Amiga Workbench 1.3 Disk Image
Jesper Sahu
There are various utilities that you can get to then read & write amiga disks and also some of the emulators do it. The page where you download that driver from has some links at the bottom for various systems including Amiga.
Really? Seriously? I was under the impression that PC disk drives can't, regardless of software, because the way they're built with Independent Drive Electronics prevents the kind of low-level control needed. If I'm wrong, fair do's; Evidious, tell us how it goes.
If mrnukem's suggestion doesn't work, you'll need either a drive which can write Amiga disk formats, like a CatWeasel, or an Amiga 1200 - they can read 720kB DOS disks. Copy the .adf image to a 720kB DOS disk, create a RAM disk on the Amiga, copy the image into that, then write out the image to a new disk as an Amiga disk. Erm .... there's more to it than that, but it's been a while since I've done it and I don't have an Amiga to hand at the minute. You might have to compress the disk image to fit it on the DOS disk.
Thanks for the reply guys.From my understanding only workbench 2.0 and above can read PC formatted disk.I only have 1.3v I recently upgraded the bios to 3.1 but my amiga has been giving me errors so i am thinking i got a bad rom chip.I will try what you said and let you know what happends with the orginal rom chip.
Amiga Workbench 2.1 and higher ships with CrossDOS that allows the AmigaOS to read/write 720K PC formatted disks. A PC disk drive cannot write (I'll reiterate that a few more hundred times) Amiga disks unless you have a Catweasel controller hooked up. If a disk image (ADF) file is under 720K (the Amiga format for a floppy is normally 880K), you can bring it over to your Amiga and write a real disk there using a ton of different utils found on aminet.net
Thanks Icbrkr.I sent you a pm.let me know if you get it.I bought an 3.1 rom and the workbench disk for it but it has been giving me errors.I would like to try the workbench for the V1.3 and see if everything is working right.Thanks for you help guys.This turned out alot harder than I thought it would be.I have a null cable and Amiga Forever ready to go when I get everything working right and when I figure all this out
Upgrading an A500 to WB 3.1 is a bit like torture and there's no real benefits The 500 with 1MB running 1.3 is the most compatible system for playing games in general - best not to mess with it. If you want to upgrade to 3.1, grab an A1200 or something similar.
Amiga Forever's AmigaExplorer works pretty well - slow, but it does work. I didn't get the PM, but I got the disks made and I believe they work (if not, I'll send you a different one). My A4000T appears to not like to boot into WB 1.3 which I'm not surprised.
Thanks Icbrkr.So my best bet is just to leave it alone and get more memory.I posted help in two amiga forums that dealt with Amiga's and did not get any help.I think it's very ironic that I got more help in an Atari site than Amiga site
An additional copy of the above files, renamed to "8.3" (short) file names, is included in the Disk Image Pack, for use with devices like some floppy drive emulators that do not support "long" file names.
Important: the downloadable Floppy & Hard Disk Image Pack does not contain physical media. An Amiga computer or dedicated PC hardware are required to write the images to Amiga floppy disks or other media. The floppy disk image files are also suitable for use in floppy drive emulators (Cortex, DTX200, EMUFFD, Gotek, HxC, Mark II, etc.), which can be used to replace an Amiga floppy disk drive.
You will need a copy of the Kickstart ROM and Workbench disk images, version 3.0 or 3.1. This is still under copyright, and at least the Workbench images can be bought from amigaforever.com. They can also be found on several places on the Internet, as usual DuckDuckGo is your friend.
Hard disk images for Classic WB can be found at classicwb.abime.net. I used the LITE version for the Amiga 1200, but for an Amiga 600 you probably want the 68K version.
If you want to be completely sure that you have selected the correct disk, you can run detail disk just to verify. When you are 100% sure, run clean. This completely wipes the file system information from the disk, making it ready to use in the Amiga. exit diskpart.
First, format the partitions by right clicking on them and select Icons -> Format disk from the menu. Name DH0 System and DH1 whatever you want (I just named mine Stuff). Make sure to use Quick Format. Confirm all warnings.
Then, press F12 to enter the WinUAE settings and go to CD & Hard Drives. Now you need to add the System.hdf file that you extracted from the Classic WB archive you downloaded in Step 1. Click Add Hardfile and select the System.hdf file. Make sure that the HD Controller is UAE, and name the device DH2. You should set boot prio to 1 (not 0).
It should now boot into the Classic WB installer. Follow the instructions (there are many, many options, and I have no good advice to give about them), and when prompted to insert a Workbench disk, press F12 to enter settings and do that. This is your change to choose between Workbench 3.0 and 3.1.
After the installation is done, and you have restarted, you probably will not see you compact flash partitions. This is because the Amiga gets confused by the two System partions. Rename the Classic WB partition to System2 (or something other than just System) and restart the virtual machine. You should now see all partitions.
After the copying is done, press F12 again to go into settings, and remove the System.hbf image from the hard disks. You should now only have your Compact Flash card left. Reset the virtual machine, and you should hopefully boot back into Classic Workbench.
Congratulations, you now have a working Compact Flash card for use in your Amiga. At this point, you could install it in the Amiga, start it, and everything should work. However, the point of Amiga is playing games, so we have one step left!
The Games and Demos need to be unpack into individual folders grouped by initial. For example Games/A/AnotherWorld_v2.4_0425. For games beginning with a number, the folder should be called 0_9. This can be done on the PC, or you can unpack them using DOPUS (as long as you have grouped them by initial).
Now, use DOPUS again to copy the files from PC to DH1. If you did not unpack the archives earlier you can use Arc Ext to extract all the archives, buy you will have to do it folder by folder. I copied them to DH1:Gamesand DH1:Demos, but you can organise your files however you want.
If you have found this page directly from an Internet search (as opposed to a link from my disk imaging introduction page) you have most likely missed some important information. Please click to READ THIS INTRODUCTORY PAGE FIRST. It explains some generic aspects of disk imaging and why, even if you DO have a good bootable disk, it may not work.
Like ADTPro with the Apple II, both computers need to be connected. There are quite a few steps so it's essential to follow the very clear documentation provided with the package. Basically to setup, you first install the Windows side of things which, when run for the first time, installs AExplorer on the Amiga. In my 500 this was initially installed in the RAM disk. After deleting a few non-essentials from my Workbench 1.3 disk like some fonts, printer drivers and notepad, I copied AExplorer from the RAM disk to the Workbench 1.3 disk as suggested in the setup directions.
Clicking the AExplorer icon turns the Amiga into a server, which is now under control of it's Windows client. Using Amiga Explorer on the Windows PC, I could view files and directories on the Amiga just as I could on my PC. Here's the nifty part though. Simply by dragging an ADF image file into the icon representing my external drive, I could write the image to any formatted disk there. Magic! The first thing I did was to make a fresh Workbench 1.3 disk to replace the copy that I had to remove files from to find room for AExplorer. The original (now "reduced") copy then became an AExplorer boot disk, to be used whenever I wanted to make new images.
There is more. On the Windows end, Amiga Explorer creates an ADF icon for each disk the Amiga is using. Dragging this to a folder on the PC machine will create an image file of the disk in question. Neat!
Amiga Explorer can be downloaded as a fully-functioning trial package. It's peanuts to buy, so registration is a must. It is sophisticated, intuitive software that works. Much of the initial setup is menu-driven, which helps enormously. Recommended!
I am very bad at amiga. Please tell me how to run games or an Amiga OS, I have only an image insert a floppy disk, I understand that the programs are on an analog of a hard disk(.hdf), but how to boot from it???
While setting up a hard disk image and running games from it using WHDload is very handy, I would say if you have never used and Amiga and just want to try out some of the games using floppy disk images is the easiest way to play.
Most Amiga game floppy disk images you will find will be cracked and often have a trainer or cheat menu that loads at first. The only unintuitive thing about these is usually they require the mouse to navigate, not the keyboard or joystick.
If you want to try out the Amiga OS easily, I suggest checking out Classic WB, These are basically pre-made HDF files that contain a set of configurations scripts and shareware/freeware utilities that make it very easy to get a good Amiga Workbench setup. They do not, however, contain the OS itself, you will need to have your own set of Workbench .adf files.
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