Newbie A1200 owner questions

[Old Fool]

I finally got myself A1200 (desktop by Commodore)... Looks sweet and plays well.

How ever after all these years fooling around only with simple A500 I'm bit confused with this new machine.

I've planned to by a 4 gig CF card to use as a hard drive (SanDisk Ultra to be exact). I've also read that I can attach it to my PC card reader and install it for Amy by using WinUAE. No sweat I hope.

A1200 came with one gig PC IDE hard drive (very noisy one) and there's nice things installed to the drive. Is it possible in any way to transfer these files to the CF card? It would be nice to attach the CF card to the Amiga with all the files allready installed to the card.

I'm completely stranger in these Amiga hard drive things so help wouldn't do harm...

[fitzsteve]

Hi & Welcome to EAB!

You can hook up your IDE Hard drive to your PC with a USB-44pin IDE converter (asuming your 1gb drive is 2.5in Laptop form.) Thats what I use and then back up all the contents in WinUAE and they are only a couple of £ on ebay.

How easy it will be depends on how familiar you are with WinUAE, its 'easy once you know how.'

Once you've got your data backed up you can prepare a CF card as HDD all through WinUAE, I'd suggest checking out Classic Workbench, its an updated for the modern world 'Workbench.'

If you don't have a memory upgrade in your A1200 then the 'lite' pack will be the one for you

Steve.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by fitzsteve

Hi & Welcome to EAB!

Hehe, Old Fool is around here for quite a while now

[Old Fool]

Thanks fitzsteve for your answer!

In fact I have a 3,5" disk drive attached to Amiga with adapter cable so I don't need any adapters connecting the drive on the PC. That's check.

I've used WinUAE only for gaming but now it's time to learn something new. In which version of WinUAE is recommended for converting files? I've used pretty old one to just play games...

By the way do I need drivers for my CF card on the Amiga side? Or do WinUAE just modify the CF card and add there drivers..? I've bought an adapter that allow to use CF card in the 2,5" IDE connector. It's mystery to me can my Amiga recognize the card without drivers.

Hmm, I must get familiar with this Classic Workbench. I don't know which version is included in the gig IDE drive. Maybe it would be wiser to start nice and clean new install but I haven't a clue how to install all those needed files. So much new information to learn...

I think that in my A1200 have 2 + 4 MB memory. There seems to be a four meg Blizzard card in the expansion hole. If I'm right Amiga has base memory 2 meg. All I know and care the most is that the old AGA games would run in my machine. Either from the floppies or from the hard drive.

Cannot wait for playing those nice AGA games! I've never played them before. Not even an emulator!

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Hehe, Old Fool is around here for quite a while now

Doh! Sorry 'Old Fool'

Originally Posted by Old Fool

Thanks fitzsteve for your answer!

In fact I have a 3,5" disk drive attached to Amiga with adapter cable so I don't need any adapters connecting the drive on the PC. That's check.

In that case all you need to do is hook it up to your PC's IDE and run WinUAE the in the 'Add HDD' section it should show up as an RDB Amiga HDD, if you add it you should even be able to boot from it under emulation, you could add a virtual drive as well, call it 'backup' or soemthing and then you can back up all your info with either CLI commands or if you have something like Directory Opus, you could use that.

By the way do I need drivers for my CF card on the Amiga side? Or do WinUAE just modify the CF card and add there drivers..? I've bought an adapter that allow to use CF card in the 2,5" IDE connector. It's mystery to me can my Amiga recognize the card without drivers.

You don't need any drivers to use the CF as a HDD, it just needs to be formatted with HDToolbox either under emulation or in a real Amiga, personally I connected my CF up to my Amiga, booted from the Install 3.1 floppy and partitioned/formatted my CF in the real Amiga. Then I connected the CFF my PC to setup Classic Workbench. As above if the CF is RDB Amiga formatted then it will show up the 'Add HDD' section list for you.

Hmm, I must get familiar with this Classic Workbench. I don't know which version is included in the gig IDE drive. Maybe it would be wiser to start nice and clean new install but I haven't a clue how to install all those needed files. So much new information to learn...

I think that in my A1200 have 2 + 4 MB memory. There seems to be a four meg Blizzard card in the expansion hole. If I'm right Amiga has base memory 2 meg. All I know and care the most is that the old AGA games would run in my machine. Either from the floppies or from the hard drive.

Cannot wait for playing those nice AGA games! I've never played them before. Not even an emulator!

Classic Workbench is awesome and I'm eternally greatful to Bloodwych for his work there

With the Blizzard and 4mb Fast Ram you could try the 'full' version but it eats up about 1.5mb just for the OS so you may want to stick to the 'Lite' version anyway then you can play all your fav games via WHDLoad.

Check out KG's pre installed WHDLoad packs (sorry don't have the link here at work - gaming sites are blocked) and you can set all that up in UAE and then transfer it to your newly formatted CF card, a nice clean install would probably be better and any files you want from your 'backup' can be transfered to your new CF again all under emaulation.

Have fun

Steve.

[Old Fool]

Thanks a lot Steve! Great answers!

Gotta go now. I have to chew a little bit all these new info I have. Cheers!

[seuden]

I've never had any success formatting the drive under emulation only with a real "A1200".

[Jope]

I've formatted many of them in emulation with good success.

[seuden]

That's 'cos you're l33t Jope!

[Old Fool]

OK, now I've gathered a little experience of this thing called Amiga 1200.

I've also have some problems:

1. I use SCART-D23 cable to Amiga to CRT TV. Everything worked fine with this cable & A500. with A1200 the TV picture contains distortion: large same colour areas are slightly flashing and there goes some kind of jumping lines (móire effect?). What on earth could cause this kind of problem? Sometimes the picture is better and then it goes bad again. Could the power supply be the case? I use now the lite version of A500 power supply.

2. I use also CF-card and WB 3.1 install disk's HDTools detected and partioned it correctly as 4GB (One partion with 200MB and 2x 1800MB). How ever when trying to install WB 3.1 itself it won't detect any kind of hard drive at all. Should I forget the WB3.1 and learn to install the Classic WB using WinUAE instead?

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by Old Fool

OK, now I've gathered a little experience of this thing called Amiga 1200.

I've also have some problems:

Ahh, the Amiga learning curve, I know it too well!

1. I use SCART-D23 cable to Amiga to CRT TV. Everything worked fine with this cable & A500. with A1200 the TV picture contains distortion: large same colour areas are slightly flashing and there goes some kind of jumping lines (móire effect?). What on earth could cause this kind of problem? Sometimes the picture is better and then it goes bad again. Could the power supply be the case? I use now the lite version of A500 power supply.

Hmm, this does not sound good - you should try another lead but I'm worried you might have some leaky capacitors on the A1200. Best wait for one of our resident technical Guru's such as Zetr0 to come along...

2. I use also CF-card and WB 3.1 install disk's HDTools detected and partioned it correctly as 4GB (One partion with 200MB and 2x 1800MB). How ever when trying to install WB 3.1 itself it won't detect any kind of hard drive at all. Should I forget the WB3.1 and learn to install the Classic WB using WinUAE instead?

I'd be concerned that something went wrong with the partitioning becuase you might end up installing Classic Workbench and then find out the CF is still not seen in the real A1200

Did you format the CF in UAE or in your real Amiga, becuase if you used your real Workbench Install Disk in the real Amiga then the installer really should be able to see your partitions.

I'd always reccomend the Classic Workbench becuase it has so many useful tools that you'd otherwise have to look for and install yourself like archiving tools, WHDLoad, Dopus, Games Lists, etc

Steve.

[Old Fool]

OK, thanks again Steve for yor quick answers!

That's my worry too that if I install CWB to the card and everything goes well with WinUAE but in the A1200 department the same card would show me as empty or it wouldn't work some other way. That's why I would do everything with my A1200. I partioned the card with real A1200 and tried to install WB...

Also I didn't mentioned this earlier but if I remove the CF-card and the CF-card IDE adapter I'wont get the Kickstart 3.0 screen at all, just black sreen and DF0: is ticking.

Also sometimes when I put power on randomly one of my three extra floppy drives may try to load without disk inserted. These drives worked fine with A500.

And to continue the list some AGA-compatible games that worked with A500 won't now work with A1200, like Quik the Thunder Rabbit (floppy #1 loads for ever while "loading" screen comes).

Could it be so that my A1200 is damaged in some way..?

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by Old Fool

OK, thanks again Steve for yor quick answers!

That's my worry too that if I install CWB to the card and everything goes well with WinUAE but in the A1200 department the same card would show me as empty or it wouldn't work some other way. That's why I would do everything with my A1200. I partioned the card with real A1200 and tried to install WB...

Hey its no trouble to help

If you partitioned in the real Amiga then the Amiga see's your CF as a HDD so there is no reason that the installer should not see it - so I am a little stumped here.

Also I didn't mentioned this earlier but if I remove the CF-card and the CF-card IDE adapter I'wont get the Kickstart 3.0 screen at all, just black sreen and DF0: is ticking.

This is worrying becuase with no HDD connected you should get 'insert disk' kick3.0 screen.

Also sometimes when I put power on randomly one of my three extra floppy drives may try to load without disk inserted. These drives worked fine with A500.

I'm not sure on this one since I don't use an external drive, sorry.

And to continue the list some AGA-compatible games that worked with A500 won't now work with A1200, like Quik the Thunder Rabbit (floppy #1 loads for ever while "loading" screen comes).

This can be a problem, some older games are not compatible with the newer hardware. The best way around this is to run them off the hard drive with WHDLoad but for many games you'll need extra Ram, this comes in the form of a trapdoor expansion. (Can give you more info if you need it)

Could it be so that my A1200 is damaged in some way..?

I'm a little worried for your Miggy, hopefully one of the big brains is along soon with some further advice for you.

Best of luck.

Steve.

[fitzsteve]

Just a thought you said in your first post that the original HDD was 3.5in so I'm guessing you're running a power splitter off the FDD?

I think these 3.5in drives are pretty power hungry and might explain why your external drives were not running correctly.

Are you using a heavy duty PSU for this system?

It could be a power problem if you're using a standard 25w A1200 PSU.

Steve.

[rkauer]

Or the underpowered A500 "heavy" brick, which is almost the same as the original A1200 PSU.

Both have only 3A on the +5V rail. Check the back of the A500 PSU to see the +5V ratings. Even a 4.3/4.5A +5V will fail with a 3.5" HDD & 3 external disk drives.

Also check the max_transfer value in HDToolBox for your HDD: the value cannot be more than 0x1FE00 for CF and is recommended even for 3.5" HD.

[Old Fool]

Thanks all for really great answers.

Thing is that my used A1200 came with real ugly looking and dangerous power supply. The previous owner told he had got an electrick shock from the device and I'm not going to test it. Someone has originally build it from a tower PC power supply and I also heard it makes big noise since there's a big fan inside the unit.

So someone has been suffering power problems...

Is it any better than the "old brick" when I use this lighter A500 type 2 (4.5A) power supply that is said to be a little powerful than the stock A1200 PSU? Check this link: http://www.hardwarebook.info/Amiga_5...0_Power_Supply
If I understand right it should be enough for A1200 with 3x external drive + 4mb extra memory + CF-card that doesn't need as more power as real hard drives.

fitzsteve: Could you explain what is "power splitter off the FDD" so I would know do I have it

[Fingerlickin_B]

You could make a new PC-PSU-based power supply using my good friend Zetro’s schematics here: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=693818#post693818

As for the FDD power split, normally it’s just a four wire cable going from the mobo to the FDD. If there are any other wires connected at this point, you’ll probably find them connected to your 3.5 inch HDD.

PZ.

[Old Fool]

I have tested A1200 now with this home-made power supply taking care of the precautions. I find some interesting results:

TV picture distortion disappeared! Alltough the image isn't exactly as sharp as with the A500 power supply. So image distortion might be caused by PSU that isn't powerfull enough. How on earth is it possible that a stock A1200 PSU is less powerfull than a A500!?!

The PC modified power keeps annoying noice but I have to use this one. Also have to make a decent case to it so no more risk of electric shock...

I also noticed that the TV screen distortion disappears with A500 PSU whenever some of the three disk drive's are operating a floppy disk! Right after disk drive light goes off the screen is full of lines and other garbage.

Is there possible to buy somewhere a factory-made power supply that is enough powerfull to run A1200 with some extra devices..?

Finally:

I managed to Install WB3.1 on my A1200. Installation was completed and everything seemed to be fine when I was about to reboot my machine... BUT NOTHING WAS ACTUALLY INSTALLED TO MY CF-CARD! I rebooted and find out that my CF-card was intact. Could it be so that my A1200 doesn't fully regocnize the card I'm using with (Sandisk Ultra 4GB)?

[Fingerlickin_B]

What do you mean "nothing was installed"?

Sorry, just not sure what that means...it then booted from the CF card?

PZ.

[rkauer]

Distortion on the image and garbage on the screen are hints to a bad filtered +5V line and +12/-12V. Check the capacitors inside the Amiga!