I've not touched my Amiga 1200 for many YEARS !!!

@vodkasoda

That's Kickstart 3.1, Workbench 3.0.

OS3.9 would be a good thing to upgrade to.

Yup, I second the 3.9 upgrade suggestion. 4MB sounds about right, it was massive years ago ;) especially for an Amiga! It's not a whole lot for doing anything modern with, such as internet browsing or anything, but I guess that's not what the plan is for this machine anyway. It will serve very well with WHDLoad and a bunch of games on the hard drive as a nice retro machine, the extra ram coming in handy there.

Regardless of anything else it might be an idea to at least match your Kickstart and Workbench versions, they're not really meant to be mixed and while it's probably working fine, it may fail at some future point. Workbench 3.1 will have a version number beginning with 40, 3.0 begins with 39.

@Daedalus & Chris

OK, the 64 million dollar question ... how do I go about upgrading the machine ?!?

I can build a a PC from the ground up & install Windows or Linux with no problem, but I can't remember diddly-squat about the Amiga !!!

Can I download what I need ... onto 720 Mb formatted PC disks, obviously ... from somewhere or do I need to buy it ?

And do I then just stick the floppy / floppies into the A1200 & reboot it ?!?

@vodkasoda

You have to buy it

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/c ... _info.php?products_id=153
http://www.vesalia.de/e_os39.htm

I'm sure it was cheaper than that when it was first released

Oh, and it would be helpful to get your CD-ROM drive working first, as it is on a CD.

Yeah, you'll have to buy it I'm afraid, and it only comes on CD. To get your CD-ROM working though you should be easily able to download some drivers from Aminet on the PC and transfer them. Once you have that working, the OS3.9 installed will let you make a boot floppy that will support the CD-ROM.

@Daedalus & Chris

OK, thanks, I'll get to work on getting that CD recognised, trouble is I'm sitting here with a very painful gout attack & it might have to wait a couple of days !!!

In the meantime, what then, is this OS4.1 that this site promotes, why should I upgrade to 3.9 rather than this 4.1 ?

@vodkasoda

OS4.1 is much better than OS3.9... however, it requires a PPC card (actually, it requires an AmigaOne or a SAM440 - you can get OS4.0 for A1200+PPC though)

A standard A1200 can only go up to OS3.9, and PPC expansions tend to be rather expensive (even second hand). If you want to investigate OS4.1, a SAM440 is the better option.

You never said where you live, but if Coventry in England is within some reasonable distance, MAG Bash is on tomorrow and there will be lots of SAMs, AmigaOnes and OS4.x to see.

Chris

@Chris

No such luck I'm afraid, Chris, I'm in County Offaly in Ireland ...

@Chris

I see, thanks, pointless me going through all that expense then if I'm just using it as a games machine !!!

Priority 1 is to get the CD working, then I can take it from there, thanks for your help ...

@vodkasoda

ed sys:Devs/DOSDrivers/CD0:

or check the tooltype of sys:devs/DosDrivers/CD0

there should be line called UNIT=?

Enter the UNIT number the CDROM is connected to.

UNIT = 0 master
UNIT = 1 slave
UNIT = 2 2en master
UNIT = 3 2en slave

check DEVICE=?

normaly it's SCSI.device, but if you have some extra hardware it can be square.device or some thing.

your A1200 is best for old games. if like to use an Amiga for multimedia (video,pictures) and surf the web then you should think about Sam440ep and AmigaOS4.1

@vodkasoda

Bejaysus! Another Irishman... If you're ever up in Dublin I could show you my AmigaOne and my A1200, maybe give you a hand with your machine...

Basically, a few years ago, the AmigaOne was commissioned - a totally new machine using a modern G3 or G4 processor, industry standard fittings and the capability to use modern peripherals. Seeing as it was a totally new architecture, a new OS was required. However, due to many issues, not many of these AmigaOnes were made, a lot of them problematic, and the OS was delayed. Nonetheless, it was released, followed by a version for classic A1200 and A4000 machines with the rare and expensive PPC expansion cards. Recently however, an update to the new OS, version 4.1 was released for the AmigaOne, and also for a new motherboard called the Sam440. This board is readily available, for the first time in years it's possible to buy a new machine that runs AmigaOS. By and large it's pretty similar to the A1, though there are many differences so a different version of OS4.1 is required for each.

[Edit: oops posted too early!]

@Daedalus

Hold your horses young man ... I'm English, not Irish ... I've been living here for 7.5 years though and have 2 daughters, both born in Holles Street, Dublin.

The Amiga has been looking at me since we moved here from Shankill, 15 months ago, and I eventually got around to hooking it up ... but thanks for the offer, I may take you up on that sometime !!!

Anyway, I think I may need to reset the whole system, maybe just reinstall WB3.1, the CD is being recognised, I'll try to explain ...

If I put a Floppy disk in & reboot, it always works.

If I don't put a Floppy disk in & reboot, it tries the Floppy drive & then boots from the Hard Drive. However, I get 4 error messages saying that it can't find Fonts & I have tracked this back to Magic Workbench. If I click on one of the fonts in a Fonts (I think) window where there are these Fonts (and only these fonts) listed, then right click & delete, the machine hangs. This is the case whenever I try to delete or copy anything ... maybe I am just too Window-oriented now and am doing something wrong ?!? For example, I have a Preferences folder & a Copy_Of_Preferences folder ... if I try to delete this, it hangs. If I click on a drawer, then right-click & choose Copy ... it hangs.

If I put a CD in & reboot, it checks the floppy, THEN IT CHECKS THE CD, but then it just gives the 4 error messages again and boots as per a normal boot. There is a Window that opens with some messages .. which may or may not be explaining a problem ... but it closes again before I can read it and I don't know where to find it ... assuming it is a log file !!!

There is nothing on the machine that I need, so I have no problem doing a complete reload & re-install (assuming all the floppies still exist and work !!), does it look like I have a problem or have I been too simplified by Mr Gates ?!?!?

@LiveForIt
for the Squirrel;
DEVICE=squirrelscsi.device
UNIT= whatever the SCSI ID of the CD-ROM drive is. IIRC this is usually 3 for CD-ROM drives, but can be checked/changed with jumpers or DIP switches on the back of the unit,

@vodkasoda
The message is probably "Intuition is trying to close the workbench screen, please close all windows - retry/cancel" or something to that effect. It's a normal message if something outputs to the Shell during boot (such as your font errors)

The fonts might be fixable by running SYS:System/FixFonts
The freezing might be impatience. WB3.0 doesn't give much indication that it is copying or deleting and doesn't allow you to do anything else at the same time. However, it could be that the HD has errors or is failing. A format and reinstall might be the easiest way out of that (unless you want to give DiskSalv a try)

@vodkasoda

LOL, fair enough :) It's just unusual to find another Amiga user in Ireland! Anyway, the machine hanging when you try to delete something sounds worrying to me... Could be some sort of hard drive corruption. Is it just those files, or can you not delete any files at all? Is there any hard drive activity when it freezes? Is the HD LED on constantly, flichering or off? A reinstall could be a good idea, formatting a hard drive can clear a lot of those issues. The CD being checked mightn't mean much as most CD drives will spin up a disc and read its TOC simply on receiving a reset signal or powering on. If no CD icon appears on the Workbench I'd be pretty sure the drivers either aren't there or aren't set up properly. It is normal behaviour for an Amiga to check the floppy drive and any other loaded drives for bootable disks, and then carry on loading workbench if none are found. To be honest it sounds like a fresh install would be a good idea, especially when you're not sure of what patches etc. might be installed.

OK, thanks to everybody who has helped me so far, it's appreciated ... sorry I've been a few days coming back, but I've been laid up on the sofa with a knee the size of a water melon, am just about getting around a bit now !!!

Anyway, I've found the following diskettes :

Amiga Workbench 3.0
Storage 3.0
Locale 3.0
Amiga Fonts 3.0
Amiga Extras 3.0

Amiga HD Install 3.0

Power CD ROM

I, probably foolishly, thought that by booting from my Workbench diskette it would ask me if I wanted to re-install the system and it would prompt me as we went along ... wrong !!! I did say before that I've been spoilt by the hand-holding of Windows !!!

So ... what's my next step ? I want re-format the HD & re-install all the software from scratch. I think I have all the necessary disks, but what steps should I undertake, and in what order ?!?!?

As before, all help much appreciated ...

@vodkasoda

So ... what's my next step ?

This diskette : Amiga HD Install 3.0

READ Instructions maybe?

@Snuffy

There's always somebody who has to be the sarcastic smartarse isn't there ... step forward for today's prize Snuffy !!!

OK, so I'm missing a diskette, that's really all you needed to say isn't it ? Especially as it sounds like one that's quite important !!!

Presumably the instructions that you suggest I should read would be on that diskette that I didn't know existed ... would that be correct ?!?

I've now read the following :

"Commodore in their infinite wisdom chose not to let the
Install disk be a standard part of the OS disk set in version 3.0, but only to be given with machines which were fitted with hard drives from the factory.

So people who bought a non-HD A1200 and fitted their own hard drive had to find another way of preparing and partitioning it. Even dealers who made package deals with A1200s with hard disks fitted by themselves
were not allowed to provide their customers with the official Install disk.

So it's likely that you don't have that disk. "

That would explain why I don't have the diskette & have not heard of it then !!!

However, as I said earlier, I *do* have the disk "Amiga HD Install", presumably I can use this to reformat & partition the HD ... will the Workbench install automatically onto a newly formatted HD or is there still something else I need ?!?

Thanks in advance to anybody who can seriously help without showing themselves up ...

@vodkasoda

All is not lost if you haven't got the install disk, all you need to do (as i understand it, you can eventually boot into the hard drive) is boot into the hard drive, insert disk1 (workbench) do, SHOW ALL FILES from menu of the floppy. Select all drawers and files that appear on the floppy, click and drag onto Hard drive.

Repeat for each disk. Ensure you get to see all the files and drag all of them over to the hard drive.

Reboot.

@Mikey_C ... and everyone ...

All might be lost now !!!

I used the HDTools utility to delete Partition DH1 (work), DH2 (Utilities) & DH3 (games) and create a new single partition of DH1. This left the original 20Mb DH0 partition (Workbench) & seemed to work OK & I rebooted ... got a few errors looking for stuff on the old Utility partition, but nothing that worried me.

Couldn't actually access the new DH1 though, so ran a Quick Format on it ... it said something like Initialisiing Disk, so I left it & went off to watch the football.

About 3 hours later, I went back & nothing had changed, there was no progress indicator, nothing different at all, just "Initialising Disk" across the middle of the screen.

I thought there must be a problem, so turned it off, left it for a couple of minutes & turned it back on ... now nothing works !!! It won't boot into the HD & it won't even boot into Floppies (though having said that, I've tried rebooting about 50 times, and about half a dozen times it has booted from a floppy) !!!

Now if I boot from a Floppy, it starts the process, the light comes on, the Floppy makes the noises it used to make ... and then nothing, except the floppy light stays on !!!

Ahhh, not been my day !!!