Getting ADF from PC to Amiga - an odyssey

[TRS80]

Working on creating some disks from ADF's for my A1000 and it turned out to be quite an odyssey:

1) I made a null modem cable according to the diagram on the Amiga Explorer website. I've been making my own cables for eons.
2) I was able to use the Amiga Explorer setup to transfer the software from the PC to the Amiga over the cable, but Amiga Explorer would not start. I had planned on buying it if it did.
3) Tried Twin Express , that did not work either.
4) Double checked my homemade cable pinouts. They were fine. Tried my trusty Thinkpad 570 with its real serial port versus my USB to Serial. No change.
5) Got a copy of Atalk3 and put that on a PC floppy, then used Dos2Dos' to get it over to the Amiga - wrote the PC disk from my thinkpad, although I do have a USB floppy drive around somewhere.
Side note.. I had trouble changing the file names from DOS 8.3 to Amiga. I found that cd'ing into the ram drive, then escaping the ~ by enclosing the filename in quotes and preceding ~ with * worked. e.g. rename "foo*~1" as foobar
This is in Workbench 1.2.
6) Used Hyper Terminal on the PC side, zModem protocol.
7) Found that although I could type between the two machines, I could not do file transfers at more than 19200 baud without getting a boatload of CRC errors.
8) Backed the baud rate down to 19.2K and was able to get the ADF over to the RAM disk (My A1000 has a 1mb expansion) using ZModem. That took about 8 minutes.
9) Used transdisk to write the image from RAM to a floppy and that worked.

I didn't mention the challenge of finding disks that I could format. I had some success once I used a magnet on them.

 

[Harrison]

If you don't mind spending a bit there is only one truly guaranteed solution and it's called Kryoflux.

KryoFlux Products & Services Ltd.

Kryoflux is a USB based device you connect floppy drives to and use with the Kryoflux software on PC, Mac or Linux and you can create disk images from original disks, and you can write disk images back to floppy disk including ADF format.

You can buy the Kryoflux boards here:

KryoFlux Web Store

I've been using the Kryoflux device since it was in beta development and couldn't recommend it enough. It has a brilliant community and easy to use software.

I have mine in an old SCSI drive enclosure because that has its own PSU to power it. And the floppy drive and board are all hidden inside.

The alternative is to not bother with floppy disks at all and instead to replace the Amiga floppy drive with a Gotek floppy drive emulator. You just put your ADFs on a USB stick, plug it into the Gotek, and the Amiga boots the ADF think it's a floppy disk.

 

[TRS80]

Thanks - some background:
I'm trying to keep the budget for this near zero as I am prepping my Amiga 1000 to sell (probably here!)
If I were going to keep it, I'd certainly go with a Gotek.
A Kryoflux is really cool, I had wanted a Catweasel a couple of decades ago but never pursued it.

 

[StrongARM]

Indeed, finding properly usable floppy disks these days is quite a challenge.....

Be warned about usb (sticks) - then can go south so faaaaaast!

 

[Dale423]

Also the Amiga Drawbridge works well.

https://amiga.robsmithdev.co.uk/

 

[Harrison]

Thanks - some background:
I'm trying to keep the budget for this near zero as I am prepping my Amiga 1000 to sell

That's going to be difficult to do without any cost because of the Amiga file format and disk formatting being so different to others. Only really with standard Amiga format Workbench readable disk images would you have any luck.

Cheaper ways I used to use in the late 90s on an A4000 was to either burn ADFs to a CD or copy them to a PC formatted Zip disk, then using SCSI on the Amiga to read them and use ADF tools on the Amiga to use them. I can't remember the utilities but I had some to write ADFs back to disk or to mount them as virtual disks if standard Workbench readable format.

 

[Harrison]

Also the Amiga Drawbridge works well.

https://amiga.robsmithdev.co.uk/

Not heard of this. Does this only work with standard Amiga format Workbench readable disks?

 

[supaduper]

Also the Greaseweazle is a nice cheap alternative

Greaseweazle F1 Plus Mini Flux Read Write Atari Amiga WinUAE (no floppy drive) | eBay

Greaseweazle F1 Plus Mini adapter Flux Reader Writer for Amiga, Atari, PC. This drive works great with the Amiga emulator WinUAE latest release with the addition by Rob Smith. Make sure you use choose "Connected as Drive B" within Floppy Bridge settings as shown in the photo screenshot.

www.ebay.co.uk

 

[Dale423]

Not heard of this. Does this only work with standard Amiga format Workbench readable disks?

It lets you read and write Amiga floppies on PC with and supported usb floppy.

 

[TRS80]

That's going to be difficult to do without any cost because of the Amiga file format and disk formatting being so different to others. Only really with standard Amiga format Workbench readable disk images would you have any luck.

Cheaper ways I used to use in the late 90s on an A4000 was to either burn ADFs to a CD or copy them to a PC formatted Zip disk, then using SCSI on the Amiga to read them and use ADF tools on the Amiga to use them. I can't remember the utilities but I had some to write ADFs back to disk or to mount them as virtual disks if standard Workbench readable format.

I see what you're saying, copy protected disks that aren't "cracked" would be an issue: not an issue for me.

I've had pretty good luck so far with the ADF images I've transferred over: Workbench and a few favorite games from TOSEC.
I just want to provide the next owner with a few working disks so they have something to boot up and try out.

I've also transferred a couple of disks the other way, creating images of my work CLI disk etc and sending them over to the PC.

I found that I can run 38400 baud with my Win10 USB serial adapter and Atalk3. I do get some errors once about 300K is transferred, but it does work.

If I were going to keep the A1000 (which I've had since 1987), I would get a GoTek, and then look into some of the other options listed for reading and writing Amiga floppies on a PC.

 

[StrongARM]

usb

Arrrrgh. usb should be dumped.... At least it's the last breath for some people.