A WinUAE guide to setup a physical disk for Amiga

I get this question ALOT..  how to setup an Amigadrive from UAE.

so instead of answering multiple times.. I do this guide.

Here I do a quick setup of UAE and install a STANDARD WB 3.1 installation, no fancy stuff or so. just plain standard.  and then prepare a disk and copy the installation to it so it can be placed in an Amiga and boot.  this will also mean NO support for larger disks etc. maybe a later time.

First let start WinUAE:

UAEQuickstart

in Quickstart , Here select model. I choose A1200

UAECPU

At CPU I select 020, but I also tick “Fastest Possible” as I am not interested of any cycle-extact things here. I want to have speed.

UAEROM

Next step is ROM.  I select a 3.1 rom for the 1200.  i will NOT provide it to you..  but  hint.  you CAN from an real amiga dump the data from $f80000 and 512K from that and use that file.. 😉

UAERAM

Then at RAM I add Z2 memory.  it is not really needed. but. hey!  it is “free”

UAEFloppy

Time to point to the floppy. I select the install disk for 3.1 and also set speed to Turbo.

UAEHDD

Time for HD.  Click on “Add Directory or archive”

UAEAddHD

Here use devicename HDD and what you want it to be called. and a directory where to put the files.
NO I do not use DH0 here as I want that to be used on the amigaside later.  AND I do not use a HDF file etc. as by this method I can ZIP the installation from the pc and send to someone, backup or whatever. I haven’t found any drawback to use this.

Anyway clicking OK and it will look like the picture above with HDD dir.

UAEConfig

Now to config.  your list wil be shorter.  as this is my testbench etc I got lots of configs. But in “name” enter some name. I took SmallSetup.

and Save the config

now click “Start” and the Amiga will boot to the install disk:

UAE-Install

so double-click on Install3.1:

UAE-Install2

and on “Install”

UAE-Install3

Select language.  I use English:

UAE-Install3

And you will see the installer:

UAE-Install4

Press “Proceed”

UAE-Install4

and press “Install Release 3.1”

UAE-Install5

and you will be presented:

UAE-Install6

Here stick to Novice user.  it is ok for us now.

UAE-Install7

Select languages you want. and “Proceed”

UAE-Install8

I do not care about printers. so Proceed.

UAE-Install9

Choose keyboards you want to install.  as my keyboard is Swedisg I click it.  And proceed

UAE-Install10

When this pops up.  press F12 on your keyboard:

UAE-Install11

And select the WB disk and OK

after a short time, it will automatically go to next step:

UAE-Install12copy

UAE-Install13

Well same here..  F12..  etc

I will just repeat all screens here:

UAE-Install14

UAE-Install15

UAE-Install16

UAE-Install17

UAE-Install18

So this is done.  now time to eject the disk. or it will be booted.

press F12

Winuaeadmin3

 

and click “eject” on df0.

DO also save this config. so it will not boot from disk the next time..
(to be honest. I happened to do this during my screenshot test 🙂 )

press start

then in UAE on the Amiga. press “Proceed”

UAE-Install

And it will boot. (here you can see the installdisk. you will not. as you ejected it 🙂 )

anyway.  now exit UAE with ALT+F4

OK. now it is time to to the physical amigastuff..

if you DO have a real HD that have been formatted on an amiga. you can skip this part.  and go to the “Setup disk in WinUAE” later.

OK you have a HD, CF, SD, SCSI disk?  attach it to some kind of adapter to your PC.    Somewhat wrong I will use a USB stick here, even if it will not physically work on an amiga. the handling is the exact same thing:

a device with ANY kind of partitiondata windows can find. it WILL block WinUAE. you MUST clear stuff. so to do so. Start a “CMD” as admin:

press the windows/start button and just type “cmd” and it will show you some results:

WinCmdadmin

when you see “Command promt” RIGHTclick on it and “Run as administrator”

if you have UAC enabled (AS YOU SHOULD!) you will get a yes/no question every time. answer YES..

at the DOS promt write  diskpart and press enter

You will now see:

wincmddiskpart

now you want to list the disks on your system:

wincmddiskpart2

Here you can see that I got 2 disks.

and disk 1 is my device I want to use on the Amiga (noted by the SIZE!)

lets select it:

wincmddiskpart3

just write Select disk 1.  remember to use the correct number for YOUR system. do something wrong and you WILL screw up your system. and do NOT blame me!

wincmddiskpart4

by writing Clear and press enter. it will clear ALL data on this disk. no questions. it will do it.  wrong disk and you WILL be sorry!

you can now close this.  and you will notice that windows will not recognise the device anymore

 

Setup disk in WinUAE

THIS is where you need to jump to of you have a Amigadevice already that doesn’t need to be cleared on a PC

Time to start WinUAE. but you NEED to do this as admin.  FORGET all old REMOVED commandlines to winuae. it WILL NOT WORK.

rightclick on the WinUAE icon:

Winuaeadmin

and choose “Run as administrator”  and choose YES on a UAC request..

Winuaeadmin2

Load your config you saved

and go to:

Winuaeadmin4

 

CD & Hard drives

Press “Add hard Drive”

Winuaeadmin5

You will see a drop down list. here you can see the device as [UNK]  if it is a real amiga device it will read [RDB] instead.

choose it and “Add hard drive”

Winuaeadmin6

yeah! right stuff  Add hard drive

now Start UAE and let the WB boot

(IF you didn’t save the config after removing the install floppy. remove that floppy now BEFORE boot)

UAE-Setupdisk1

It is booted. Time to partition the drive (IF you have a amigadrive mounted. it will be presented here. but now we act as it isn’t!)

Doubleclick UAEDisk

UAE-Setupdisk2

and doubleclick Tools

UAE-Setupdisk3

you might need to resize the window.

but click once on HdToolbox and the hold down right mousebutton to get into the menus.

UAE-Setupdisk4

Go to Icons/Information and release the mousebutton:

UAE-Setupdisk5

Click on the SCSI_DEVICE_NAME line.

at the window below. change scsi.device to uaehf.device and press enter

UAE-Setupdisk6

press Save

and now doubleclick on Hdtoobox

UAE-Setupdisk7

it wil now show some devices.  might be unknown or known. usually it is the device at the bottom so click it

UAE-Setupdisk8

and Change Drive Type

UAE-Setupdisk9

here we had not handled any drives. it might be different for you.  anyway. “Define new”

UAE-Setupdisk10

now it is time to read the data..  press “Read configuration” and it will read the physical data from the device

UAE-Setupdisk11

it will warn you some. yeayheay.  press Continue

UAE-Setupdisk11

UAE-Setupdisk12

Here you can see that it is the correct drive.  if not  cancel and select another drive

if it is all OK press OK

UAE-Setupdisk13

Press OK here aswell it wil save this data

UAE-Setupdisk14

you MIGHT get this nag.  bah! Continue. I will not use old OSes anyway

UAE-Setupdisk15

press Partition Drive:

UAE-Setupdisk16

This might look different for you. but resize the FIRST parition to BELOW 2GB!

UAE-Setupdisk17

Also press “advanced options”  change partition drive name to DH0 (or whatever you want) make sure Bootable is ticked.

in this tutorial I will NOT change filesystems etc.  we keep it simple!)

now click on the other parition (OR paritions if you got a large disk) and delete all the others

UAE-Setupdisk18

we let the rest be unused. press OK

UAE-Setupdisk19

press “Save changes to drive”

UAE-Setupdisk20

 

it will now be greyed out. press exit

here you might get different results.  warning about parititons changed, it will reboot etc etc. it is ok

if no reboot. DO reboot with ctrl+windows+windows

UAE-Setupdisk21

the drive will pop up after like 1 second or so as NDOS etc.

click it and then hold right mousebutton:

UAE-Setupdisk22

go to Icons and Format disk

UAE-Setupdisk23

Write a name and choose QUICK FORMAT (it is pointless doing “format” or so. do it QUICK!)

UAE-Setupdisk24

are you SURE? press format

UAE-Setupdisk25

Are you REALLY sure?  press format

UAE-Setupdisk26

formatting drive

and:

UAE-Setupdisk27

yeah disk is formatted

go to UaeDisk (or the UAE disk you did) (doubleclick on it)

UAE-Setupdisk27

Doubleclick on System

UAE-Setupdisk28

Start CLI (or well.  Shell!)

UAE-Setupdisk29

Resize and move it to a good size and write   info and press enter

UAE-Setupdisk30

here you can see that the PC hd is named “HDD:”  and the Amiga is named “DH0:” now time to copy from the PC to Amiga:

UAE-Setupdisk31

simply write        copy hdd: dh0: all clone                    this copies ALL from HDD: to DH0:  and will clone all tags etc.    if you also enter quiet  after it will not show anything making copy faster.

 

UAE-Setupdisk32

 

it copy data..

 

UAE-Setupdisk33

 

and now it is DONE.

now press F12

UAE-Setupdisk34

click on “HDD” and choose “remove”

do however not save this..  this is just to let WinUAE to only know of the physical Amiga disk you have left.

UAE-Setupdisk36

now press Start:

UAE-Setupdisk37

 

AND Voila.  WinUAE just started from your physical disk prepared for Amiga.  put this disk in your amiga and you can boot it.

if you prepare your installation before copying it to the Amigadisk. you can prepare all from uae. making it extremly more easy than copy stuff to your amiga etc.

a HINT here is actually to make sure your WinUAE disk is not named “uaedisk” as i sys  but instead  SYS   then installsoftware will use SYS: as name and that is always the bootdisk on the amiga.

 

Hope you liked it.  please comment if you think I should do it more advanced.  what more do you want me to cover?

 

IF you want me to do a youtube version TELL ME!

 

About

Categories: Uncategorized |

9 thoughts on “A WinUAE guide to setup a physical disk for Amiga

  1. Ok, I have it working now, needed to remove the CF from the configuration and then re-add it and restart WINUAE…Running 3.1.4…

    Thanks for the great walk through…

    v/r

    Ron K.

  2. Hey,

    I’m at this point:
    “here you might get different results. warning about parititons changed, it will reboot etc etc.”

    And I have no HD icon. Everything was ok before. Could You help me some way?

  3. Hey Chucky,

    thanks a lot for your detailed explanation! Perfect!
    I recently started playing with my A2000 again, after 23 years! Everything works like a charm. I decided to “upgrade” a little and spend the machine an IDE-CF converter (I have the first Buddha IDE controller inside) so that I can finally dump my 1995 IBM IDE HDD which is louder than a buzzsaw 🙂
    While I’m writing this, I’m still waiting for the delivery. Nevertheless, with your guidance I was able to successfully prepare a bootable CF card. I only had to look up, why formatting it didn’t result in a validated disk. Found out, it’s a 8 GB card and I had to make 2 partitions around 3600MB each.
    Within WinUAE I can now boot to workbench, so it works as intended.
    As soon as I have tested it with the adaptor, I’ll be back here.
    Thanks a lot!!

  4. Using WinUAE 4.40 I get the same problem as Maciej above, no matter which CF card or adapter I use. After partitioning and rebooting, the drive never shows up in Workbench.

    I tried using Johan Driessen’s guide too, and had exactly the same problem.

    Downgraded to WinUAE 4.10 and everything works as it should.

    So something has changed in the newer versions, and guides would need to be updated too. 🙂

  5. Hi,

    Fantastic guide. Seems to have worked very well for me.

    Only question I have is that while I’m partitioning my drive, it’s an 80GB disk btw, I can create one partition at around 1.2GB, but if I change anything, the screen corrupts and makes it impossible to make it any bigger. Also because of the same issue, I can’t create and additional partitions.
    Any ideas how to make this a bit easier? Any other partitioning programs?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

[TOP]