New User-ex IBM-HELP!!
6 messages in this thread
I am completely new to the Amiga after several years on IBM, including
Tapcis on CIS. So ignorant am I that the Amiga, with a KCS Board fitted, is
now running as a PC and I am still on Tapcis. I must get it into native
mode. What do I need? Is WHAP! the one for CIS? How do I get it and if I
have to d/l in PC mode in the first instance can I get software (initially
in PC 720k format) that can convert to Amiga disk format? I changed
machines for the Amiga sound/MIDI/graphics and am entirely satisfied. Comms
is never easy and that is the area giving me some trouble at the moment. At
least I can still get on to CIS. Don#t suppose there are many UK Tapcis
users on this particular forum! Thanks in advance, Bill Hardman
You will find quite a few UK Whap! users on this forum, though. And some
of them will help you get things set up properly to make it work right with
the British telephone system.
Whap! is the one you want. It is in AmigaVendor Forum, Library 9,
WHP19G.LZH.
I would recommend that you purchase a commercial program for your Amiga
called CrossDOS. It will let your Amiga drives read and write MS-DOS disks
just as easily as it does AMigaDOS disks. It mounts your drives for each
format, and you give the drives different names to be used with the MS-DOS
disks. The program suggests DI0, but I have used MF0 from the beginning on
mine, and it works fine. If I want to read an MS-DOS disks, I give the
command using MF0: for the drive name. If I want to read an AmigaDOS disk
in that same drive, I use the same command, but use the name DF0: It works
easly, flawlessly – just wonderful. And it costs very little for such a
useful utility. I paid about $20 for mine at my local dealer.
You would probably also enjoy BackTalk as a companion term program for
Whap!. It is in Library 5 of AmigaUser, and I forget the exact title. You
can locate it easily, though, if you go to Library 5 and type BRO BT*
Please do ask whenever you have a question. We're all glad to pitch in and
share whatever we know.
Betty
Betty, Thanks v much for the helpful reply. In my old C64 days I was a
member of the UK ICPUG and often saw your name in the magazine. You are
very highly regarded as the CBM guru, you know – not the meditation guru. I
will give Whap! a try. I am very partial to Tapcis under MSDOS, so just as
an alternative, would CrossDOS convert binary files downloaded to MSDOS
disks to Amiga format? That would really give me the best of both worlds.
Bill
Bill,
CrossDOS only permits you to read MS-DOS disks. It cannot make the
executables work under AmigaDOS – sorry about that! It would be
impossible, of course, to make it that easy to go between platforms. MS-DOS
runs on an Intel 80xxx chip, and AMigaDOS runs on a Motorolo 68xxx chip,
and the similarity between the two is minimal. You can get a Bridgeboard
for the 2×00 or 3×00 Amigas and run Tapcis on that – or it would probably
work if you got ATOnce if you are using a 500.
Guru??? Me???? I think you are confusing me with Jim Butterfield. He's the
only Commodore guru (pre-Amiga, that is) that I know! I do love my
association with ICPUG, however, and I do write an Amiga column there each
issue. Have you tried them since you have an Amiga? There are LOTS of
Amiga users in ICPUG, and the journal is full of Amiga articles of high
quality.
Betty
Betty, Thanks for the reply and sorry for calling you the Guru! I am
actually running Tapcis now on the Amiga 500 with the KCS Power Board
installed. What I meant was if I downloaded Amiga executables as binary
files on to MS-DOS disks and then converted to AmigaDos – would they run? I
know that MS-DOS can't run AmigaDos progs and vice versa but how if the
MSDOS disk was merely the vehicle for downloading? Honestly, I am having so
many problems with Amiga file compression. I have downloaded Whap! as
Whp19g.lzh from CIX along with LHarc13 (uncompressed) which I have, as
suggested, renamed lharc and placed in the C: directory of a bootdisk.
Every time I try to run it I get "unable to load lharc: File is not an
object module". This came from the ICPUG area on CIX so I should think the
file is OK. What do you think could be going wrong here? BTW, I shall be
re-joining ICPUG from January 1st. Bill (PS I don't want to go interactive
on CIS so until I can get this Lharc/Whap problem sorted out I shall still
be a PC user in disguise. Are you familiar with this KCS Board? I think
Supra market it in the USA. I should think it's capacity to work through
the Amiga serial port is as good a test as any of its capabilities.)
Bill,
I'm glad you will be getting back into ICPUG. I think they are a really
neat group of people. There is a chance that I may get to visit some of
them next spring! My only other visit to England was in 1988. At that
time, I visited a show at the Novotel, and attended some club meetings at
Portsmouth, Slough, Coventry, and Biggin Hill. Jim Butterfield was
speaking at those meetings, so they were well attended. I really liked the
people I met there.
You can download Amiga software to your MS-DOS disks. You can even unpack
it with MS-DOS versions of the archivers. When transferred to an AmigaDOS
disk, they will run on the Amiga. I'm sorry I misunderstood your question
before. I've done the reverse of this a number of times. I frequently
download things to my Amiga disk, unpack with my Amiga unpackers, and then
use CrossDOS to transfer the software to MS-DOS disks for my laptop and
Bridgeboard. The programs have always run. I think you'll have no
trouble.
Are you using the right commands for LHARC? To use Whap! from a floppy,
the floppy needs to be named Whap, so format a disk named WHAP and have it
ready. Then, the LHARC commands would be:
cd WHAP:
lharc -m -x x path:WHP19G
Lharc does not run – it just works on archives, and you have to give it the
arguments to make it work. The switches have to be in lower case to work.
The -m tells it to create new directories as needed without stopping to ask
your permission; the -x tells it to preserve the directory structure; the x
tells it to extract the file.
Let us know if you still have problems, and be pretty specific about the
messages you are getting. We can get through this, but it may take a
couple of tries.
Betty