Convert *.adf from PC to Amiga
Newsgroup
amiga. I have an Amiga 500, 500Plus & 600. Using Crossdos, ADF2DSK, OPUS &
Tuqeilla I have had no joy. I can convert 720k Disks from PC - Amiga and get
all the files onto an Amiga formatted floppy disk. How do i create a
booteable Amiga Floppy so that the games work ?
Surely it can't be that hard ?? I have read the FAQ's and all the normal
literature, can someone out there who has actually done this enlighten me ??
I have over 1000 adf & adz files to convert and will gladly send versions to
anone who can succesfully help me.
(and yes i did own over 1200 amiga original games before i was burgled 6
years ago. As you can not buy all the games freely anymore i see it within
my rights to own the adf's)
Tom Iversen
"Newsgroup" <m...@mykmyk1.com> skrev i en meddelelse
news:8lsvrp$5iq$1...@newsg4.svr.pol.co.uk...
> I am intersted in finding a way of converting PC *.adf files back to an
> amiga. I have an Amiga 500, 500Plus & 600. Using Crossdos, ADF2DSK, OPUS &
> Tuqeilla I have had no joy. I can convert 720k Disks from PC - Amiga and
get
> all the files onto an Amiga formatted floppy disk. How do i create a
> booteable Amiga Floppy so that the games work ?
I am not sure I understand your problem, but I'll give it a try.
You have some ADF-files (on PC), and wishes to have those copied back to 880
Kb. Amiga disks. What about just copying the ADF-files from PC to the Amiga
harddisk (via Parnet f.x.), and then creating the disk images on the Amiga?
The images itself are (normally) bootable - no need to change anything
there.
Please let me know if this was'nt enough - I've done it many times with my
old A600 without problems.
> (and yes i did own over 1200 amiga original games before i was burgled 6
> years ago. As you can not buy all the games freely anymore i see it within
> my rights to own the adf's)
I see your problem here, but it's still illegal to do so - not that I think
people (or software companies) care ... :-)
/Tom.
Newsgroup
I can get all the info from my PC adf's on to the amiga (stored in RAM for
eg.) I then copy them back to my amiga floppy, but although i can read the
data they do not run. Just wondered if i need to do anything to the files
once they are on the amiga. (rather than just copy the data straight to
floppy ?) I have also noticed that some files etc. when transferred have a ~
in their name. Is this normal or a problem caused when transferring ?
Sorry to be such a pain but this is driving me mad !
Regards.
Tom Iversen <yeeh...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:5dAg5.6651$e3.9...@news010.worldonline.dk...
Tom Iversen
> I can get all the info from my PC adf's on to the amiga (stored in RAM for
> eg.) I then copy them back to my amiga floppy, but although i can read the
> data they do not run. Just wondered if i need to do anything to the files
> once they are on the amiga.
I can't figure out what goes wrong - but some troubleshooting to set you on
the right track could be:
- Do the ADF files work in the emulator?
If no, the ADF files are broken in some way.
If yes, copy an ADF file to Amiga and back to PC. Does it still work?
If no, the problem occurs during file transfer.
If yes, it looks like the problem occurs while copying the image to an Amiga
floppy.
(Perhaps I should ask what exactly happens when you try to boot your
"adf"-floppy on Amiga. Do you get an error (invalid key 880 error e.g.) or
does it simply not boot? In the latter case, you could try to install the
floppy from CLI /Shell. (Boot your Amiga in Workbench, select "Shell", set
the disk in DF0: and type "install df0:") and then boot the disk again.)
> I have also noticed that some files etc. when transferred have a ~
> in their name. Is this normal or a problem caused when transferring ?
I dont know if this will cause problems - I havent seen that before. Maybe
just renaming the file would solve the problem?
> Sorry to be such a pain but this is driving me mad !
:-)
/Tom.
Chad Dylan Long
disk. If that's true, then of course it's not working. What is the program
he uses to write the image?
And I don't know what program he's using to do the transfer, but if it's a
DOS program, I'd expect the ~ with filenames that are longer than 8
characters.
Chad
"Tom Iversen" <yeeh...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1MXg5.7446$h3.7...@news000.worldonline.dk...
p...@nic.fi
> eg.) I then copy them back to my amiga floppy, but although i can read the
> data they do not run. Just wondered if i need to do anything to the files
> floppy ?)
Have I understood correctly: By using some method whatsoever you transfer
your adf's onto the Amiga, and after you've done that, you write the adf's
on dd's by simply copying them?
I think you should use some program to convert the adf's back to disks,
for example Tequilla, which can be found at
http://www.aminet.net/pub/aminet/disk/misc/tequilla.lha
There are also other adf -> disk programs on Aminet.
I haven't tried this myself, because I have no method of transferring
programs to my Amiga :(
Hope this helps.
--
Pii
Newsgroup
I used Opus on the PC, transfer all the data out of the ADF file to a
directory on the PC. Then using 720k PC disks copy the data on to the
Amiga's RAM Drive. (I am able to read the disks on my amiga using Cross Dos)
When all the data is there i copy it to an amiga formatted floppy. (My
problem is then the floppy does not boot. (the amiga can read the floppy
fine) I have a vast knowledge of PC DOS & Windows but little (None) of the
amiga except how to play all my favourite games. I do not copy the raw ADF
as one of the previous guests thought but all the individual folders & files
within. Tom has been of great help, but i do not know how to "set the disk
in DF0:" before i type "install df0:" within the CLI to try and make it
booteable.
Many Thanks Guys & Gals,
Steven Maude
ZIPped/LHAed/some compression software common to PC and Amiga - I find
ZIPping them works best as I can use TransADF (from Aminet) to write the ADF
in the ZIP file back to an 880 Kb Amiga floppy - the only problem is when
the compressed ADF is bigger than 720 Kb ... in which case you have to have
a serial cable
<p...@nic.fi> wrote in message news:8m473l$frk$1...@opp3.lyseo.edu.ouka.fi...
<snip>
Newsgroup
I have noticed something that may help ?
on an original of IK+ there are 2 files IK.bin & IK.s, on the adf file
there are the same files but no file extensions ! I am coming to the
conclusion that is may not be possible to do this afterall ?
Thanks.
Newsgroup <m...@mykmyk1.com> wrote in message
news:8m4dt8$bhe$1...@news6.svr.pol.co.uk...
Steven Maude
from the PC. ZIP the ADF (if it isn't already) and make sure the name of
the ADF in the ZIP and the ZIP itself are less than 8 characters long (easy
enough) - but note the name of both the ADF and ZIP - it helps if they're
both the same (!!) Use a 720K PC formatted disk to transfer the ZIP(s) to
an Amiga 880K disk (using CrossDOS or similar). Then use TransADF (from
Aminet or a myriad of other places) to write the ADF back to a disk to
obtain an exact copy of the original disk that was converted into an ADF.
The only problem with TransADF is that it's a command line utility and not
that user-friendly. If I remember correctly, the command line form is
something like:
TransADF WRITE NAME (name-of-zip.zip) DRIVE (drive to write ADF to) FILE
(name-of-adf-in-zip.adf)
I'm not sure if you *need* two drives or not - I've never tried it with 1
...
I think that's the easiest way of what you're trying to do: the method
you're using wouldn't work for games which don't have AmigaDOS disk
structures as you wouldn't be able to get DOS files/directories out ...
Tom Iversen
> the only problem is when the compressed ADF is bigger than 720 Kb ...
> n which case you have to have a serial cable
This reminds me of an utility (read: a small hack :-) I wrote for the Amiga
form some year ago. It was able to read PC backup files (made by the old
MS-Dos Backup command). The point is that the backup command could split a
backup file onto several disks - and the Amiga could read them afterwards.
Another solution (which I haven't tried) is to making an ARJ archive
with -z720 (MaxSize 720 Kb), copy the image(s) to disk and then run unarj on
Amiga. However, I'm not sure Amiga-unarj supports multiple disks.
/Tom.
Steven Maude
Tom Iversen wrote:
> Another solution (which I haven't tried) is to making an ARJ archive
> with -z720 (MaxSize 720 Kb), copy the image(s) to disk and then run unarj
on
> Amiga. However, I'm not sure Amiga-unarj supports multiple disks.
I may investigate that ... I tried using some splitting utility (HJSplit)
to split the ZIP into 2 chunks and then recombine them on the Amiga ...
except the Amiga version wouldn't let you use multiple floppies - you needed
a hard disk, a bit of a problem considering I'm using the most basic of
systems (Amiga 500, 512k Chipmem, 512k Fast)!!!
In fact, I was impressed I got any ADFs converted: I only have Workbench
1.3, so no CrossDOS to copy files between file formats - instead I used some
similar utility I found I had on a disk (Dos2Dos) to copy the files across
to Amiga disks and a Kickstart 2.0 emulator (which magnificently reduces the
amount of free memory I have to about 300k!!!) to use TransADF to write the
disks!!!
I was wondering whether if you had enough RAM, you could just copy the
chunks off disks into RAM and THEN decompress onto floppies ...?? Anyone
know?
Tom Iversen
> In fact, I was impressed I got any ADFs converted: I only have Workbench
> 1.3, so no CrossDOS to copy files between file formats - instead I used
Whoaa!! Now it gets complicated :-)
My first images was done using AsmOne. After the adf-file has been copied, I
read the image into AsmOne and wrote the entire track to df0: (via ws /
Write Sectors) ... it worked!
> I was wondering whether if you had enough RAM, you could just copy the
> chunks off disks into RAM and THEN decompress onto floppies ...??
The decompression should be done directly to RAM - and then it should be
quite possible with at least 4 mb. Ram. Again: haven't testet it ...
/Tom
Steven Maude
> > I was wondering whether if you had enough RAM, you could just copy the
> > chunks off disks into RAM and THEN decompress onto floppies ...??
>
> The decompression should be done directly to RAM - and then it should be
> quite possible with at least 4 mb. Ram. Again: haven't testet it ...
So: all I need now is to find a second hand Amiga for sale with 4 Mb RAM -
easy!! <grin> and I can once again play games like Super Cars 2 ...(someone
"borrowed" that and Syndicate and never returned them ..)
I am (as I type) looking on Aminet for Amiga ARJ, so I will give that a go
at some point ...
Newsgroup
I am so close now it is bugging the hell out of me.
Between all the suggestions I know it is possible.
Lets start from round 1:
Take one PC with lots of *.adf's and *.adz's
One Amiga 500, 600 with 1.5MB RAM and 1 Floppy DF0:
1 PC Genius (ME)
1 Amiga Fool (ME)
Cross Dos on Amiga
Then Answer this in completely user friendly steps. (missing nothing out on
the Amiga end !)
How do i convert the adf/adz's on my PC to a floppy on my amiga ?
I promise i will send anyone who contributes a CD with all my adf's and
adz's on to show my appreciation if interested.
(I know there are still a few legal implementations but after all this time
we are the ones keeping the Amiga Alive. If i could still buy all the
original games i would, but I can't.)
Thanx.
Chad Dylan Long
I saw it on Aminet once. I've got a version from way back (early 90s) on my
A1000. It reads/writes 720k floppies just as well as anything. All you
have to do is copy some files and edit your mountlist, and probably your
startup-sequence. Works for me =)
Chad
"Steven Maude" <bammyj...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:8m4o1t$5m1m5$1...@ID-31315.news.cis.dfn.de...
>
> Tom Iversen wrote:
>
> > Another solution (which I haven't tried) is to making an ARJ archive
> > with -z720 (MaxSize 720 Kb), copy the image(s) to disk and then run
unarj
> on
> > Amiga. However, I'm not sure Amiga-unarj supports multiple disks.
>
> I may investigate that ... I tried using some splitting utility (HJSplit)
> to split the ZIP into 2 chunks and then recombine them on the Amiga ...
> except the Amiga version wouldn't let you use multiple floppies - you
needed
> a hard disk, a bit of a problem considering I'm using the most basic of
> systems (Amiga 500, 512k Chipmem, 512k Fast)!!!
>
> In fact, I was impressed I got any ADFs converted: I only have Workbench
> 1.3, so no CrossDOS to copy files between file formats - instead I used
some
> similar utility I found I had on a disk (Dos2Dos) to copy the files across
> to Amiga disks and a Kickstart 2.0 emulator (which magnificently reduces
the
> amount of free memory I have to about 300k!!!) to use TransADF to write
the
> disks!!!
>
> I was wondering whether if you had enough RAM, you could just copy the
> chunks off disks into RAM and THEN decompress onto floppies ...?? Anyone
> know?
>
>
Chad Dylan Long
break an adf into pieces if you have little memory -- if that's what you
were asking down there. I can't remember the syntax though.
Chad Dylan Long
*** WHAT YOU NEED:
1) 1 MS-DOS 720k-formatted diskette
2) 1 (or more) diskette(s) for the Amiga image (doesn't matter if it's
formatted or not)
3) The amiga program called TransDisk that comes with UAE and Fellow
4) A compression program common to both platforms (we'll use PKZIP codec
here)
5) Cross-DOS (or other) loaded on Amiga (which you already have)
*** FIRST: Transfer the programs you need to the Amiga (if you don't already
have them there)
1) Find transdisk -- it came with the emulator -- and copy it to the 720k
disk from windows (thereby avoiding the '~ 8-character' limitation (I'm
assuming CrossDOS can handle newer dos formats -- is this wrong?)
2) If you don't have a unzipper on the Amiga, email me privately and I will
send you the command-line one I have. It's from 1992 but it does the job.
It's really small, called 'unzip'. Copy it to the disk too.
3) Put the 720k disk in the Amiga drive.
4) Open a CLI on the Amiga
5) type 'copy df0:transdisk ram:'
6) type 'copy df0:unzip ram:'
Those last two lines copy the programs you will need to use to the Amiga's
RAM drive. If you had a HD or something, we could copy them there. But
this means that you will have to copy them everytime you transfer after
turning the Amiga off or rebooting.
*** SECOND: Transfer the ADF to the Amiga (you can do this multiple ways,
but let's do the disk transfer method since you've already done that (see
below for another method):
1) With the 720k disk back in the PC, and emptied to maximize the space
available, zip up the ADF file with WinZIP or something similar. It's
probably best if you make the name 8 characters or less.
2) Copy the zipped ADF file to the floppy (I'll call it 'zipadf.zip)
3) Put the floppy back on the Amiga
*** THIRD: Decompress the ADF to RAM and write it to a blank floppy
1) In the CLI, type 'ram:unzip df0:zipadf.zip ram:'
This will unzip the adf back to ADF format, and stick it on your ram disk
(there should be plenty of room if you have 1.5 MB.)
2) Now put the empty (Amiga) floppy into the drive.
3) Type 'ram:transdisk -w ram:adffile.adf'
(This writes the adffile image to the floppy in df0:, including bootblock
and other sectors)
4) When it's done, type 'delete ram:adffile.adf' to make room for the next
one.
It's that easy! To do another disk, just start from the SECOND part again.
If you need either of those programs, they're really small and I can email
them to you
Good luck, hope this helps
Chad
PS: If you have a serial cable and terminal programs on both computers, you
can set them up to transfer files between them, and you don't need to worry
about a 720k lmit. It's much faster too. That's what I do.
"Newsgroup" <m...@mykmyk1.com> wrote in message
news:8m4quk$th6$1...@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk...
Peter Hutchison
--
Peter Hutchison
http://www.blizzard.u-net.com/
Newsgroup <m...@mykmyk1.com> wrote in message
news:8lun2v$jsi$1...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk...
> Thanks Tom,
> I can get all the info from my PC adf's on to the amiga (stored in RAM for
> eg.) I then copy them back to my amiga floppy, but although i can read the
> data they do not run. Just wondered if i need to do anything to the files
> once they are on the amiga. (rather than just copy the data straight to
> floppy ?) I have also noticed that some files etc. when transferred have a
~
> in their name. Is this normal or a problem caused when transferring ?
> Sorry to be such a pain but this is driving me mad !
To make a disk bootable on the Amiga, you need to do the following:
a) Type INSTALL DF0: to make a disk in DF0: bootable (needs WB)
b) Create a directory called 'S' in the root of the disk
c) Create a file called startup-sequence in the S directory and edit it so
that it contains the file name of the game or program to run.
This will only work with normal WB readable disks, NDOS disks should
already be bootable with their own boot code.
The ~ appears because Crossdos or MSH cannot read PC long filenames properly
so shortens them to 8.3 length. I won`t affect writing images back to disks.
Peter
Tom Iversen
"Steven Maude" <bammyj...@hotmail.com> skrev i en meddelelse
news:8m4pae$5p3is$1...@ID-31315.news.cis.dfn.de...
> So: all I need now is to find a second hand Amiga for sale with 4 Mb RAM -
> easy!! <grin> and I can once again play games like Super Cars 2 ...
:-) - I assumed that you would like to unzip directly to disk because of
speed - it is not nessecary (or for many machines not even possible!) to
store the image(s) in Ram.
Again - the easiest way to copy those files are the first one mentioned by
using CrossDos or similar programs and then copy the image.
> I am (as I type) looking on Aminet for Amiga ARJ, so I will give that a go
> at some point ...
Otherwise I have it somewhere on an Amiga disk.
/Tom.
Tom Iversen
"Newsgroup" <m...@mykmyk1.com> skrev i en meddelelse
news:8m4quk$th6$1...@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk...
> Lets start from round 1:
I'll try it. This is not the easiest way, but it *works*. I will avoid using
TransDisk / TransImage/Whatever (since I don't have it myself). Other people
might suggest you use them - and it might be some easier, but ...
I will convert your ADF files into DMS archives (on PC) for two reasons:
1) The DMS archive is packed and hopefully the size does not exceed 720 Kb
(but here's no guarantee :-)
2) The image can be written back to Amiga with the very same program.
The first thing you need to do is getting the DMS archiver (DMS = Disk
Mashing System as far as I recall). You can download it here:
http://www.aminet.net/~aminet/dirs/aminet/util/arc/dms111.run (the extension
".run" means that the file is a packed executable).
1) Copy the ADF files to where UAE are installed (e.g. c:\programs\winuae)
2 Copy the DMS program to a harddisk which the Amiga "can see" while it's
emulated. Rename the DMS file to "dms".
3) Start your emulator - the setup should be something like:
- CPU: 68000
- Kickstart: 1.x and 2.x works. I haven't testet 3.x.
- Add a PC directory as harddisk (if you dont already have one). Do NOT use
a hardfile, as you must access the disk from outside the emulator later on!
- Boot using Workbench 1.x or 2.x (again: 3.x might work, but it's
untested).
- Ram is not an important issue right now. 2 Mb. Ram will do just fine.
4) Phew - I'll get a cup of coffee before I continue. You should take one
too :-)
5) Start the "Amiga" (the emulated one). When Workbench appears, start an
Amiga (Dos) shell (usually by opening the System folder and select "Shell").
For layout reasons you should maximize the shell window.
6) Change directory to the harddisk (cd hd0:) if you're not already there,
and copy the dms program to the Amiga's command directory (copy dms c:). Now
dms has been installed on your Workbench once and for all ...
7) Set an (adf)disk into df0: (on WinUAE: press <F12>, choose "Floppies"
and select the ADF file you want to copy).
8) Convert the adf file by typing:
dms read disk.dms <enter>
Now the packing starts (I've testet this on my emulator.)
Continue the steps 7-8 for each adf file you wish to convert.
When you're ready to transfer the files, continue with:
9) Stop the emulator.
10) change directory to the Amiga-directory on your harddisk (e.g. cd
c:\programs\winuae\amigahd)
11) Insert a 720 Kb. diskette in A:\ (you might want to format it first with
format a: /f:720 /q /u ).
12) Copy the DMS image(s) to the diskette. Hopefully no dms file is bigger
than 720 Kb. Remember also to copy the dms program to disk.
13) Start your Amiga (the real one :-). Select Amiga(Dos) Shell in the same
way as you did on the emulator. We'll create a Ram disk where the DMS
program should be stored - this would prevent too many disk changes later.
Type:
makedir ram:c
15) (via CrossDos).
The dms program should be copied to ram:c (the ram disk command directory)
16) (Via CrossDoss) Copy some (not too many) dms images to ram: - the
memory will deside how many images you can store in memory.
17) Exit CrossDos, and type:
assign c: ram:c
(this would make the Ram disk's c-directory active. This is of course only
nessecary first time after you have bootet your Amiga.). Test that dms
works - just type "dms" at the command prompt. A help file appears. (Calm
down - you don't have to read it :-)
18) Insert an empty disk in df0:.
19) Type:
dms write ram:disk.dms df0:
(Now finally ... an adf file has been copied to an Amiga floppy).
20) Delete the converted dms files from Ram:
delete ram:disk.dms (deletes one single file), or
delete ram:#?.dms (deletes all files).
Repeat step 18 and 20 for all dms files (and step 16 for copying new images
in ram:).
I'll explain how to create a bootable disk you can use to copy / convert adf
files easier and faster in the next letter.
/Tom.
Tom Iversen
"Tom Iversen" <yeeh...@hotmail.com> skrev i en meddelelse
news:5S%h5.8768$h3.9...@news000.worldonline.dk...
> I'll explain how to create a bootable disk you can use to copy / convert
adf
> files easier and faster in the next letter.
Hmmm . I've made a disk image now with dms and transdisk, which creates a
ram disk etc - there's only one problem left: it's an ADF file ... argh!
/Tom
Zeprfrew
>a serial cable
What about this:
Convert the ADF into DMS. I don't know offhand if there is a utility for this
for dos/windows, but I do know of one or two that can convert dms->adf, they
may be able to so the reverse. In any case, you can mount a directory on your
PC hard drive as a hard drive under UAE, and then use DMS under UAE to create
the DMS file on the hard drive/directory. For archives over 720k, you can
create two DMS archives, one for tracks 0-39, and the other for 40-79 (as I
recall - haven't done this in about six years).
From there, put the DMS file(s) on to Pc 720k floppies, copy over to the Amiga
with Crossdos, then extract to Amiga disks. This would be time-consuming, and
you'll need a few disks to use for transfer purposes, but it should work. I
used a similar method to transfer ST disk images to the original machine, and
it worked well.
Alternatively, you could attach a modem to your Amiga - PC external modems will
work - then dialup to your ISP through a shell account using a terminal program
on your Amiga, and download adf/dms files from your home directory once you
upload them there from your PC, aminet, or wherever.
-rob. To reply, delete windows.
[put something funny in here at some point do not post until it is there]