Installation
Make an Install 3.1 Disk
This can be skipped if there is already an Install 3.1 disk available.
Our A1200 came with a Kickstart 3.1 ROM and Workbench 3.1 on five floppies. This, unfortunately, didn't include the disk for installing Workbench to a hard disk.
We were able to find a disk image for the installation disk. However, this image can only be made into a disk by an Amiga, so there's a bit of a bootstrapping problem. The trick is to use CrossDOS, which allows the Amiga to read 720KB MS-DOS formatted floppies.
The vanilla Workbench 3.1 disk doesn't have CrossDOS configured. The following steps demonstrate how to set up a persistent bootable RAM disk (RAD: device) with CrossDOS enabled.
- Boot the Workbench 3.1 disk
- Open a command line
resident C:Copy PURE ; load the Copy command into memory
resident C:MakeDir PURE ; load the MakeDir command into memory
- Insert the Storage 3.1 disk
copy Storage3.1:DOSDrivers/RAD#? RAM:
- Open the "Ram Disk" device
Select the the "RAD" tool and select "Icons" -> "Information" from the menu bar
- Change the "HIGHCYL=79" tool type to "HIGHCYL=99"
- Save changes to the icon, and then double click it to mount the RAD: device
- Return to the command line
makedir RAD:DEVS
makedir RAD:DEVS/DOSDrivers
copy Storage3.1:DOSDrivers/PC#? RAD:DEVS/DOSDrivers
- Remove the Storage 3.1 disk and re-insert the Workbench 3.1 disk
copy Workbench3.1: RAD: ALL
- Remove the Workbench 3.1 disk and insert the Extras 3.1 disk
copy Extras3.1:L/CrossDOSFileSystem RAD:L
copy Extras3.1:L/FileSystem_Trans RAD:L/FileSystem_Trans ALL
- Warm reboot the Amiga (ctrl-left amiga-right amiga); hold down both mouse buttons to get the boot menu and choose to boot from the RAD: device
After that, it is necessary to some how get an image of the Install 3.1 disk onto the Amiga, along with the necessary utilities to write it to disk. Here are two possibilities:
- Copy a compressed image of the Install 3.1 disk onto a 720KB MS-DOS formatted floppy. It will also be necessary to get the TransADF or DMS utility (which one depends on the format of the compressed floppy image) and possibly the LhA archiver onto the Amiga.
- Use a 720KB MS-DOS formatted floppy to get some terminal program that supports ZMODEM (e.g., NComm) onto the Amiga. Then use a null-modem cable to transfer the install disk image, TransADF, and potentially the LhA archiver onto the Amiga.
In either case, make use of the RAM: device to store the image file.
Partition and Format the Disk
Boot the Install 3.1 disk. Open the disk icon, then find and open the HDTools drawer. Run HDToolBox.
You should an entry for the hard disk of interest. Select it and click "Change Drive Type." In the next window the pops up click "Define New..."
In this window you specify the geometry for the disk. First, change the FileName to something random in T: (rather than writing it to the Install 3.1 disk). You can try clicking the "Read Configuration" button to attempt to read the geometry from the drive itself. This may or may not result in the correct result. Also note that the Size information displayed by HDToolBox is subject to overflow, and will probably be incorrect. Despite the fact it will appear that HDToolBox is not supporting large disks, as long as the geometry is sensible for the desired disk size, it will properly partition the disk.
Click the "Ok" buttons for the "Define/Edit Drive Type" and "Set Drive Type" windows to return to the main HDToolBox window.
Now click the "Partition Drive" button.
Create a 200-300MB partition at the beginning of the disk. This will be the bootable system parition. After the basic operating system is installed and the system is patched to support large disks, more partitions can be created to use up the rest of the disk. For the filesystem, pick some variety of the Fast File System. The extra options International Mode and Directory Cache allow more types of characters in file names and faster performance, respectively. However, they require newer versions of workbench (all will work with Workbench 3.1, only the basic Fast File System is compatible with Workbench 1.3). Pick a device name; "DH0" would be a reasonable choice. When finished, click "Ok."
Click "Save Changes to Drive" and then "Exit."
Now, reboot using the Workbench 3.1 disk.
Format the newly created partition. The easiest way to do this is to select the icon for the partition (it will be "DH0:NDOS", if you choose a device name of "DH0"). Select the same options you used creating the partition, and give it a volume name of "Workbench." Click on the "Quick Format" button.
Dealing with Large Hard Drives
This is a pain. There are two different solutions that work: Commodore's beta version of scsi.device, and a shareware program called IDEFix. The nag screen on IDEFix is really annoying, so I've used the former (although the latter might actually support larger drives).
Actually, the beta scsi.device also has a nag screen (it "expired" at some point in the distant past). However, somebody's written a patch that removes the nag.
SFS
Here's a guide: http://palbo.dk/amiga/sfs/
Other Riff-Raff That Should be Installed
TODO!