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ScuzzBlog: Diaries October 2024

Entry 27th October 2024: Post 1: Amiga CrossDOS - 5.25 diskette etiquette.


Amiga CrossDOS - 5.25 diskette etiquette.

Came as a bit of a revelation to me the day I discovered the Amiga
could read PC disks. I recall getting very excited at the prospect
of transferring images from my PC taken from the internet to the
Amiga and DPaint. It was such a magical discovery.

Today the process albeit a little more common place was none the
less still a touch magical as I used a 5.25 inch floppy drive
connected to an Amiga to crack open PC disks or diskettes. I have
been threatening for some time to check over some PC disk boxes I
have sitting in my Windows repository, so today I jumped straight
in.

First up I powered up the IBM PS/1 to check she was running just
fine and as ever she simply booted straight into 3.1. I installed 
a 5.25" disk drive on the machine a good while back now and testing
with one of my disks she was working perfectly. Using the PS/1 
isn't a challenge, what I needed to do was test the Amiga. 

As ever.

Amongst the disks were a number of programs that I have not been
able to track down their origins on the internet. One was called
The Word Wizard. All this software dates from the late eighties
and was used on a Windows 3.1 PC that I got with the Checkmate.
Gave me the opportunity to fire up the Checkmate and have a play.

That was the plan. Didn't work out quite as intended as I found
myself trying to work out why a bunch of Amiga disks I had had
been loaded with an Aminet search tool and index plus a small
catalogue of files. You would think it would be an easy problem
to solve. More confusing as the files appeared also on a disk in
the Checkmate.

Nothing for it but to transfer activities to the upper quarters
and fire up an Amiga 1200 hooked up with external 5.25 and SCSI
with an external hard drive and CD. This is my main location for 
working on 5.25 disks as I have the 1060 hooked up to the 1000
sitting below the 1200.

Turned out to be part of an actual CD project for the Q Drive of
all things and totally unrelated. What I should have done was to
simply read my own blogs. Duh. Anyhoo as the light faded and I
found myself sitting trying to use a 5.25 by the light of an Amiga
drive light flickering red numbers I decided to call it a day.

I sat with my cuppa reflecting on the marvel that is CrossDOS and
fingered my way through small leaflets and booklets in the special
CrossDOS box. Time was when life was much simpler. Ar hum .. Like
my Amigas I age gracefully and nodded off still clutching my disks.

Happy days.

Amiga CrossDOS - 5.25 diskette etiquette.

Previously on scuzzblog

CrossDOS'n about.. as you do

Entry February 25: Diary: The way we were ... No pressure

December19 2603: scuzzblog: Amiga - CrossDOS.

January 9th 0902: scuzzblog: Cracking stuff - CrossDOS, Checkmate and X-Copy.

February20 0103: scuzzblog: A1200 - Unbranded 5.25 inch drive.

December 9th 0901: scuzzblog: BayBench 1.3 - Mounting a 5.25 RF 542C.

December 3rd 0301: scuzzblog: Baybench 1.3 - Adding MultiDOS.

Apr28 2802: scuzzblog: IBM PS/1 with Windows 3.1


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Last updated 27th October 2024

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