AMAX II - Mac Floppies Not Activating?

[Warty]

I acquired an AMAX II cartridge the other day (REALLY VERY interested in a II+ or IV card if anyone wants to part with theirs), and have been trying to get it working. I had an AMAX II for my A500 back in the day, and then a II+ (might have been a IV, don't remember) for my A3000. I remember using an external 800K Mac Drive on the II, and an internal non-commodore high density drive on the II+/IV board. That was great. Got me through college.

Anyway, the II is pretty basic: you just plug a Mac Drive into it, and it should recognize it, and let you read/write native Mac 800K floppies.

On my current A2000 though, it's like the drive doesn't exist. I know it's getting power (I also tried my FloppyEmu, which is powered by the +5V in the floppy connection, and it's getting power).

Setup:
-A2000
- 1 Gotek as DF0
- 1 Amiga floppy as DF1 (I tried disconnecting and clearing J301, it didn't make any difference. and shouldn't have, AMAX is supposed to work with I think 3 amiga floppies)
- matze 68030 upgrade with CF IDE adapter
- A2091 SCSI adapter, which is basically acting as a RAM expansion at this point, the CF adapter thing I think takes over the SCSI chain, but not 100% sure on that)
- CrossMac installed (it also sees nothing from the Mac Drive)

I tried shapeshifter too, and it doesn't see the Mac floppy either. (I think it is supposed to, but not sure)

I saw one reference in the AMAX manual about problems possibly being with CIA chips. I installed Amiga Test Kit and ran that, but I'm not sure what I'm looking for. The first CIA test page didn't show any problems, and the 2nd one (the one with the warning) I couldn't figure out what it was supposed to do.

BTW, Amax II does fire up and show the blinking Mac floppy with question mark, and tells me to eject it when I put in an amiga floppy in an amiga drive. So the ROMS seem fine.

Any ideas?

[Retro1234]

I don't know really about reading Mac disks with external drive.

There was a System6 disk floating around that lets A-max boot from normal amiga internal drive - apparently it's A-max format disks not Mac.

I know there's some guys around here that could help you, I could probably dig out some files if really needed.

Wish I'd had A-Max back in college days maybe a cracked copy .

There's lots of copies of cracked A-max on the net that don't require the hardware, if you have a non-cracked version of the software I.e won't boot without the hardware might be worth uploading for presavation.

[Warty]

Yeah, I was wondering if it was possible to do make an AMAX format disk and then upload it somewhere. Can you make ADFs out of them? I saw something about eADFs, but that looked like it was maybe emulator-only.

I need to switch the machine's configuration around and get the 2091 working again as the main SCSI device, then I can plug in a Mac 6.0.8 SCSI HD and see if AMAX will find that.

I'll look around for the floppies, but this was floating loose in a ware house with literally thousands (low thousands) of loose Amiga floppies. So that's going to be a bit of a long-term project in itself. I'm not sure if these cracked ones even try to read the AMAX cartridge, or if they are just skipping the ROM reading part.

[Retro1234]

good point is your software definitely not cracked and accessing the hardware?

Yeah if you can find your hard drive that is probably the best bet.

I can upload system 6 tomorrow but I can't remember the easiest way to write it back to real floppy, there is a huge! A-Max thread here on eab.

[Retro1234]

Ok system 6 is n the eab fileserver

http://grandis.nu/eabsearch/search.p...=&httplinks=on

there's some info here https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php...90#post1161190
you can write it back to real floppy with PowerCopy or converterII both require a hard drive.

[Warty]

Thanks! That worked... twice. It was very cool to see it start up the first time. I have no idea what's going on with this setup, but after making the AMAX floppy out of the 605 disk, I started up AMAX 2.0, and it worked great. No HD partition though. The next like 10 times I tried to get it to run, using 2.0 and 2.5, it would load the ROMs, get to the screen where it should be showing the checkerboard and flashing floppy icon, and the (Mac part of the) screen would be solid blue. Computer completely dead at that point (inserting floppy doesn't get floppy motor started, etc.). I got it to work one more time, but nothing after that. weird... tried powering off and on; tried running shapeshifter prepareemul; tried various incantations and curses, nothing worked.

BTW, from what I can tell, I have 1 cracked version of 2.0, one non-cracked version (based on no crack message, and fact it is reading ROM from cartridge, and not from an embedded ROM in the AMAX startup file), and one cracked 2.5 version.

[Retro1234]

hi, I've only ever run it on an A600 but the last things I can think of is trying different versions of A-max from the file server or the A-max homepage, trying without the hardware and trying without the HD connected.

with different versions it might be a good idea to virus scan them if you can be bothered.

if you have a higher cpu A-max below IV can be a bit temperamental, try Shapeshifter or Fusion or A-maxIV but it's not that good.

hope you figure it out.

[Warty]

Hmm. virus scan. That's a Good idea. I'll try the various configs and versions too. I do suspect the Matze 68030 (no MMU) is possibly a factor, as ShapeShifter has given me some trouble too, and I don't remember ever really having issues with that in the (deep) past. I should be able to test on a straight 68030 machine soon.

Thanks for you help.

I'll post what I learn (if anything!).

[Retro1234]

yeah let me know how it goes A-max is interesting - never heard of it until Supamax uploaded some stuff and wish I'd had it back in the day.

I think I picked up a virus from a cracked version of A-max that's the only reason I say that.


Only thing that is a shame is there's no hard drive driver for IDE on the A600/A1200.

[Warty]

Well, not sure if this is good or bad news for me:

• I got my A3000 working, and it is able to use this AMAX cartridge perfectly. I'm using the Amax II version from the "official" AMAX support site. It is not a cracked version, and makes you wait while it transfers the Mac ROMs from the cartridge.
• I used the 720K Amiga/AMAX version 6.0.5 to boot the first time.
• I formatted the AMAX0 partition I had created on the Amiga.
• I was able to install system 6.0.8 from a FloppyEmu I had hooked up to the AMAX cartridge. And a bunch of other stuff.
• Amax (2.0) did not like 6.0.8, kept giving fatal errors about co-processor not being installed, but I installed it on the AMAX partition I made, and then copied the system and finder over from the 6.0.5 floppy, and it's been working perfectly ever since.
• I was able to plug in an SCSI2SD device (5.5, or whatever the one in the self-contained external box is), created on/for a real Mac, and it read and wrote to that no problem.
• I'm even able to transfer files from my (modern) Mac to the AMAX, using the Amiga's serial ports (although a bit slower than I get when going directly to a Mac, but I think that's just the Amiga needing to manage the serials comms). I used this to send the AMAX Mac the utility disk from my modern Mac, to get the file transfer (and mini-disk-transfer) program. That program seems to work just fine too, but I wish it could write directly to the Amiga Hard Drive. I think maybe the 2.5 version can do that.
• I successfully spread a Mac virus onto my Mac install, so that's always a good sign of high compatibility. <grin>

So the potentially bad news for me there is that maybe either my A2000 CIA chip(s) are damaged, or maybe it's just the 68030TK accelerator I have in there. I think it can cause a few things to act weird.

[mark_k]

Which make and model of Mac floppy drive do you have?

[Warty]

I tried 2:
- FloppyEmu, which is a Big Mess O wires product
- Apple 800K External Drive

I could try a 400K drive if anyone cares. I don't have an external superdrive / HD floppy.

[mark_k]

I don't think the A-Max cartridge works with 400K or HD Mac drives.

Are you able to confirm your 800K drive works on a real Mac?

[Warty]

Yes I can confirm that. This is a drive I use with Mac pluses and other old macs. Sometimes the internal ones are glued up and I don’t want to bother getting them out.

I can also confirm that the cracked 2.5 version of amax does use the cartridge if you have a drive attached to it. Which is nice because it saves a minute or so of rom loading.

[Warty]

Another report, might save somebody some frustration and confusion if they ever are in same situation:
- I started testing on A2000 with Gotek. This is the machine I couldn't get to recognize the AMAX cartridge->Mac floppy chain
- I switched to an A3000 with no Gotek. Everything worked.
- I swapped the Gotek over to the A3000... all AMAX floppy connectivity died. Didn't matter where the Gotek was in the chain (before the amax, plugged into the amax, etc.). Gotek would show up as DF2 (which is what you would expect with AMAX, it makes every amiga floppy after DF0 be DF2+. Unplug the Gotek, it works fine again.

Not sure what the root cause is, but that's the observed conflict.