Amtari and Chamaeleon proper HD support...

[commie1974]

Any progress here?
Aren't there any crazy coders who'd like to disassemble e.g. the HD drivers from A-Max (scsi.amhd, gvpscsi.amhd etc.) and convert them to be used with Chamaeleon?
Would it be THAT difficult to achieve this?

[commie1974]

After 2 years of silence, I'm digging out this old request of mine...
Cm'on, coder fellows, have a look, it must be a piece of cake for the experienced ones among you...

[Valken]

I wondering would it better to port Hatari into Amiga?

https://hatari.tuxfamily.org

Source code is there. It would to use the emulator parts that are unique to the ST and then use native Amiga CPU, graphics and OS to enable HD support?

[jotd]

Hatari uses SDL library => super slow

[Estrayk]

An old version is in Aminet

http://aminet.net/package/misc/emu/hatari_a68k

[commie1974]

AFAIR Hatari 68k requires a gfx card to run, so it's not of much use on a miggy like the 500 or 600...

[Zarnal]

I managed to get my 10MB hard drive recognized with the Golem/Chamaeleon II SCSI controller ( pic 1 ).

The hard disk refuses to write.

Does anyone have the second floppy that came with the real Chamaeleon hardware ( edit : found in page 1 ) so I can initialize and format it? I am also looking for the Chamaelon manual (which details the initialization procedure ) ?

Example : for Medusa there is a special utility to initialize HD.

[alexh]

Interestingly the parent company who wrote CHAMÄLEON II are still operating (albeit they have moved on from Amiga etc.)

https://www.maxon.net/en/about-maxon/history

Extremely unlikely but perhaps you could write to them and ask if there is anyone who remembers it? Release the source code?

Originally Posted by commie1974

Chamaeleon II gives a couple of OMTI (MFM) HD drivers, mostly for some prehistoric and obscure German-production controllers for the A2000, but lacks of ANYTHING that could be useful to an A500 user, or A2000 with more modern equipment.

There is an interesting post from @Galahad/FLT from a long time ago with a README all about Chameleon and HDDs (it is in German, but if you use google translate it does a very good job)

https://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=102229&postcount=7

There are Chamäleon II IDE drivers for the Apollo AT500

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/p=apollo500

That might be as close to Gayle IDE as you can get?

[Zarnal]

Thank you for your information ( and Apollo 500 drivers ).

I made new tests with the Apollo 500 SCSI controller. The 16Mb hard disk is well recognized (pic 1) but if I try to write on it, a crash occurs (pic 2).

[Zarnal]

Success with Apollo 500 IDE.

[commie1974]

Wow, it was a pleasant surprise for me to visit my own old post after a long time and realize that there is still some interest on the subject!
First of all, many thanks to @alexh for the additional info, and also congrats to @Zarnal for his success!!
Well, I just read the German (translated) text which is indeed interesting, but it doesn't contain anything really useful about our case...
Next thing I did, I visited the Maxon homepage, in order to attempt contacting them, but unfortunately the contact forms are absolutely automated, related only to their current products, sales and aftermarket support, so I couldn't find a way to write and send my text about this specific request...
I found this, though:
https://www.maxon.net/en/about-maxon/history
Very interesting on the starting part, it mentions some of their fabulous Amiga-era products, but it surprised me to see that there was no mention at all about Chamaeleon, which was IMHO an important achievement back in the day...

Could any of the persons mentioned in the start be still involved with the Amiga community as a hobbyist? Does anybody in here know anyone of them? We could, perhaps, get in touch personally, outside of the Maxon homepage...

[Retro1234]

All ways find this stuff interesting. I had a PD ST emulator as a kid. I wonder who bought these back in the day.

[commie1974]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

I wonder who bought these back in the day.

Who? Any average student, hobbyist or low-end professional, who had Ataris/PCs/Macs at work/school/university or clients with different formats and only e.g one A500 at home/office and didn't want to spend an extra fortune to buy another machine.


This kind of emulators could be really useful and powerful tools some 30 years ago. A friend of mine did his whole college diploma, papers and a huge Turbo-Pascal program at home, using his A500 with Transformer (software DOS emulator). It was a bit slow but 100% effective and he didn't spend a penny, in order to exchange stuff in 720k floppies from/to his college PC machines. Imagine how important these simple things were back then, when it came to some REAL work. Imagine a pro with Amiga at home or work, who wanted to see/edit/create a Calamus file for/from a client with ST or a Claris file for/from a Mac... Emulators could save lots of money, or even be used completely for free... Really big deal!!!


Today when we talk about emulation it's 99.9% for fun purposes, as almost everyone owns one or more Windoze PC or Mac which do practically everything and any working stuff is most of the times easily interchangeable between them. We even try to run an emulator within an emulator within another emulator and it's done rather perfectly...

[Retro1234]

I mean these particular devices. Atari ST hardware emulators? There were free emulators and these are very limited but the hardware versions offer harddrive support but what advantage would there be? The market for such a device must of been very small.

[commie1974]

I guess the hardware devices were mostly for a professional who may have wanted full support, instruction manuals and an as-good-as-could-be solution with least money, compared to buying one more whole computer...
But don't forget that many of the emulators for old Amigas we use today directly out of ADFs (or back then from floppies) were CRACKED and perhaps trimmed down (but also sometimes enhanced) software-only versions of emulators that required some additional special hardware attached to the Amiga...
I think that the right-from-the-start software only emus for Atari ST/Mac classic/PC on the first generation Amigas were very few, anyway...

[alexh]

I believe that all Atari emulators for the Amiga were software emulators and if any came with hardware it was just to get around the licensing of TOS (the Atari ST OS) which was only available to buy on ROM. The hardware didn't improve compatibility and probably wasn't used after installation. Removing the need for the hardware and including TOS as a file wouldn't have removed any features.

[Retro1234]

True - although the hardware emulators were all ways commercial and the commercial emulators offered more features such as harddrive support etc.

[commie1974]

Originally Posted by alexh

I believe that all Atari emulators for the Amiga were software emulators and if any came with hardware it was just to get around the licensing of TOS (the Atari ST OS) which was only available to buy on ROM. The hardware didn't improve compatibility and probably wasn't used after installation. Removing the need for the hardware and including TOS as a file wouldn't have removed any features.

Right, the ROM copyright was the main issue, hence the boards. Medusa came with a board, for sure, but IIRC it was only for the ROM... I think that the first versions of Chamaeleon also included a board!
About extra features, we can say e.g. about A-Max, anyone who had the HW version could connect an external 400 or 800k Mac floppy drive, the software-only users just couldn't. This was a major issue, even though 720k format was supported. But this is another story, we are talking Atari emulation here!