Reading Ami-format zip disk

09 February 2003, 14:57

Hello all!

Now I can't be the only one with this problem: I used to use (well, still do) a zip drive, connected via a lovely squirrel adapter, as my A1200's hard drive. What I want now, of course, is to get the contents of that disk onto my (Win9x) PC without having to laboriously transfer it, 720k by 720k, via floppies and CrossDOS.

Does anybody know a way to read Ami-formated zip disks on a PC? I wouldn't know where to start with ADFLib and C++ (or even if ADFLib would help!) so I'm really looking for an existing utility that will access the zip disk as-is, when inserted into my PC's zip drive.

Any suggestions much appreciated!

EDIT: Sorry, should have clarified -- I'm using UAE and would be particularly interested to know if there's any way to mount an Ami-formated zip drive/disk as a directory for use by the emulator too. WinUAE currently doesn't see the drive when it has an ami-zipdisk inserted. *PAIN*

Amiga1992 · 09 February 2003, 15:56

This could be a workaround... I know you can partition that disk on the Amiga and put a PC DOS partition and an AmigaDOS partition. You might want to split some zips in two and move stuff from one partition to the other.

50MB beats transfering 720KB!

Severin · 09 February 2003, 22:33

First, how is the zip disk formatted? did you use a RDB with hdtoolbox or just format it as 'superfloppy'?

do you have a harddrive in your miggy?

if you have, the easiest way is to copy everything from the zip to the HD, bung the zip in the PC, reformat it, back into the miggy and copy everything back (use fat95 filesystem to preserve filenames). there are several utilities to mount PC formatted zip disks on aminet.

Unfortunately the PC doesn't have an equivelent of the miggies mountlist / dosdrivers so reding foriegn disk formats is a bit pain in the arse

Amiga1992 · 09 February 2003, 23:00

Quote:

Originally posted by Sledge
I used to use (well, still do) a zip drive, connected via a lovely squirrel adapter, as my A1200's hard drive.

That answers your HD question Severin.

Just thought about another one (never tried it meself tho but it is a possibility)... most linux flavours come with an Amiga FFS filesystem, maybe you can mount the zipdisk using this?

10 February 2003, 02:24

Thanks for the suggestions guys. No HD in the Amiga itself I'm afraid, Severin... I guess I'm paying the price for being a bit of a smart-arse but, still, having a couple of WB installations for different purposes was useful. Anyway, the zip disk was treated as a normal harddrive and got a dose of hdtoolbox... I'd be interested to know what difference this makes as I am not familiar with super-floppies at all.

Akira, as luck would have it I have SuSe sitting on the shelf by my side -- access through Linux sounds very proimising and I will try it out.

Cheers!

Amiga1992 · 10 February 2003, 03:13

I used to have SuSe myslef and it brought the option to install the Amiga FFS filesystem... Mounting Atapi ZIP disks is not that hard, you just have to know which device your ZIP drive is (was a pain in the ass to figure out on my system)

after that, I'd force-mount it as AmigaFFS filesystem and see what happens! Please report back with results

03 March 2003, 04:09

Hmmmm....

Is there any way you could beg, borrow or steal another SCSI ZIP drive? (I'd lend you mine, but there's an ocean between us and I do use the Drive quite frequently

).

If you can, then you could daisy chain them on your squirrel (one address "5" and one address "6") and put an MS-DOS ZIP disk in one after you have booted off the other. You could mount the MS-DOS disk with either Cross-DOS (Yuck!

) or with Fat95 (MUCH Better

).

For a little explanation on mounting MS-DOS ZIP Disks using fat95, try reading this post here .

If you can't get your hands on another ZIP Drive, how about a smaller sized 2.5 inch HardDrive (something in the "less than 1 gig" size is getting cheaper all the time!) ? Installing it in your 1200 is a piece of cake, and you can still boot from various ZIPs if that's what you prefer.

I just checked the website of a place that is just down the street from me, and they have a used 200 MG Drive for just $10.00 Canadian! That is only 4.27 UK Pounds! You might have a place near you that offers a similar deal...You could get the Cable on ebay (check here ) or they might have one at the same place you find a HardDrive...

10 May 2003, 15:56

Sledge,

if you still did not find a solution for this you might want to take a look at this.

Kinda long way around but it works. If you happened to find out another or better way, please let me know.

Twistin'Ghost · 11 May 2003, 03:36

Quote:

Originally posted by Maja
Sledge,

if you still did not find a solution for this you might want to take a look at this.

Kinda long way around but it works. If you happened to find out another or better way, please let me know.

Thanks for that link...I can make use of this info (I have a bunch of Amiga zip disks that I need to dump).

Toni Wilen · 11 May 2003, 10:58

ZIP disks are properly detected in next WinUAE release. (for some reason Windows guesses that there are single empty MBR partition and of course WinUAE ignored it...)

11 May 2003, 18:26

Thats really good news to read, Toni!

Anyway, I don't consider the effort I made to create that workshop to be wasted time. I think it's a good thing to now that there is a way to get images of those disks under Windows to serve backup purpose, too.

Thank you for your effort!

11 May 2003, 18:29

Quote:

Originally posted by Twistin'Ghost
Thanks for that link...I can make use of this info (I have a bunch of Amiga zip disks that I need to dump).

Make sure to have the latest version of this workshop at hand. I reworked it last night due to some new insights. Actually there was one step too much in it.

Twistin'Ghost · 12 May 2003, 03:14

Quote:

Originally posted by Toni Wilen
ZIP disks are properly detected in next WinUAE release. (for some reason Windows guesses that there are single empty MBR partition and of course WinUAE ignored it...)

Does this include Amiga-formatted zip disks (as opposed to PC and/or Mac formatted).

Quote:

Originally posted by Maja
Make sure to have the latest version of this workshop at hand. I reworked it last night due to some new insights. Actually there was one step too much in it.

Thanks for that! I made a PDF of that page for handy usage, but I'll bang up a new one now!

Toni Wilen · 12 May 2003, 08:19

Quote:

Does this include Amiga-formatted zip disks

Yes, they will appear at "add hard disk" -menu.

18 May 2003, 12:23

Hi,

Maybe this could help too : use a serial cable to transfer the ZIP content to the PC (if you still have a real Amiga of course

)

09 February 2003, 14:57	#1
Sledge Posts: n/a	Reading Ami-format zip disk Hello all! Now I can't be the only one with this problem: I used to use (well, still do) a zip drive, connected via a lovely squirrel adapter, as my A1200's hard drive. What I want now, of course, is to get the contents of that disk onto my (Win9x) PC without having to laboriously transfer it, 720k by 720k, via floppies and CrossDOS. Does anybody know a way to read Ami-formated zip disks on a PC? I wouldn't know where to start with ADFLib and C++ (or even if ADFLib would help!) so I'm really looking for an existing utility that will access the zip disk as-is, when inserted into my PC's zip drive. Any suggestions much appreciated! EDIT: Sorry, should have clarified -- I'm using UAE and would be particularly interested to know if there's any way to mount an Ami-formated zip drive/disk as a directory for use by the emulator too. WinUAE currently doesn't see the drive when it has an ami-zipdisk inserted. PAIN

03 March 2003, 04:09	#7
zaqwsx Posts: n/a	Hmmmm.... Is there any way you could beg, borrow or steal another SCSI ZIP drive? (I'd lend you mine, but there's an ocean between us and I do use the Drive quite frequently ). If you can, then you could daisy chain them on your squirrel (one address "5" and one address "6") and put an MS-DOS ZIP disk in one after you have booted off the other. You could mount the MS-DOS disk with either Cross-DOS (Yuck! ) or with Fat95 (MUCH Better ). For a little explanation on mounting MS-DOS ZIP Disks using fat95, try reading this post here . If you can't get your hands on another ZIP Drive, how about a smaller sized 2.5 inch HardDrive (something in the "less than 1 gig" size is getting cheaper all the time!) ? Installing it in your 1200 is a piece of cake, and you can still boot from various ZIPs if that's what you prefer. I just checked the website of a place that is just down the street from me, and they have a used 200 MG Drive for just $10.00 Canadian! That is only 4.27 UK Pounds! You might have a place near you that offers a similar deal...You could get the Cable on ebay (check here ) or they might have one at the same place you find a HardDrive... Last edited by zaqwsx; 03 March 2003 at 04:24.

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09 February 2003, 15:56	#2
Amiga1992 Registered User Join Date: May 2001 Location: ? Posts: 19,658	This could be a workaround... I know you can partition that disk on the Amiga and put a PC DOS partition and an AmigaDOS partition. You might want to split some zips in two and move stuff from one partition to the other. 50MB beats transfering 720KB!

09 February 2003, 22:33	#3
Severin Registered User Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Gloucester / UK Posts: 700	First, how is the zip disk formatted? did you use a RDB with hdtoolbox or just format it as 'superfloppy'? do you have a harddrive in your miggy? if you have, the easiest way is to copy everything from the zip to the HD, bung the zip in the PC, reformat it, back into the miggy and copy everything back (use fat95 filesystem to preserve filenames). there are several utilities to mount PC formatted zip disks on aminet. Unfortunately the PC doesn't have an equivelent of the miggies mountlist / dosdrivers so reding foriegn disk formats is a bit pain in the arse

10 February 2003, 02:24	#5
Sledge Posts: n/a	Thanks for the suggestions guys. No HD in the Amiga itself I'm afraid, Severin... I guess I'm paying the price for being a bit of a smart-arse but, still, having a couple of WB installations for different purposes was useful. Anyway, the zip disk was treated as a normal harddrive and got a dose of hdtoolbox... I'd be interested to know what difference this makes as I am not familiar with super-floppies at all. Akira, as luck would have it I have SuSe sitting on the shelf by my side -- access through Linux sounds very proimising and I will try it out. Cheers!

10 February 2003, 03:13	#6
Amiga1992 Registered User Join Date: May 2001 Location: ? Posts: 19,658	I used to have SuSe myslef and it brought the option to install the Amiga FFS filesystem... Mounting Atapi ZIP disks is not that hard, you just have to know which device your ZIP drive is (was a pain in the ass to figure out on my system) after that, I'd force-mount it as AmigaFFS filesystem and see what happens! Please report back with results

10 May 2003, 15:56	#8
Maja Posts: n/a	Sledge, if you still did not find a solution for this you might want to take a look at this. Kinda long way around but it works. If you happened to find out another or better way, please let me know.

11 May 2003, 10:58	#10
Toni Wilen WinUAE developer Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Hämeenlinna/Finland Age: 49 Posts: 26,573	ZIP disks are properly detected in next WinUAE release. (for some reason Windows guesses that there are single empty MBR partition and of course WinUAE ignored it...)

11 May 2003, 18:26	#11
Maja Posts: n/a	Thats really good news to read, Toni! Anyway, I don't consider the effort I made to create that workshop to be wasted time. I think it's a good thing to now that there is a way to get images of those disks under Windows to serve backup purpose, too. Thank you for your effort!

18 May 2003, 12:23	#15
Magus Perdé Posts: n/a	Hi, Maybe this could help too : use a serial cable to transfer the ZIP content to the PC (if you still have a real Amiga of course )

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