A tutorial on how to set up a Compact Flash and install the Amiga OS software using WinUAE. This can then be used with a 2.5 IDE adapter on a real Amiga 1200.
Many of the other tutorials miss out several things you mention, which are the reason this doesnt work for many. Thanks for posting this and thanks for making it clear.
Hi Dave, Great tutorial, the only thing missing that is fairly essential when using a compact flash card is to change the max transfer rates in advanced options in HDTools. Tick the advanced checkbox then in click change button and in max transfers remove whats in there and replace it with 0x1FE00 and press enter, do this for all partitions. This is due to a bug in the HDTools program that doesn't correctly allocate the transfer rate to the CF card which will result in read/write errors. Hope that helps.:)
Well made tuturial. Understandable and useful for beginners, interesting for advanced users. It gave me a clue about some details. I'm planning to feature my A1200 with CF in the near future. I mean I knew how it goes (done that many times with HDD's - Amiga's, PC's, dual-format) but it's always good to see how someone other did it just so I could maybe think it over once more a bit before doing it. :) Congratulations on keeping the Amiga alive! Greetings from Poland.
I had the same problem and racked my brain trying to find a solution-- including trying to format the CF in the A1200. The problem is that most CF cards are formatted to PC and WinUAE cannot write to it. You will need to wipe the CF card clean with a drive erase application such as DriveScrubber. Once it is wiped then WinUAE can write to it and you can partition the CF so that the AmigaOS will recognize it; i.e., the drive will be a RDB type drive as Dave indicated in the video. Hope this helps.
Pretty interesting video, even if I don't own an Amiga at all. It is fun to watch and it's cool to see that the Retro-Computer-Scene is still there also on the Amiga-side.
Great video, I was actually intending on making a similar vid myself soon, but may leave it now since you did such a good job! Oh, 3.0 shipped in Commodore A1200s, 3.1 in the later Amiga Technologies/Escom models.
Thanks for the awesome tutorial! Even if I had a pre-installed CF card with WB3.1. This gave me a better understanding of how to get it working and most of all how to do it from scratch. Good luck in the future mate :)
You probably dont care but if you are stoned like me atm you can stream all the latest movies and series on InstaFlixxer. Have been binge watching with my girlfriend for the last months =)
Great tutorial. Alas, I gave my 1200 away to a young relative a few years back. I'd love to get a another one someday and enjoy all the classic games again. Thats a cool IDE adapter. Would a modern laptop drive work? I remember my original Amiga HD drive didn't have the right spin up time so it never auto-booted correctly. IIRC is was a 60 meg drive?!?
Thanks for this video, it made my install on M a-600 very simple. Before that I had massive problems to get my SD card working. One more question... Any way to make bigger partitions work? My 8GB SD got splitted in two 4gb partitions, wanted a big 8gb one... Thanks again for saving my day!
Great tut but you have to make sure you use an older version of WINUAE. Newer.version will give you a WINUAE boot block kinda error after you partition the CF & click save.
Excellent video, had great trouble searching the web for this info. Very easy to follow. I do have a question though, I can't get this to work because I'm on an Amiga 600 with workbench 2.05. My Workbench disks are over 20 years old, so no surprises that they don't work. Is there anywhere on the web that has workbench 2.05 which includes the install disk. I'm not buying physical disks again, I've already been stung on ebay getting replacement disks that don't work. I assume workbench 3.1 will never work on my amiga?
Thanks for the post helped a lot, I did however have a problem with the system asking for the install disk to be inserted on reboot, so in WinUAE I changed the HD Controller to IDE0 instead of UAE and this corrected the problem?
This is mostly usefull info. if you get stuck because windows wont let you apply the partition. theres some updated info on using this method: you need to "clean" the CF drive first using diskpart on a win7 pc. do a search for this subject on "the english amiga board".
I forgot to activate the read/write box but now I get another error: "Block zero write attempt but drive has one or more mounted PC Partitions. Erase the drive or unmount all PC Partitions first."
Does the A1200 work with a PC monitor? I have an old A2000 with a flicker fixer card, but the fan is to loud for my taste so I'm looking to replace it with a 1200 with this CF solution you showed.
It all went fine until the part at 7:00, it seems HDTools is not changing anything because I don't get the "you need to format the disk" message and the CF shows up normal under Windows. It does not change to RDB, but still has MBR. I followed your instructions exactly. What went wrong? Any idea?
I found the solution already, I used Diskpart to clean the device, partitioning it again in computer management and then do again the steps you did. Then it worked fine. Even for some old flash cards which I thought were 'dead'. :-) Thanks.
HELP! When I click 'save changes to drive' i get this message: Block zero write attempt but drive has one or more mounted PC partitions or WinUAE does not have Administrator privileges. Erase the drive or unmount all PC partitions first. Tried everything I can think of, any advice???
I know this was 5 years ago, but I would imagine it's because you didn't start WinUAE with administrator rights. Rather than just double-clicking the program to start it, right click the icon and select "Run as administrator" refer to the start of Dave's video and you will see him do that.
Great video! Only problem I have is that when I tried to save the changes to the CF after partitioning Win 7 complained saying Windows was using the drive. I used dispart to completely wipe the drive and it seemed to work. Is this ok or did I do something wrong? I did run WinUAE as Administrator.
Hi, i want to ask if it's possible to do this procedure on the MiSt FPGA computer that runs a minimig core on it in order to run .HDF games, if not, is there a way to configure workbench to run HDF images games on the MiSt using minimig? Thank you.
I'm having a problem, installed everything, and tried different launcers like tinylauncher - I click on the game, and gives me an error, right away after clicking on the game. software failure - error 8000 - 0004 - even tried to load up on my a4000 - same thing. - not sure whats going on been fighting with this for several days, looks like a path issue or something.
Tried to do this but no success! I get winuae message... Block zero write attempt but drive has 1 or more pc partitions etc. or sometimes trying all kinds of memory cards I get winuae error 28. I try to format cards "FAT" but some will only "FAT32" I tried with partitions with boot or 1 part with boot or 1 part with no boot. I doesn't matter it will not work. Even tried on A1200 doesn't see cart at all
Yes, you can. You may need to cleanup the CF with Windows' diskpart utility, prior to install it in your Amiga system. Then boot your Amiga with the "Install" floppy from the OS3.1 diskset and run the HDToolbox utility.
Great stuff, I bought one of those pre installed flash drives of ebay, but I'll now give it a go with setting up my own flash drive with 3.1 instead. Although I have already all the games and software that I need from the other flash disc, is there a way to simply copy the directory from one flash drive to another ?
Hi Dave What should I do when Workbench says I must remove pc-artitions on my flash card ? It's a brand new card never used and when I partitioned it in HDtools and I click Save Changes it says I might have to delete some pc partitions. The problem could be that I'm using a usb-cf reader, I'm gonna try it with my dads computer he has a a cf-reader internally on his pc
***** I removed the partitions using diskpart in Ms-Dos. No problem after that, but the only thing is that it becomes unrecognizable to both Winuaes config and Windows in general. But HDTools found the drive and I could partition it and workbench made it rdb after that so it worked
No prob, I just finished an 8GB transcend CF x133 on Amiga.A strange thing, it was not recognised (disk 7 error) and I did that on UAE. The problem is when I use 4 or 2GB CFs uae gives me errors and its better to do this on a real amiga. As for above 4 GB on UAE is OK!!! lol
Many of the other tutorials miss out several things you mention, which are the reason this doesnt work for many. Thanks for posting this and thanks for making it clear.
1 year on this has really helped me (keep coming back to this if I get any CF card errors and need to set up a hard file) many thanks!
This too has really helped me install a solid state drive in my refurbed A4000. 👍
I followed the instructions with the latest version of winuae 2.7.0 .
everything worked perfectly ! Now on to learning whdload !
Many thanks, Peter
This video has helped no end - thanks very much for this as it`ll be nice playing stuff on an actual amiga rather than through emulation.
Hi Dave,
Great tutorial, the only thing missing that is fairly essential when using a compact flash card is to change the max transfer rates in advanced options in HDTools.
Tick the advanced checkbox then in click change button and in max transfers remove whats in there and replace it with 0x1FE00 and press enter, do this for all partitions.
This is due to a bug in the HDTools program that doesn't correctly allocate the transfer rate to the CF card which will result in read/write errors.
Hope that helps.:)
Well made tuturial. Understandable and useful for beginners, interesting for advanced users. It gave me a clue about some details. I'm planning to feature my A1200 with CF in the near future. I mean I knew how it goes (done that many times with HDD's - Amiga's, PC's, dual-format) but it's always good to see how someone other did it just so I could maybe think it over once more a bit before doing it. :) Congratulations on keeping the Amiga alive! Greetings from Poland.
I had the same problem and racked my brain trying to find a solution-- including trying to format the CF in the A1200. The problem is that most CF cards are formatted to PC and WinUAE cannot write to it. You will need to wipe the CF card clean with a drive erase application such as DriveScrubber. Once it is wiped then WinUAE can write to it and you can partition the CF so that the AmigaOS will recognize it; i.e., the drive will be a RDB type drive as Dave indicated in the video. Hope this helps.
Pretty interesting video, even if I don't own an Amiga at all. It is fun to watch and it's cool to see that the Retro-Computer-Scene is still there also on the Amiga-side.
Bought kickstart 3.1 and it works now!
Great video, I was actually intending on making a similar vid myself soon, but may leave it now since you did such a good job!
Oh, 3.0 shipped in Commodore A1200s, 3.1 in the later Amiga Technologies/Escom models.
Thanks for two great videos on setting a CF and whdload your awesome. probably the best information I could find anywhere
Thanks for the awesome tutorial! Even if I had a pre-installed CF card with WB3.1. This gave me a better understanding of how to get it working and most of all how to do it from scratch. Good luck in the future mate :)
You probably dont care but if you are stoned like me atm you can stream all the latest movies and series on InstaFlixxer. Have been binge watching with my girlfriend for the last months =)
@Jaziel Sage yup, I've been using instaflixxer for years myself :D
SFS is recommended for CF (127GB). It goes fast and secure.
Also scsi.device v43 can see bigger partitions. I have 2CF and an SD.
Great vid man.
Thank you soooo much for this video, exactly what i was looking for, totally help me out of a fix, now my CF card is working fine.
Good times indeed, managed to get it working on an A600HD as well, thanks!
Good video. I used the a1200 and hd toolbox on istall3.o disk to setup my cf card
Excellent video. Thanks for teaching so well.
This is a brilliant and very useful video mate!
Great tutorial. Alas, I gave my 1200 away to a young relative a few years back. I'd love to get a another one someday and enjoy all the classic games again. Thats a cool IDE adapter. Would a modern laptop drive work? I remember my original Amiga HD drive didn't have the right spin up time so it never auto-booted correctly. IIRC is was a 60 meg drive?!?
Thanks for this video, it made my install on M a-600 very simple. Before that I had massive problems to get my SD card working. One more question... Any way to make bigger partitions work? My 8GB SD got splitted in two 4gb partitions, wanted a big 8gb one... Thanks again for saving my day!
Great tut but you have to make sure you use an older version of WINUAE. Newer.version will give you a WINUAE boot block kinda error after you partition the CF & click save.
Good stuff Dave, putting hdtoolbox into ram disk solved my problem :-)
great video, regards from sweden
Excellent step by step tutorial!
Great tutorial again. Any chance of a vid showing how to use CF/PCMCIA adapter as opening up Amiga to add files is a pain!!
Excellent video, had great trouble searching the web for this info. Very easy to follow. I do have a question though, I can't get this to work because I'm on an Amiga 600 with workbench 2.05. My Workbench disks are over 20 years old, so no surprises that they don't work. Is there anywhere on the web that has workbench 2.05 which includes the install disk. I'm not buying physical disks again, I've already been stung on ebay getting replacement disks that don't work. I assume workbench 3.1 will never work on my amiga?
Hi Dave, i have some trouble at 7:42... on my WinUAE ein cant see the two new created partitions :( Maybe you can help?
Tnx..
Same here, did you figure this out
This was very useful - thanks for this tutorial!
Great video!! Thanks man!
All working perfect!
Thanks for the post helped a lot, I did however have a problem with the system asking for the install disk to be inserted on reboot, so in WinUAE I changed the HD Controller to IDE0 instead of UAE and this corrected the problem?
Worked great first time. Thanks a lot
Excellent tutorial!
To remedy this error, try using Diskpart. There is something PC on the CF that stops any saves to it.
This is mostly usefull info. if you get stuck because windows wont let you apply the partition. theres some updated info on using this method: you need to "clean" the CF drive first using diskpart on a win7 pc. do a search for this subject on "the english amiga board".
I get the Massage "Error 28 on write" when I want to save Changes to Drive, what should I do ?
Great tutorial, it helped me out a lot!
I forgot to activate the read/write box but now I get another error:
"Block zero write attempt but drive has one or more mounted PC Partitions. Erase the drive or unmount all PC Partitions first."
Cant seem to get DH1 and DH2 visible in Workbench? DH0 shows up ok but just cant get other partitions to show up. Any ideas?
Same here
Does the A1200 work with a PC monitor? I have an old A2000 with a flicker fixer card, but the fan is to loud for my taste so I'm looking to replace it with a 1200 with this CF solution you showed.
great vid man
It all went fine until the part at 7:00, it seems HDTools is not changing anything because I don't get the "you need to format the disk" message and the CF shows up normal under Windows. It does not change to RDB, but still has MBR. I followed your instructions exactly. What went wrong? Any idea?
I found the solution already, I used Diskpart to clean the device, partitioning it again in computer management and then do again the steps you did. Then it worked fine. Even for some old flash cards which I thought were 'dead'. :-) Thanks.
HELP!
When I click 'save changes to drive' i get this message:
Block zero write attempt but drive has one or more mounted PC partitions or WinUAE does not have Administrator privileges. Erase the drive or unmount all PC partitions first.
Tried everything I can think of, any advice???
I know this was 5 years ago, but I would imagine it's because you didn't start WinUAE with administrator rights. Rather than just double-clicking the program to start it, right click the icon and select "Run as administrator" refer to the start of Dave's video and you will see him do that.
Great video! Only problem I have is that when I tried to save the changes to the CF after partitioning Win 7 complained saying Windows was using the drive. I used dispart to completely wipe the drive and it seemed to work. Is this ok or did I do something wrong? I did run WinUAE as Administrator.
this is a good video worked well. (2019)
Fixed the dos disk error by full format
Hi, i want to ask if it's possible to do this procedure on the MiSt FPGA computer that runs a minimig core on it in order to run .HDF games, if not, is there a way to configure workbench to run HDF images games on the MiSt using minimig? Thank you.
I'm having a problem, installed everything, and tried different launcers like tinylauncher - I click on the game, and gives me an error, right away after clicking on the game. software failure - error 8000 - 0004 - even tried to load up on my a4000 - same thing. - not sure whats going on been fighting with this for several days, looks like a path issue or something.
On my real Amiga i have Kickstart 2.05(37.350) so I guess its better to install Workbench 2.1 rather than 3.1, correct?
I used this didn't make the connection at the time, well done...:)
Great tutorial, thanks mate! :-)
Tried to do this but no success! I get winuae message... Block zero write attempt but drive has 1 or more pc partitions etc. or sometimes trying all kinds of memory cards I get winuae error 28. I try to format cards "FAT" but some will only "FAT32" I tried with partitions with boot or 1 part with boot or 1 part with no boot. I doesn't matter it will not work. Even tried on A1200 doesn't see cart at all
I have a problem with this tutorial. In my case i click "read configuration" and it says "unit is not a disk (type 32).
can anyone help me?
Im not experienced with Amigas. Couldnt you setup the compact flash on the Amiga itself by booting the Amiga with workbench floppies?
yes you can
Yes, you can. You may need to cleanup the CF with Windows' diskpart utility, prior to install it in your Amiga system. Then boot your Amiga with the "Install" floppy from the OS3.1 diskset and run the HDToolbox utility.
Great stuff, I bought one of those pre installed flash drives of ebay, but I'll now give it a go with setting up my own flash drive with 3.1 instead. Although I have already all the games and software that I need from the other flash disc, is there a way to simply copy the directory from one flash drive to another ?
Hi Dave
What should I do when Workbench says I must remove pc-artitions on my flash card ? It's a brand new card never used and when I partitioned it in HDtools and I click Save Changes it says I might have to delete some pc partitions.
The problem could be that I'm using a usb-cf reader, I'm gonna try it with my dads computer he has a a cf-reader internally on his pc
Ok, I'll try that. Thanks for the help much appreciated !
*****
I removed the partitions using diskpart in Ms-Dos. No problem after that, but the only thing is that it becomes unrecognizable to both Winuaes config and Windows in general. But HDTools found the drive and I could partition it and workbench made it rdb after that so it worked
No prob, I just finished an 8GB transcend CF x133 on Amiga.A strange thing, it was not recognised (disk 7 error) and I did that on UAE. The problem is when I use 4 or 2GB CFs uae gives me errors and its better to do this on a real amiga. As for above 4 GB on UAE is OK!!! lol
once restarted as in 7:30, I don't see the disks
Can somebody tell me how to do it without a computer just with Amiga
thxxxxxxxx
genial¡¡
04:00 onwards... you cant rename it like this in OS3.9.
Hi, where did you get the rom files from?
Doesnt work for me all i get is not valid dos disk
Yh i have the same problem
Excellent tutorial!