(Currently Work in progress!)
In this guide I’ll show you how to install a 2.5″ IDE laptop drive or CF Card into an Amiga 600 / 1200.
You will need the following hardware:
Amiga 600 or Amiga 1200!
PC / laptop
USB caddy to connect the 2.5″ hard drive to your PC
USB card reader if you’re using a CF card
2.5″ to 2.5″ IDE cable (If your Amiga already had a HDD then you already have this)
2.5″ IDe to CF adapter if your going to use a CF Card
Philips screwdriver to open the Amiga
You will then need the following software
WinUAE emulator
Kickstart ROMs to work with WinUAE
(Either download Amiga TOSEC from your favourite torrent site, purchase from Amiga Forever or extract it from your own Amiga using TransROM)
Classic Workbench Operating System (GAAE for A600 and CWBFull for A1200)
PFS3 AIO for Amiga (File System that allows large HDD support)
PFSformat for Amiga (Located in the tools folder of the archive)
Workbench 3.0 Disk for A1200 or Workbench 2.1 Disk for A600
(Either download Amiga TOSEC from your favourite torrent site or purchase from Amiga Forever)
The following would also be useful!
WHDLoad so that you can play games straight from the HDD
WHDLoad games!
HDD Raw Copy – Create 1:1 clone of your finished 2.5″ hard drive
Win32DiskImager – Create 1:1 clone of your finished CF Card
Load WinUAE and setup WinUAE HDF as VHD0:
Install CWB to your liking, you’ll be copying this exact install to your real Amiga.
Once Classic Workbench is installed, right click on System Drawer Icon and rename it to vSystem then restart.
(This ensures that you don’t format the wrong drive or copy files to the wrong partition)
PFS3 Installation Settings
Copy pfs3_aio-handler to L: on WinUAE hard drive
Copy pfsformat to C: on WinUAE hard drive
Before you try to partition the IDE or CF card, you will need to close WinUAE and load Windows diskpart from the command prompt.
Type the following to show the drives installed in the PC
list disk
Select the correct disk number for your drive with the command:
select disk 2
You can lose data on your real hard drives if you do this wrong, so chack and double check that you select the correct drive!
Now, issue the following command:
clean
You can now type exit and load WinUAE as Administrator (Right click it’s icon and choose Run as administrator)
Under WinUAE’s hard drive settings add a new hard drive, select your correct drive and then load / start the emulator.
HDToolbox (Located in the Tools Drawer)
Right click on the icon and choose info, then click on the Tool Types tab.
Change SCSI_Device_Name=scsi.device to SCSI_Device_Name=uaehf.device and press ENTER
(If you put this drive in the real Amiga and use HDToolbox again, rename uaehf.device back to scsi.device)
Change drive type (Your drive will usually be ID2 if you’re doing this in WinAUE)
Add / Update file system
NB: You must press enter / return to save the changes within HDToolbox
Location L:pfs3_aio-handler
Identifier PFS/03 (0x50465303)
Mask 0x7ffffffe (there are 6 F’s!)
Max Transfer 0x1FE00 (for IDE drives)
Max Transfer 0x1A000 (for Compact Flash)
Buffers, DH0: 70
Buffers DH1: 300
Save the changes to the drive and then exit HDToolbox
You will then need to restart the Amiga from the Workbench menu for the partitions to show up.
They will all show up as NDOS until you format them, this is normal!
Format your partitions from CLI / Shell
pfsformat device dh0: name "System" quick noicons fnsize=107
pfsformat device dh1: name "Games" quick noicons fnsize=107
pfsformat device dh2: name "Programs" quick noicons fnsize=107
You can also format within workbench by right clicking on the drives icon, give it a name and choose quick format. PFS3 will then load and format the drive for you.
Updated scsi.device
A600 copy A600IDE.scsi.device from SYS:MyFiles/LargeHD/128gB_Support/SCSI_43_24/Patched/ to C:Devs then rename it to just scsi.device
A1200 copy A1200IDE.scsi.device.43.43 from SYS:MyFiles/LargeHD/128gB_Support/SCSI_43_35_v43_43/ to C:Devs then rename it to just scsi.device
Any of the other later numbered scsi.devices also seem to wotk well too.
Check if scsi.device & PFS3 is installed from shell
version scsi.device
version dh0:
version dh1:
(version dh2: etc etc…..)
When copying ADF’s or backing up DH0: to PC – use A1200 config with 8MB Chip Memory and 64MB Z3 Fast
Share PC directory as PC: (This will allow quick access in dopus or from CLI)
Files with names over 103 charachters will fail
Files with long names won’t be accessible to copy / move on the A600 under dopus, but will work with TransADF to convert back to floppy)
WHDLoad
Locate WHDLoad-prefs under S: and un comment out the quitkey, change it to QUITKEY = $59
This maps it to the F10 key and not the print screen key (Which the A600 doesn’t have!)
Copy the following to Devs:Kickstarts
kick34005.A500
kick34005.A500.PAT
kick34005.A500.RTB
kick40068.A1200
kick40068.A1200.PAT
kick40068.A1200.RTB
kick40068.A4000
kick40068.A4000.PAT
kick40068.A4000.RTB
NB: On several occasions I got lots of disk ID, disk block and disk ablock errors when copying several gB’s
from a PC share to a compact flash drive.
I tries so many things to eliminate this issue including:
Using an older version of Dopus from Aminet
Using copy command from shell
Using dopus from CLI on bootup (hold right mouse)
– Try rebooting Amiga and holding right mouse button, works in WinUAE too.
– Choose CLI
– Type:
copy share:games TO DH1:Games ALL
– (Substitute share:games with your source and DH1:Games with your destination)
– (Pressing tab will auto fill the source and destination for you once you have typed the drive)
Using ClassicWB_Lite and copying from shell / CLI.
Using WB disks with CWB, not WB 3.1 disks
Using different scsi.device other than my default choice of 43.35
Using different compact flash USB card reader
All of the above made no difference! I found the solution after hours of searching posts and forums for any clues and help!
When using a compact flash device, set Max Transfer to 0x1A000
You can also try the following Max Transfer should you run into problems while copying 0xFE00
