Reading Amiga disks on PCs or Macs.

[+Allan]

Does anybody know the easiest (if any) way to copy Amiga disks to PCs or Macs?

 

Thanks,

Allan

[Zerosquare]

Does anybody know the easiest (if any) way to copy Amiga disks to PCs or Macs?

 

Thanks,

Allan

I'm not an Amiga specialist, but here are few pointers :

* Disk2FDI (only way I know of to read the floppy disks directly on the PC without adding special hardware, but you need to have two disk drives)

* Reading the disks with a real Amiga, and transferring the data to the PC/Mac (serial connection with a crossover cable, copying the data to a PC or Mac compatible floppy disk [which the Amiga is able to access], etc.)

* If it's commercial games you own, a lot of disk images can be found on the 'net.

[+Allan]

Does anybody know the easiest (if any) way to copy Amiga disks to PCs or Macs?

 

Thanks,

Allan

I'm not an Amiga specialist, but here are few pointers :

* Disk2FDI (only way I know of to read the floppy disks directly on the PC without adding special hardware, but you need to have two disk drives)

* Reading the disks with a real Amiga, and transferring the data to the PC/Mac (serial connection with a crossover cable, copying the data to a PC or Mac compatible floppy disk [which the Amiga is able to access], etc.)

* If it's commercial games you own, a lot of disk images can be found on the 'net.

 

Thanks for the response. The disks are actually Antic's Amiga Plus magazine disks.

 

Allan

[Dauber]

I think it's actually physically impossible to read Amiga disks on a non-Amiga computer unless you can somehow rig up an Amiga floppy drive, due to the particular way an Amiga disk is formatted.

 

BTW -- which Antic's Amiga mags are they? I had a bunch, and I DMS'ed 'em and burned them to a CD, and I think I still have the CD...if nothing else, maybe I can set you up with the DMS files??? (assuming I can find them!)

[Zerosquare]

I think it's actually physically impossible to read Amiga disks on a non-Amiga computer unless you can somehow rig up an Amiga floppy drive, due to the particular way an Amiga disk is formatted.

Amiga floppy drives and PC floppy drives have a few minor differences, but nothing enough to prevent you from reading the disk. I think Escom used PC drives on their rereleased machines.

 

The problem is the floppy disk controller : the one used in PCs is not flexible enough to directly read most non-PC formats. For many years, the problem was thought to be unsolvable without using extra hardware. But the author of Disk2FDI figured out that you can attach a second drive containing a standard PC disk (that's still extra hardware, in a way ), and dynamically switch between them to trick the controller into reading the data.

 

For more info, check out Disk2FDI's documentation. It's a clever hack.

[Rybags]

I just read it a while ago - seems totally feasible.

 

Might try it later. I did my transfers using DOS2DOS (writes MS-DOS disks on Amiga) in conjunction with another Amiga program which made image files. A painful process since my Amigas are only 1 meg machines.

[ijor]

Reading AMIGA diks with Disk2FDI isn't just feasible, it is absolutely possible. Many people use it quite successfully.

 

In the same vein, it is unfair to call it just a clever hack. It is a genius one just to to come up with the idea, let alone to implement it. Vincent (FDI author) is an extremely smart guy.

 

An alternate way to reading Amiga disks is, of course, with special hardware. Both the CP Option Board and the Catweasel can be used. The former is hard to find, the latter is a bit expensive if you want the latest model. But the older Catweasel model (MK1) is not that hard to find and it is quite cheap. Lastly, you can use Vicent's own hardware (well, sort of), which is just a simple cable.

[ijor]

I forgot to mention that you don't really need two drives for using Disk2FDI to read Amiga disks. You can do it with a single drive, as long as you don't mind writing to the disk. Another genius touch of Vincent.

 

Of course, this is recommended only for transferring your own data that you could recover if something goes wrong. And because in this case you have alternate ways, this is more a theoretic than a practical method.

[+Allan]

I think it's actually physically impossible to read Amiga disks on a non-Amiga computer unless you can somehow rig up an Amiga floppy drive, due to the particular way an Amiga disk is formatted.

 

BTW -- which Antic's Amiga mags are they? I had a bunch, and I DMS'ed 'em and burned them to a CD, and I think I still have the CD...if nothing else, maybe I can set you up with the DMS files??? (assuming I can find them!)

 

Well I think I have all of them on 3 1/2 disks but Atarimagazines.com has permission to put them online and I want to get backups of these before the floppies fail. So if you have any of them that would be great.

 

Allan

[Zerosquare]

In the same vein, it is unfair to call it just a clever hack. It is a genius one just to to come up with the idea, let alone to implement it. Vincent (FDI author) is an extremely smart guy.

Hehehe, what a coincidence. Just a few days ago I stumbled upon this post of yours on atari-forum.com while looking for some info about disk drives bitrates. (Check out the topic if you want to see how many things Ijor knows about those beasts ).

I tend to understate things, so when I say "clever hack", understand "brilliant example of original thinking"

 

I forgot to mention that you don't really need two drives for using Disk2FDI to read Amiga disks. You can do it with a single drive, as long as you don't mind writing to the disk. Another genius touch of Vincent.

I thought this process could randomly destroy part of the data ?

From DOCS\TECH\1DISKDRV.TXT in the Disk2FDI archive :

As a result, up to two Amiga sectors can be altered in a way that is not

recoverable. No sector is altered if bytes are written on the track gap of an

Amiga track.

(...)

3. Conclusion

 

Securely reading an Amiga disk with a single PC disk drive attached to a

standard PC controller is unfortunately impossible because of the different

index synchronizations. I hope it is now proven that nobody will ever be able

to do it.

[ijor]

(Check out the topic if you want to see how many things Ijor knows about those beasts ).

 

Well, I certainly doesn't consider myself a beginner on the topic. That precisely why I think I have the authority to praise Vicent's so much

 

I thought this process could randomly destroy part of the data ?

 

That's right. I forgot that Amiga disks are usually not index aligned.

[Rybags]

Just tried it myself on the second machine. Got an almost working WB 1.3 image made although the original might have been faulty.

 

Not to mention the fact that all my spare floppy drives are rather dodgy.

 

Used ADFREAD, with the required driver installed from FDInsall from http://simonowen.com/fdrawcmd/FdInstall.exe