Amiga Transfer Disk v2.1

Recently I decided to transfer my old Amiga floppy disks as ADF images to PC. So I checked out a bunch of availabe transfer solutions, but none was really suitable. So I finally created an own set of transfer tools, which were compiled into one “transfer disk”.

This disk contains a collection of tools which can help you to transfer any kind of data from an Amiga to PC and vice versa. Both systems are connected via serial port and a null modem cable. For data transfer a classical terminal software (e.g. HyperTerminal) and the zmodem protocol is used.

The disk provides the following features:

sending whole disks track by track as an ADF image to pc.
receiving whole disks (ADF) track by track from PC
sending files using wildcard arguments to PC (e.g. send df1:*.txt)
receiving files from PC (e.g. receive myfile)
sending/receiving files to/from PC using x-modem/z-modem protocol and the terminal programm azcomm
salvation of old disks using disksalv and transfer them after salvation to PC
format, initialize, install, and relabel any disks
Unix-like shell which supports cp,mv,ls,etc. commands + integrated shell scripting language + history function
zip,unzip,lharc (pc compatible) commands for compression/decompression
windows oriented text editor az (type in ed)

Important Hints

In order to use the disk you have to write the disk image to a real disk, first. For that you can use e.g. a real Amiga and the program Crossdos, which can read/write PC-format DD disks (720KB).

Beside the “real disk”, you need a null modem cable in order to connect the Amiga to PC. You either can buy it, or solder it yourself from components. Moreover, since serial ports (RS-232) are not common on modern PC’s anymore you probably need a RS-232 usb-adapter / pci-card whatever.

Floppy Drive Transfer Methods

Beside the null modem cable method there exist various methods to convert physical Amiga disks to ADF images using physical floppy drives. E.g. with a PC and the “two-drive-trick”. In this case a special software and two physical internal floppy drives are needed. Examples are adfread (http://www.winuae.net/files/stuff/adfread-1.1.zip), or DISK2FDI (http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi). But there’s also a problem here: USB floppy drives are not supported and newer PC’s usually don’t have internal floppy disk support.

Also there exists special hardware that can do the job like Catweasel multi-format floppy disk controller (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=842).

And finally it seems to be possible to connect an original Amiga external drive to a PC via parallel port – some soldering work is necessary, though. See http://afr.back2roots.org.

For more details also read http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=39566.

Screenshot: