Hello,
I'm hoping to archive a load of Amiga data (source, art, etc.) from the many programs I created for the Amiga in the old days.
I sold all my Amiga hardware (to good homes) about 10 years ago. But, I have access to an Amiga 4000.
I figure I have less than 500 disks.
If I did this manually, I would stick a disk in, copy it to the internal harddrive.
It has some PC DOS file disk feature which allows me to write out to that.
So, worst case 500 * 1 minute or so, is about a day or two worth of work.
Seemed a better solution would be to install a USB device, or perhaps something that gets me on the internet (save right to Google Drive?)
Is the RapidRoad the best solution?
P.S. I co-created CDTV, and designed Fire Power, among many other products including Disney's Animation Studio on the Amiga. Feel free to ask anything.
RapidRoad USB on an Amiga 4000
- Reichart
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While a USB stick looks like a "good solution", I'd recommend networking, as that will be cheaper and more convenient.
The X-Surf-100 card is required as a "carrier card" for the RapidRoadUSB host controller anyway, but you won't need the USB part when you're networked. Just mount a NAS with the Samba protocol and transfer data the easy way. Saving "right to Google drive" is not an option as far as I know, but I figure that a developer with a history like yours has a NAS in your home.
Who knows, maybe the A4000 that you have access to even has a networking card already?
I co-created CDTV, and designed Fire Power
Fire Power was an eye-opener for me when I was a teenager - and the 2-player mode with two nullmodem'd computers was awesome. Only very few games had such a mode. Happy to help if you're recovering old sources and artwork. Here's hope that you will publish what you have the rights to, or maybe even re-discover the Amiga as a hobby.
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Cool feedback, ty.
Indeed, the A4000 does have a network card, but - I know nothing about it, and given it has a BNC connector, I'm not sure what I would even hook it up to.
I agree with you on Networking all said though. Funny enough, the first product I was going to bring to Amiga in 86 was something like (but better) than Apple Talk. I built an adapter that could go on either the Par port or be treated like a Disk Drive. It would automount if it were the drive version. So for example it would just become DFx: for example. What was cool about this is you would see all other Amiga's (that allowed you to) as folder names. So copying to anyone was as easy as copying one drive to another, no heavy networking crap as overhead. But it would have allowed you to hook up to other systems like Ethernet. Oh, I should mention, I built this to sell retail for about $50. And we would have built a bridge for Apple Talk and other systems. I lament myself we never made that.
Sadly, where I am I don't have a NAS (although easy to set up all said). I'm travelling, so using someone else's system.
Indeed, FirePower was the first game in history, in fact, to play over a modem, and support a real-time game (min 8 packets per second) with multimedia input, meaning, you could play the game, use a joystick, and type text at the same time. Also, it was the simplest interface in history at that point, since the cool feature we did was to make it so when you ran the game we took control of your modem, put it into answer mode, and configured it automatically for you. As a result, the first person to type a phone number and dial would switch to LEAD, and the other system would just auto-answer, connect, and start the game. Oh, and one more thing we did, we made all that configurable in a text file so if anyone wanted to hack it for some new modem, or different defaults, they could. I miss the days of programmers trying to help hackers instead of make their lives awful.
And yes, my goal is to (slowly perhaps) recover lots of data and post it publically if I can. To blow your mind, Will Ware and I wrote Fire Power together in 87, we still work together today. Oh, and the place I'm staying is Jim Sachs castle
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I agree with you on Networking all said though. Funny enough, the first product I was going to bring to Amiga in 86 was something like (but better) than Apple Talk. I built an adapter that could go on either the Par port or be treated like a Disk Drive. It would automount if it were the drive version. So for example it would just become DFx: for example. What was cool about this is you would see all other Amiga's (that allowed you to) as folder names. So copying to anyone was as easy as copying one drive to another, no heavy networking crap as overhead. But it would have allowed you to hook up to other systems like Ethernet. Oh, I should mention, I built this to sell retail for about $50. And we would have built a bridge for Apple Talk and other systems. I lament myself we never made that.
You were obviously not alone with that idea. I bought a bunch of used Amiga stuff a few years ago, where a floppy-cable-contraption was part of the deal. Unfortunately, the software wasn't included, and the cables with a small TTL-based circuit are not good for anything else than telling "well, it was probably supposed to network a few Amigas". That was well past the days when ParNet was already outdated, and it was definitely less sophisticated than AmigaLink (which I believe used RS485 drivers to cope with long cables) so I didn't preserve the thing.
Sadly, where I am I don't have a NAS (although easy to set up all said). I'm travelling, so using someone else's system.
How about taking a laptop with you, hook that up to their network and open a Samba/CIFS share? Still cheaper than adding a 100,- EUR RapidRoad on top of the X-Surf-100.
Or you could go fancy and open a Samba share on your home NAS on a custom port (remember to poke a hole into your firewall to forward that port to your NAS from the outside world). We've done that for the "iComp drive": If you download the AmiTCP install disk from us (paid download, that is), it will also install that. We provide the latest versions of our tools on the network-drive. While this is read-only, you can of course make it r/w on your home NAS.
Indeed, the A4000 does have a network card, but - I know nothing about it, and given it has a BNC connector, I'm not sure what I would even hook it up to.
If it's "only BNC", then it's unlikely to connect to anything that's "recent". Please check our shop: The X-Surf-100 networking card is a Z2/Z3 auto-sensing card that will give you true 100MBit Ethernet on the A4000. You will only see the AmiTCP install disk when logged in, so please make a member account for the shop page as well (forum and shop are separated for security reasons).
If you are *really* lucky, then the A4000 has the Catweasel MK3 in one of it's slots. That was a floppy controller that had a Zorro edge on one side, and a PCI edge on the other end. If you find one of those in that computer, you can plug the controller into a PCI slot of a PC and read Amiga disks with a Win32 or Linux OS, where you already have "lots of connectivity". Unfortunately, neither this thing, nor the Catweasel MK4 or MK4plus are still available - and the Catweasel MK5 has been on my long-term-todo-list for years, so no, I can't offer this floppy controller at this point.
About FirePower - I believe that hardly anyone in Europe has really used it with a Modem. I used to meet with a friend and take the A500 with me, then used a self-made Nullmodem cable to play (had to be self-made, because that friend of mine had an A1000, where the gender of the serial port was "wrong"). Remember that even making a local call was charged big time in Germany, and blocking the line for the better part of the afternoon wouldn't have been an option
Oh, and the place I'm staying is Jim Sachs castle
You mean he's the owner of the A4000? Looks like I should donate an X-Surf-100, just to say that it's being used in a legend's computer. I already got the fame of having my networking cards in NASA's Amigas (only found out when the computers appeared on eBay), but this one is still missing the list
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This reminds me of a thread on the German a1k.org forum - I wanted to encourage someone to write an ADF reader tool that uses two drives. The idea was that the tool would read one drive, while you have time to change the disk in the other drive. This would ensure that the floppy controller is always busy, and disk-change times won't delay reading. Not sure if the tool ever saw the light of day - will check later.
With a read-time of 47 seconds per disk (if there are no read errors), those 500 disks could be read in just over 6.5 hours - plus a few minutes for taking a leak every now and then.. I'd start looking for a second or a third Amiga to keep it short enough to fit "in between two meals". This is really a task that can easily be parallelized (hmm.. is that a word?).
About the same price as an X-Surf-100 is the ACA500plus: It gives you enough memory and acceleration, plus two CF-card slots, one of them hot-swappable and with FAT95 file system transparently installed, so no "installation pain". If you find "any" A500, you have a perfect read-and-backup-to-FAT-formatted-CF-card system. Maybe even the better system compared to an A4000, as the only moving part is the floppy drive - everything else would be solid-state.
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Not sure if the tool ever saw the light of day - will check later.
Found the thread, but the author "FlatHamster" has not been active there since 2019, and attachments to the posts were lost when forum software was updated (I guess).
I also have to correct myself - possible read-time for a full 880k floppy is under 37 seconds, so 5 hours and 9 minutes for 500 disks. Two Amigas would easily get you to the "time between two meals"-goal.
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The last reply was more than 365 days ago, this thread is most likely obsolete. It is recommended to create a new thread instead.
