Path: utzoo!bnr-vpa!bnr-fos!bnr-public!schow
From: schow@bnr-public.uucp (Stanley Chow)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amax problems, again. . .
Message-ID: <730@bnr-fos.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jul 89 17:48:45 GMT
References: <28133@ames.arc.nasa.gov> <221@kesmai.COM>
Sender: news@bnr-fos.UUCP
Reply-To: schow%BNR.CA.bitnet@relay.cs.net (Stanley Chow)
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada
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In article <221@kesmai.COM> kff@kesmai.COM (Kelton Flinn) writes:
>In article <28133@ames.arc.nasa.gov>, mike@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mike Smithwick) writes:
>> I'll bring it up on my dad's Mack, hit "make transfer disk" to format
>> the "MiniTD" into the 270K size. As per instructions I then copy the
>> files I want over to the disk, then click on "Prepare transfer disk"
>> (or some such thing. . .). This is supposed to move the files over to the
>> tracks that the Amax can read. I get disk activity, then an
>> "operation completed successfully" notice.
>> 
>> Now when I try to bring it up on amax, I'll get the icons and file info.
>> When I click on the Icon, the program will start to load partway, but then
>> I'll get a message saying "application in use of damaged".
>> 
>   If this is what I ran into, the problem is in the documentation,
>and the prompts in the transfer software, not in the actual functioning
>thereof. When it asks for the "First Transfer Disk", what it really
>means is the MACINTOSH SOURCE DISK. After that you give it the two
>mini transfer disks in sequence. It took me about an hour and a half to
>work this out, by which time I was more than a little annoyed :) The
>manual is inconsistent, in one place it mentions the Amiga will ask for
>the source disk, yet in the actual section on doing the transfer it
>tells you to insert the "transfer disk." Tres confusing...
>    Kelton

There are two ways of moving disks around:
  - MTD   This is the Mini Transfer Disk that is 270K. The S/W will
	  label this disk to be "MiniTD". I believe Mike Smithwick is
	  talking about this method.
  - FDT   This is Full Disk Transfer that will transfer a whole 800K
	  Mac disk with multiple 270K disks. Kelton Flinn is talking
	  about this one.

After hours of trying to bring A-Max up on my Amiga, I have the following
observations:

  - Mike is doing the right thing. It is just that A-Max (using Amiga
    drives) is very finicky about the MiniTD. When I made up my bootstrapping
    system disk, it would boot into A-Max only about a quarter of the time.
    The A-Max format disks seem to be much more robust, I used my bootstrap
    system to "Disk Receiver" a whole system disk into A-Max format and
    have had not trouble booting with it.

  - Kelton is also right. The documentation is not very clear. (In fact,
    the documentation is very poor in general).

  - As to Mike's problem, (not being a Mac wiz), it sounds like A-Max 
    decided to not like that MiniTD. I would suggest trying again and
    again. Copying it to a A-Max disk may help.


Some questions of my own:

  - Which drives work best with A-Max?

  - What are the symtoms when a drive does not work? I tried an Ehman 800K
    drive and nothing happens. A-Max just does not acknowledge its existance.
    Should the drive at least spin, ..?

  - Does anyone know when the harddisk and multitasking stuff will be
    released?

  - Is there anyway to do a Full disk Transfer on the Amiga *without* going
    into A-Max? (This would have simplifed bootstrapping a lot).


Stanley Chow        BitNet:  schow@BNR.CA
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Me? Represent other people? Don't make them laugh so hard.