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[UPDATE 26/7] The fastest,eaysiest,cheapest way to transfer adf images between pc and amiga 500!
[UPDATE] I've just received feedback for using the kit with AMIGA 500+ : Transfer times are reduced ~50% against AMIGA 500! You can copy an adf image to the disk in just 75 seconds!!
(Finally found something that ECS chipset along with kickstart 2.0 made a REAL difference from OCS kick 1.3: I/O ports work faster! :) )
-Man this amiga game is really awesome!And it sure bring up memmories too!
-I wish it wasn't 5 disks... i have a serial cable to transfer it and play it on my amiga 500,(winuae is great but,to be honset, can never give you the REAL magic, of playing it on a REAL amiga...)
-But the mess of moving amiga,monitor,psu by the pc, and mostly the unbearably long time it needs for the transfer...
-Man,i wish there was a faster way to do it....
That's how all started!
If you happen to have a "humble" Amiga 500 only with 512k extra ram and (perhaps) a second floppy, like myself, you would probably tempted many times by the numerous games that are widely availiable today, in the form of adf images,and how you could enjoy them on your beloved A500. Or perhaps, you have some programs or games (even saved games...:-)) that you'd like to transfer them as adf images and use them with winuae or just take adf backups!Up untill now, the options we have where:
1) Use a serial cable and some porgram like amiga explorer which is probably rather easy procedure, but,unfortunately the poor 68000/7.16Mhz of an A500 can't give you nothing faster than 19.2kbps transfer rate e.g. at least 8 MINUTES to transfer one adf image!!!
2)Use some floppy emu with sd card.Again,this "solution" is rather expensive (~100euro),it's "read only",and it doesn't give you any noticeable speed improvement,as the use of a fast sd card might suggest, it's speed is more or less of a classic floppy disk drive.
Having to face this situation, i decided to do something about it, and i've come up with a solution that i think you might find it VERY interested and helpful!
FIRST THE "INGRIDIENTS" for the..."recipe":
1) An amiga 500 and it's psu :-) .Frankly you wont be needing ANYTHING else for the procedure,not even a monitor or tv connected to your amiga !(extremely usefull if there is a realtive big distance between your amiga and pc or if you dont have enough space for the monitor near your pc)
2) A PC running windows 32bit/64bit (XP,VISTA,7) equiped with a parallel port. (On vista/7 you must run adf_transfer as administrator).If your motherboard doesn't have any parallel port, you can find countless pci/pcie parallel cards almost for nothing, (bought mine for less than 3euros....). Also if you have windows vista/7 installed you can use a vm software with parallel support (like vmware) to do the "trick".
(All the tests i have made, up untill now, where using an amiga 500 1mb and a rather old pc (athlon xp, 1gb ram, motherboard with on board parallel port), running windows 32bit (xp and 7).The program seems to function allright on vmware (windows xp 1gb virtual machine) on a modern powerfull pc with windows 7/64bit using a virtual parallel port.In the next weeks i will get a pci parallel card to fully test it, and i will give you an update).
3) A special kit i make for this, where you can find it HERE (bellow i give you all the neccesary info to try and make it yourself too!)
4) Many amiga formated 3.5" disks to transfer your beloved games adf images!
Before we proceed, download this and uncompress it anywhere in your hard disk.
Now for the "cooking":
FOR TRANSFERING ADF IMAGES FROM THE PC TO AMIGA 500:
1) Connect amiga and pc with the cable (beware to plug the right end on each side,if you put it either way it will not work!)
2) Power on your amiga
3) Insert the boot disk of the kit, and wait untill floppy led turns off
4) Insert the first empty amiga disk.
5) Go to the uncompressed folder and Run adf_transfer.exe.
6) Press "open file" button and select the adf image you want to transfer
7) Press "transfer" button.
8) On the cli window that will appear on you screen of your pc, you watch the procedure of the transfer.For an adf image it will take about 1 minute and 50seconds!! (compare it with the at least 8minutes you need using a serial cable for the transfer...)
9)After the transfer is completed,insert another empty amiga disk to your A500 drive
10)Goto step 6)
By this method i manage to transfer more than a dozen adf images to amiga disks, IN LESS THAN 30 MINUTES!
FOR TRANSFERING DISKS FROM AMIGA 500 TO ADF IMAGES ON YOUR PC:
1) Install the special dosbox megabuild release, found in the uncompressed folder.USE THE DEAFULT INSTALL DIRECTORY (otherwise amiga->pc transfer will not work)
1) Connect amiga and pc with the cable (beware to plug the right end on each side,if you put it either way it will not work!)
2) Power on your amiga
3) Insert the boot disk of the kit, and wait untill floppy led turns off.Press <esc> and then <enter>.Wait untill floppy led turns off.
4) Insert the first amiga disk you want to transfer.
5) Go to the uncompressed folder and Run adf_transfer.exe.Select direction "AMIGA-->PC"
6) Press "transfer" button.
7) After the transfer is completed,you will have a newly created adf image in the folder of the adf_transfer programm.insert another amiga disk you want to transfer, to your A500 drive.
8 ) Goto step 6)
The expected speed improvement over transfers using a serial cable would be about:
110 seconds using AMIGA 500 (~470sec. for serial transfer)
75 seconds using AMIGA 500+ (~240sec. for serial transfer)
40 seconds using AMIGA 1200(~160sec. for serial transfer)
As you can see, the hole step procedure is so plain and simple that,if you follow exactly the steps above, you can transfer many disks in a row, without even having a monitor connected to your amiga!
Now, if you are more of a "do it your self" guy, you can try and make the special parallel calble yourself:
You wil need 2X 25pin D male connectors and make the cable (using a multistrand cable with at least 10 inner cables) according to this:
=============================================
AMIGA SIDE | Pins | PC SIDE
----------------------------------------------
Data bit 0 | 2 <---> 2 | Data bit 0
Data bit 1 | 3 <---> 3 | Data bit 1
Data bit 2 | 4 <---> 4 | Data bit 2
Data bit 3 | 5 <---> 5 | Data bit 3
Data bit 4 | 6 <---> 6 | Data bit 4
Data bit 5 | 7 <---> 7 | Data bit 5
Data bit 6 | 8 <---> 8 | Data bit 6
Data bit 7 | 9 <---> 9 | Data bit 7
Busy | 11 <---> 11 | Busy
Paper Out| 12 <---> 1 | Strobe
Ground | 25 <---> 25 | Ground
==============================================
Also you must take the file "paradise" which is in the folder "TOAMIGA" (inside the "adf_transfer" folder that you previous download),transfer it to an amiga disk and execute it in wb's amiga shell.For more information read the included paradise.doc and "Cli_usage_of_paradise_on_windows_xp.txt".
I hope this new method of phenomenal fast adf transfer (especially when using a plain AMIGA 500) would make many of you to get your old amiga's out of the closets and trunks :-), and enjoy once again your beloved programs and games you want!;):)
*some usefull notes:
1) On the amiga-->pc transfers you may notice that sometimes pc and amiga can't start the connection.In that case press <esc> and <enter> on amiga and "transfer" button on pc program.
2) The modern gui program is only an interface that "covers" the very old software that lies underside, which also needs a lot of "tricks & hacks" to function properly on a modern pc.So i can't guarantee that this kit will work for sure on your pc.
3) The program utilizes a combination of dosbox application, paradise utility and porttalk driver, which are all freeware, as my program too ;)
4)Check out the attached photo of the program, "on duty". Notice that having transfered ~25% of the adf file to disk,the ramaining time expected, is less than 85seconds!!
