So I got an A1200. Now what?

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ubermick

ubermick

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Right lads and lasses...

Back in the old days, when men were men, sheep were afraid, and people knew the meaning of "You can't beat a bit of Bully" on Sunday nights, I had an old A500 tucked away in my bedroom, where I'd spend my days playing Kick Off 2 and all the old classics, as well as feeding my fledgling career as a graphic designer with sessions on DPaint.

Nostalgia returned, like many, so I jumped back into the mix. After some scuffling around, I'm now the proud owner of a not-so-shiny and nowhere near new A1200 with a 32mb Apollo 50mhz 030 accelerator card, and an internal hard drive.

Currently on order from Amigakit are the CF flash PCMCIA adapter and a few other bits and pieces, although turns out I need neither, since a simple 2.5 to 3.5 adapter means I can pop the Amiga drive in my old P4, and boot it in WinUAE. (Hooray!)

So now come the questions.

I think I've got Workbench 3.1 on here (version 40.42) which I've never used before. Is it worth my while rummaging around for a copy of 3.5 or 3.9 for this? Or just go with what I have? (I snagged a copy of Amiga Forever Plus, which if I'm right, means I have a legal copy of 3.1 in there somewhere?)

Since I'll primarily use this for retro gaming to revisit the old favourites from when I was a lad, I've sniffed around WHDload, and have then discovered ClassicWB as well. Is there a step by step guide floating around somewhere written in ultra-moron that would let an utter muppet like myself get this installed on my ikkle 2.5" HD purring away in my PC?

Since I'll (eventually) be running ClassicWB/WHDload from the hard drive, I'm assuming the things I used to feel were utterly necessary - external floppies, for example, and a massive stockpile of disks - are no longer needed?

Last question... since the keyboard and case were rather ugly, I popped the keys off to submerge in a bath of retr0bright, but one of the posts snapped off (the right alt key). Is it worth trying to mess with this, or am I better off looking out for another keyboard?

Cheers in advance, all. I promise wholeheartedly that at some point I'll gain enough knowledge to the point where I won't ask stupid questions anymore. (That day, alas, hasn't come yet, mwahhahaha)
 
ubermick said:
Back in the old days, when men were men, sheep were afraid...
Click to expand...

:lol:


Since you have an accelerated A1200, definitely purchase a WHDLoad key. Its very good money spent and opens up a whole world of software that otherwise might not be so easy to get to work on the 1200 (older ECS/OCS games demos). Plus virtually no load times for most of the software. Beats playing from a floppy any day!

Personally I wouldn't spend the money on either 3.5 or 3.9. However if you do decide to go with one of those two, I would probably just go straight to 3.9. But if you did, you would want to make sure to have a nice multisync monitor or a scandoubler in your machine. 3.9 with low res screen = not very good experience.

I would just still go with 3.1. Its clean, fast and supports most everything you would want to do. Its a perfectly fine OS for a classic Amiga.

ClassicWB = Awesome. Especially if you have been away from the Amiga for a while. Has tons of awesome addons that are already configured in it (like WHDLoad, music players, many other useful apps). There is good reason why its suggested so often. For classic Amiga's its the bee's knees.


Unless you absolutely need massive amounts of storage, you might want to look into using a Compact Flash card with an inexpensive adapter as a HD replacement. You can also use SDHC cards with SD to IDE adapters. Both work well. CF might be a tad faster, but SDHC cards are hella cheapers plus greater availability.

I would just replace the keyboard. Consider it was all yucky with yellow keys, I would replace it. Maybe retrobright the keys as a backup.
 
I'm in the same boat as ubermick, except that I will receive an A4000D next month. Appreciate the tips :)
 
Yeah, if you already know how and are able to pop the drive in your other computer and use it for WinUAE, I'd get a CF card, a CF/IDE adapter and go for Classic WB..
The way I did it was:

I set up Classic WB on WinUAE first.
(It's just a hard disk file you boot and it asks you for ADFs of the Workbench disks)

When that's done and you're happy, then shutdown WinUAE/PC and add your CF/IDE card. Power it up and load WinUAE. Format the CF drive in WinUAE.

**(Note: Set the Max Transfer to <smart guys insert number here, my Amiga is just powered off so I don't have it handy...> so the CF card works happily in your Amiga..)**

Then use DirOpus to copy everything over to your new CF drive.

Power down, plug card into your Amiga.

Power up Amiga..

Profit!!!

;-)

I'd stick with 3.1, but I haven't used 3.5 or 3.9 much....

As for external floppies and stockpiles of disks...
While no longer technically "necessary," it's still fun to have those as well.. ;-)

desiv
p.s. don't go over 4G for CF, and partition it under 2G each partition)
p.p.s. don't name both partitions the same thing "i.e. System", as the OS doesn't like that.. :-)
 
In my case, I will most likely use a Bluetooth serial adapter together with Amiga Explorer to transfer stuff wireless, as I already have that at home.
 
stick with 3.1 for a while till you fairly familiar with it

if you got amigaforever then you should have wb3.1 and versions befor but am not sure if it actual dose come with wb3.5 or 3.9 but what you do get is the kickstart rom images and if you want install any workbench after 3.1 you need to make sure you are using Kickstart 3.1 or better
 
Amiga explorer - install on your pc and amiga, transfer files through a serial connection or ethernet. In this case, he's going to plug a bluetooth serial adaptor which emulates using a wired serial cable.
 
desiv said:
**(Note: Set the Max Transfer to <smart guys insert number here, my Amiga is just powered off so I don't have it handy...> so the CF card works happily in your Amiga..)**
Click to expand...

0x1FE00


@Luy32
http://www.amigaforever.com/ae/ read more here in addtion to Gouldin, though he got the basics covered :-)
AE is a great tool when you have the hardware


@CosmicFrog
The one that Ribbits Frist Ribbits Loudest
(I wonder what Frist means :-P) sorry for the hijack
 
cosmicfrog said:
stick with 3.1 for a while till you fairly familiar with it

if you got amigaforever then you should have wb3.1 and versions befor but am not sure if it actual dose come with wb3.5 or 3.9 but what you do get is the kickstart rom images and if you want install any workbench after 3.1 you need to make sure you are using Kickstart 3.1 or better
Click to expand...

@CF

AFAIR it doesn't include 3.5 or 3.9 or at least my CD doesn't.

Dave G :cool:
 
Gouldin said:
Amiga explorer - install on your pc and amiga, transfer files through a serial connection or ethernet. In this case, he's going to plug a bluetooth serial adaptor which emulates using a wired serial cable.
Click to expand...

Amiga Explorer is a great piece of software. It allows you to connect any Amiga via serial to a PC. You load the software on both systems, on the Amiga pop a blank disk in the drive, and then from the PC select an ADF file and write it over the serial connection directly to the Amiga's drive.

It is a great piece of software, but be warned it is very slow!

A better solution these days is to buy a very cheap CF card to PCMCIA adapter and use that with EasyADF from Amigakit, or alternative free software tools from Aminet that Skydivingirl details in a tutorial she whole on Amibay.

With a CF card you can format it to FAT32, stick it in a PC card reader, copy whatever you want onto it, remove it and put it in the PCMCIA adapter, plug it into an A1200 and using the software access the card just like an HDD on the Amiga and copy the files to your Amiga. One of the best file transfer solutions.

You can find CF to PCMCIA adapter cards for only a couple pounds on eBay.
 
Harrison said:
Amiga Explorer is a great piece of software. It allows you to connect any Amiga via serial to a PC. You load the software on both systems, on the Amiga pop a blank disk in the drive, and then from the PC select an ADF file and write it over the serial connection directly to the Amiga's drive.

It is a great piece of software, but be warned it is very slow!
Click to expand...

Or, if/when you're ready, a PCMCIA networking card takes care of that too...
AmigaForever also supports a TCP/IP connection and is pretty quick that way.

With my A1200 on my network, I use Amigaforever to push/pull files when I'm working on my Laptop and I use AmiTradeCenter (Amiga FTP client) when I'm on the Amiga.

That's one of the best things about the 1200 (and 600).
You get floppy transfer (crossdos), you get serial, you get PCMCIA CF, you get network, you get IDE...

So many ways to get data to/from that computer.. ;-)

desiv
 
Fair play, lads. I'll stick with 3.1 then, and avoid paying double the price of a 3.5 or 3.9 CD in having it shipped to Yankeeland. :thumbsup:

Right, so I've got WinUAE trundling along on ye olde PC. I configured it to my A1200 as closely as possible - 3.1 ROM (40.68), 030 processor with 32mb of Z3 fast, and installed ClassicWB ADVSP on here. Working away in emulation mode.

Problem is (at the moment) the compact flash card I just snagged. I sniffed about online, and found the instructions for prepping a CF card in WinUAE, and have done the following:

1) Added CF card as a hard drive in WinUAE. It was selectable in the little dropdown, so added it there, using UAE as the hard drive controller. Showing up as Device n/a, Volume n/a
2) Popped the WB 3.1 adf into DF0: and the Install 3.1 adf into DF1:
3) Changed the information for SCSI_DEVICE_NAME in HDToolBox to uaehf.device, and saved.

But when I open up HDToolBox to format and prep the CF drive, all of the options are greyed out, apart from "Change Drive Type", which just boings back and forth between SCSI and XT.

Help?
 
I think they made some changes in WinUAE and you have to run it as admin and you have to clear the CF card of all partitions first, otherwise the OS will mount it and you can't tweak it..

Not sure tho,
I actually use a much older version of WinUAE and use the disablesafetycheck option...

You're close! :-)

desiv
 
Urgh.

Yeah, am using WinUAE 2.4.0 which came with Amiga Forever 2012. And like a steering wheel strapped to my crotch, this is driving me nuts.

I'm guessing it's something to do with the CF card or reader, since when I add my 2.5" IDE drive, it pops up without a problem. (Granted, this is the one that came out of the 1200, so it's already formatted and has WB installed.) I've reformatted the thing as FAT32 (again) but still no joy.

This isn't some situation where an external USB card reader is useless for doing this, is it? (ie, should be doing this with the CF card connected via IDE?)
 
Maybe this can help you along your way:

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=59560

Looks like you're already on page 2 of that thread onwards, post 25...

I find it easier to temporarily call the primary bootable partition DH1 so that i can find it later in dopus to copy the wb system hdf, you can rename it later on

:)
 
another option is to go to Computer Management -> Disk management,

remove drive letter for the CF card,
remove card and reinsert

double check that the card doesn't have the driveletter, now you should be good to go.

and yeah.. start WinUAE as administrator if you run Vista/7, WinXP doesn't have this feature
 
best thing you can do with amigaforever is copy the roms folder to where you installed WinUae

if you can`t find someone in the community to let you try the wonder of wb3.5 or wb3.9 then my I suggest you try, we not that bad really :p
 
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