, then I don't need to do any hardware modifications on the board, correct?

Never used serial transfer method, so this is new ground to me....

[Jope]

You can leave it if you like, it just adds the menu entries. On the other hand, once you have file transfer going, you can copy the debug exe to your amiga and start that when needed.

[Overdoc]

Thanks Jope, that sound great!
So whenever I sell an Amiga 500 with some disks to someone, I can include debug.exe on the Workbench disk, and he can start transferring his most loved ADFs to the disks.

Finally, with this speed, the null modem cable solution becomes the best and most simple one available!

This is really a BIG step for the 'how can I put ADFs on my Amiga disks' problem, which everyone who returns to the Amiga from the old days will sooner or later run into..

Many thanks to admiral!!

[admiral]

Originally Posted by Overdoc

Does it then change anything else in Workbench? Or can I just always leave it in debug mode, without any other restrictions?

Yes, you can leave -debug on. AIUI, all it does is add the extra menu.

Originally Posted by Overdoc

And when I load Workbench in debug mode, then I don't need to do any hardware modifications on the board, correct?

Correct.

The hardware trick, for people without workbench, also doesn't involve modifications. It's just a one-off brief connection, then you'd get a workbench written and never need to do it again.

[lesta_smsc]

I've tried nearly 1 hour to get this working with no success on A500, A600 or A1200!

I'm using HelloAmi to access debug.

If I select CrashEntry it will do the blink but not reboot so I have to do this manually.

If I select nothing and try to connect it will either do a reboot to guru (then back to reading floppy) or just sit there idle.

I'm using USB to serial and tried 2 different types with same outcome.

I'm using Windows 7 64bit if that has any bearing to the failure?

[admiral]

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

I've tried nearly 1 hour to get this working with no success on A500, A600 or A1200!

I'm using HelloAmi to access debug.

If I select CrashEntry it will do the blink but not reboot so I have to do this manually.

If I select nothing and try to connect it will either do a reboot to guru (then back to reading floppy) or just sit there idle.

I'm using USB to serial and tried 2 different types with same outcome.

I'm using Windows 7 64bit if that has any bearing to the failure?

I do test with win7 64bit, it is definitely fine. I also have multiple A500 and an A1200, and a wide assortment of serial adapters I've done extensive testing with. You shouldn't need CrashEntry or anything, defaults should work, as long as you select the correct serial port and RomWack (1.x, 2.x and Hyperion 3.1.4/3.2) vs SAD (CBM 3.x, 3.5/3.9). Amiga will appear frozen as soon as you enter the debugger via workbench's debug/romwack/sad menu option, and AmigaXfer will attach to it w/o issue.

Is having a serial cable even doing anything at all, vs no cable? You should be getting a lot of debug output from AmigaXfer's console window if there's any sort of communication at all. I suspect there isn't (and you're stuck with the "waiting for amiga to enter debugger" text). If my guess is wrong and there actually is visible communication past that text, the first thing you should try is lowering the link bitrate setting in AmigaXfer's SetupDialog to a very safe (and slow) 9600 bps.

You can easily test whether the serial cabling works at all irrespective of AmigaXfer, by ensuring (on your workbench's preferences) serial baudrate is to 9600, 8bit, 1 stop, no parity, no flow control. I believe these are the defaults except XON/XOFF, which shouldn't affect this test anyway.

Then you'd do, in an AmigaShell CLI:

mount aux:
newcli aux:

A shell prompt will appear on the serial port, at 9600 8N1, and will be usable on any serial comms program for Windows (press return on your terminal program if you don't get the prompt, to force a reprint). I think Windows bundles some terminal, but in any event Putty will work.

I suspect your cabling is straight. RX<>RX and TX<>TX won't allow for communication, and you won't get a shell prompt with this test, nor will any serial port communication software (e.g. the stuff in Hombre, NComm, etc.) work. On top of that, some 25<>9 pin adapters do null-modem crossing... if you do it twice (if your cable also does it) you end up straight.

If you don't have the right adapters, but have some male to female duponts, you can just connect GND<>GND, RX<>TX, TX<>RX with the duponts, between your cable's connector and the Amiga's serial port connector.

It's the ugliest thing ever, but I've done it before and it works. Once your wiring is good, amigaXfer will work flawlessly.