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#Jlink
7 messages in this thread
I had hoped that I would be able to get by without a second 5 1/4 floppy with
Bridgeboard by using jlink and a hard disk which I hope to have someday if the
hard disk controller card I ordered ever gets here. However, now I am
wondering if it will be possible to use a hard disk on the Amiga side, sharing
with PC side with the jlink function. Has anyone had any problems. My concern
is due to trying to install an Infocom game today. The game is a version for
the IBM. I can install it by swapping disks but this takes MANY swaps. I tried
using jlink defining an Amiga 3 1/2 floppy as a virtual drive, then using
assign to assign b: to the virtual drive. It worked fine until the install
program asked for me to put the disk from drive b (which was the 3 1/2 Amiga)
into drive a. Next I tried the installation program for a hard disk assigning
first the hard disk to C: (or D:) which I set up at one time as the Amiga 3 1/2
floppy with jlink, and another time with RAM:–both using jlink since I do not
yet have a hard disk. It didn't work. The installation program on the Infocom
disk kept saying: C: (or D:) is not your hard drive. There is an errorlevel
check in the install batch program that apparently checks and doesn't find a
hard disk. I guess jlink will not always work correctly by making the machine
think a ram: disk or an Amiga Floppy is a functioning drive.
Any similar such experiences?
The first message you got is an ms-dos messages saying that since you only have
one drive (Which, regardless of your link/assign is still what the ms-dos
thinks you have) it wants you to put the second disk into drive a:. Why it is
not recognizing your linked drive as drive B;, Im not sure. From the manual it
looks like that if there is a b: attatched to the Bridge side ms-dos will
recognize it. It might be a hardware only connection, ie. the Bridge looks out
off of the floppy connector for a drive instead of seeing if there is something
linked. Im not sure.
Trying to fake ms-dos out that a 800+k device is a hard-drive is also something
I haven't had the chance to try, sorry. Maybe it has a problem because it
looks into the drive partition table on the ms-dos side and since the linked
drive is not partitioned (fdisk'ed) it decides it's not a hard drive.
I run a 1MB jlink on one of my A2000's at the store and everything seems to
work fairly well, installing to HD etc, but I do get a lot of r/w errors. The
errors seem to be mostly recoverable, but it still scares me. I wonder if it's
not better to put the HD on the ms-dos side and leave a partition for the
Amiga. I have not tried it this way myself and hope someone who has lets us
know how it works.
-John
My same thoughts about using a hard disk on the IBM vs Amiga side and trying to
share.
There are also problems running a drive on the IBM side and sharing it with the
Amiga, though less troublesome. First, the access to the Amiga is slower than
the access to a native Amiga HD. Secondly, I've found that accessing the Amiga
partition can cause intermittent problems on the MS-DOS side (like missed
interupts that cause a 'device not ready' message out of MessyDOS (for the
internal FLOPPY drive!). This problem is avoidable if you want to use the
MessyDOS side like it's intended – strictly single tasking with no
acknowledgement of a real computer sitting around idling (the Ami side).
Actually, the ideal solution is to have separate hard disks for the IBM side
and the Amiga side.
..Bob
There are also problems running a drive on the IBM side and sharing it with the
Amiga, though less troublesome. First, the access to the Amiga is slower than
the access to a native Amiga HD. Secondly, I've found that accessing the Amiga
partition can cause intermittent problems on the MS-DOS side (like missed
interupts that cause a 'device not ready' message out of MessyDOS (for the
internal FLOPPY drive!). This problem is avoidable if you want to use the
MessyDOS side like it's intended – strictly single tasking with no
acknowledgement of a real computer sitting around idling (the Ami side).
Actually, the ideal solution is to have separate hard disks for the IBM side
and the Amiga side.
..Bob
My same thoughts about using a hard disk on the IBM vs Amiga side and trying to
share.
The first message you got is an ms-dos messages saying that since you only have
one drive (Which, regardless of your link/assign is still what the ms-dos
thinks you have) it wants you to put the second disk into drive a:. Why it is
not recognizing your linked drive as drive B;, Im not sure. From the manual it
looks like that if there is a b: attatched to the Bridge side ms-dos will
recognize it. It might be a hardware only connection, ie. the Bridge looks out
off of the floppy connector for a drive instead of seeing if there is something
linked. Im not sure.
Trying to fake ms-dos out that a 800+k device is a hard-drive is also something
I haven't had the chance to try, sorry. Maybe it has a problem because it
looks into the drive partition table on the ms-dos side and since the linked
drive is not partitioned (fdisk'ed) it decides it's not a hard drive.
I run a 1MB jlink on one of my A2000's at the store and everything seems to
work fairly well, installing to HD etc, but I do get a lot of r/w errors. The
errors seem to be mostly recoverable, but it still scares me. I wonder if it's
not better to put the HD on the ms-dos side and leave a partition for the
Amiga. I have not tried it this way myself and hope someone who has lets us
know how it works.
-John