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

[admiral]

amigaXfer is an easy to use GUI tool for lightning fast serial-port floppy and file transfers.

http://aminet.net/package/comm/misc/amigaXfer_win32

All Classic Amiga models are supported. All AmigaOS (1.x/2.x/3.x), all Kickstart versions (I have tested 34/37/39/40/45/46).
All you need is an Amiga, another computer and a serial cable (any null-modem will work, only 3 wires used).

Its main feature is that it does not require special software on the Amiga side, as it uses the kickstart's builtin serial debugger.

The easiest way to get into the debugger and use amigaXfer is via the extra workbench menu when wb is loaded via loadwb -debug.

Additionally, it can be used to bootstrap an Amiga without bootable floppies.

https://www.rvalles.net/bootstrappin...ga-floppy.html

By disabling interrupts and polling the serial port directly, speeds as high as
512kbps are achieved, even on a basic Amiga 500 with its 7MHz cpu clock.

Both floppy images and files can be transferred in both directions. Additional functions are available.

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

[Jope]

Super cool.

[btp]

That's just brilliant!

[robinsonb5]

That's amazing - really cool!

[djukon]

Great job, admiral! Thank you so much for providing this to the community .

[nivam]

Thank you Admiral

[duga]

Very cool.

[admiral]

Thanks for the warm response.

I have since learned people are apparently getting the idea that the hardware hack is necessary to run amigaXfer even floppies available, which is totally wrong (!).

I have also heard some people got the impression it only works with AmigaOS 1.x, which is also not the case.

Thus I have edited the article to try and make it clearer in that regard.

It'd be nice if someone were to actually report they tried amigaXfer in any capacity (e.g. normal use, not necessarily the floppyless method) and it worked (or not).

[Acill]

Love it! had to share this on my site as well.

[chiark]

Just tried to download this, and your file is being flagged as a trojan by Windows SmartScreen - it matches the signature of Trojan:Win32/Wacatac.B!ml within amigaxfer/amigaxfer.exe.

I've just run amigaxfer.exe through virustotal.com and EVERY engine is flagging it as malicious.

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/...1748/detection

Any ideas what's going on?

For now, I STRONGLY advise people to use extreme caution. It could be a false positive, but when 27 engines are saying it's dodgy, well... It's worth taking care!

[admiral]

Originally Posted by chiark

Just tried to download this, and your file is being flagged as a trojan by Windows SmartScreen - it matches the signature of Trojan:Win32/Wacatac.B!ml within amigaxfer/amigaxfer.exe.

I've just run amigaxfer.exe through virustotal.com and EVERY engine is flagging it as malicious.

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/...1748/detection

Any ideas what's going on?

Notice it's far from every engine and that they each detect different things. At some point in time, somebody must have written malicious code using the python language, then packaged it into an executable with pyinstaller, which is the most popular open source tool for turning python into binaries. So now a common code pattern in pyinstaller-made executables is detected by some antiviruses.

Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence, and there's not much that can realistically be done, besides telling AV vendors it's a false positive and hope their databases will improve over time.

Refer to https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller/issues/4633

I do my development work on Linux, and the binaries were built in a clean Win7 vm with no inbound network connectivity, installed from a microsoft ISO for the single purpose of building amigaXfer binaries that work on win7 32bit and higher. This should be a fairly decent standard as far as making binary releases goes.

Ultimately, you do not need to trust the binaries; You can install python, pyserial, wxpython and run amigaXfer from sources. You'll also need the m68k object files, you can copy over from the windows release 'asm' directory, or build yourself from the source with vasm or phxass. A vasm-based Makefile is provided. You can package your own binaries with pyinstaller, too, using the .spec file included in the sources.

[chiark]

Thanks! I’ll see if there’s any way to sort this because the false positives seem endemic: I assume the problem is that giving Python admin rights through an installer could (emphasis could!) be an incredibly bad thing to do, hence heuristic scanners all saying “uh oh”...

I did check the source too, that’s the ultimate way of validating, but I couldn’t see the process to make the executable: I’ll do some digging.

Thanks again

[admiral]

Originally Posted by chiark

I did check the source too, that’s the ultimate way of validating, but I couldn’t see the process to make the executable: I’ll do some digging.

If amigaXfer runs correctly from sources (i.e. you have python 3.8+, wxpython, pyserial and the m68k object files in the asm directory, plus you've tested running amigaXfer with python interpreter), and you've got pyinstaller installed, it's possible to do a build like this:

pyinstaller amigaXfer.spec

The .spec file is in the github repository. I only committed it now, but it has not been modified since; It needs to be edited to replace the hardcoded path. I will eventually fix it to not need that, but this is what 1.0.0 was built from.

[admiral]

amigaXfer 1.0.1 now available.

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

[E-Penguin]

Fascinating writeup on how the floppy-less bootstrap works.

[admiral]

Originally Posted by E-Penguin

Fascinating writeup on how the floppy-less bootstrap works.

Glad you liked it.

I had to edit it several times after publishing, as people misunderstood the floppyless method as the only method (!).

[fryguy]

Really cool!

[chiark]

Thanks again for the explanations. This really is excellent, and whilst the diskless boot is only one feature, it’s exceptionally cool

[admiral]

What I need the most is feedback from users. I have heard some reports, but they're really scarce.

Does amigaXfer work for you? Did you test all the tools? What Amiga / kickstart do you have?

[ovale]

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