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Can you connect a real Amiga formatted disk?

Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2021 9:27 am
by Caldor
I was wondering whether maybe there could be a way to connect an Amiga disk? Say you use an SD or CF card in your real Amiga which is formatted with FFS or some other Amiga file system, could it be used with the Minimig core on the MiSTer like you can use it with WinUAE?

Re: Can you connect a real Amiga formatted disk?

Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2021 12:38 pm
by Bas
You could probably clone the card and mount that as a hdd image.

Re: Can you connect a real Amiga formatted disk?

Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2021 3:12 pm
by akeley
I've mounted MiSter images in WinUAE, just like SD cards from my real Amiga, so I suppose it should work.

Re: Can you connect a real Amiga formatted disk?

Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2021 5:00 pm
by bbond007
Caldor wrote: Sun Sep 12, 2021 9:27 am I was wondering whether maybe there could be a way to connect an Amiga disk? Say you use an SD or CF card in your real Amiga which is formatted with FFS or some other Amiga file system, could it be used with the Minimig core on the MiSTer like you can use it with WinUAE?
You could possibly use a symlink to achieve this.

Code: Select all

ln -s /dev/??? /media/fat/Amiga/TEST.HDF
"???" is the device assigned to the card reader.

this does somewhat work (slowly) with USB floppy drives under ao486.

Re: Can you connect a real Amiga formatted disk?

Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2021 11:16 am
by Caldor
bbond007 wrote: Sun Sep 12, 2021 5:00 pm
Caldor wrote: Sun Sep 12, 2021 9:27 am I was wondering whether maybe there could be a way to connect an Amiga disk? Say you use an SD or CF card in your real Amiga which is formatted with FFS or some other Amiga file system, could it be used with the Minimig core on the MiSTer like you can use it with WinUAE?
You could possibly use a symlink to achieve this.

Code: Select all

ln -s /dev/??? /media/fat/Amiga/TEST.HDF
"???" is the device assigned to the card reader.

this does somewhat work (slowly) with USB floppy drives under ao486.
Nice. I did not know Symlinks could be links to virtual files as well and that the files could be pointing to drives.

This should work with everything I guess? Floppies, CDs, drives... although I do think that this might not work for drives like this. I suspect it would require the raw data of the f.ex. CF card would match the data of an HDF file, and I do not think it does. If it does work... I am thinking it might be read only.

But either way, that really opens some possibilities.

Re: Can you connect a real Amiga formatted disk?

Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:10 pm
by bbond007
Caldor wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 11:16 am This should work with everything I guess? Floppies, CDs, drives...
Not floppies on Amiga due to the USB drive not understanding the media encoding method. Maybe on ST. Not sure...

Re: Can you connect a real Amiga formatted disk?

Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:45 pm
by bazza_12
I love the idea of loading a game from usb floppy on the minimig.. it's completely unnecessary and I don't have any disk based games anymore, but it's total nostalgia..

Re: Can you connect a real Amiga formatted disk?

Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2021 1:01 pm
by multisystem
Caldor wrote: Sun Sep 12, 2021 9:27 am I was wondering whether maybe there could be a way to connect an Amiga disk? Say you use an SD or CF card in your real Amiga which is formatted with FFS or some other Amiga file system, could it be used with the Minimig core on the MiSTer like you can use it with WinUAE?
Rob Smith is starting work on the Amiga Floppy interface for MiSTer - it's working in WinUAE using a real floppy drive connected via USB (Via High speed serial port on Arduino) see more in this thread - viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1538&p=27770&hilit= ... b14#p27770

Re: Can you connect a real Amiga formatted disk?

Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:48 pm
by Caldor
bbond007 wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:10 pm
Caldor wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 11:16 am This should work with everything I guess? Floppies, CDs, drives...
Not floppies on Amiga due to the USB drive not understanding the media encoding method. Maybe on ST. Not sure...
Yeah, I know. Amiga floppies are quite different. Should work with the AO486 core. There are two Amiga floppy projects I think, or at least one, and it even works, but the one making it wanted to design it to be easy to use, but unfortunately, the user-IO port on its own does not have enough signals it seems, to support a full Amiga floppy drive, so the way he got it to work used pins from the GPIO and the user-IO port if I understood it correctly.

I have not seen any updates on the thread about the project for a while now. Hoping maybe to see Greazeweasel support somehow and the floppy drive that was made to work with WinUAE on PC.
multisystem wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 1:01 pm
Caldor wrote: Sun Sep 12, 2021 9:27 am I was wondering whether maybe there could be a way to connect an Amiga disk? Say you use an SD or CF card in your real Amiga which is formatted with FFS or some other Amiga file system, could it be used with the Minimig core on the MiSTer like you can use it with WinUAE?
Rob Smith is starting work on the Amiga Floppy interface for MiSTer - it's working in WinUAE using a real floppy drive connected via USB (Via High speed serial port on Arduino) see more in this thread - viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1538&p=27770&hilit= ... b14#p27770
Nice :) I hope that will work. I have ordered a Greazeweasel so I can test this with WinUAE. I hope the WinUAE mod gets official support, as I think right now it only works with that one special modded version, so a few years from now, it might only work with that, by then, old version of WinUAE.

But even more so I hope to see it work with the MiSTer.