The Icon Bar: General: Archimedes file to disk
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Archimedes file to disk |
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Macc (10:01 5/3/2013)
vanpeebles (11:20 5/3/2013)
arawnsley (12:10 5/3/2013)
PaulV (12:41 5/3/2013)
pwx (12:43 5/3/2013)
swirlythingy (14:37 5/3/2013)
helpful (15:12 5/3/2013)
Macc (16:07 5/3/2013)
Macc (16:46 5/3/2013)
swirlythingy (20:30 5/3/2013)
Macc (21:45 5/3/2013)
arawnsley (21:46 5/3/2013)
swirlythingy (02:12 6/3/2013)
Macc (12:49 6/3/2013)
bhtooefr (10:59 7/3/2013)
apdl (11:20 7/3/2013)
bhtooefr (11:39 7/3/2013)
Macc (23:03 7/3/2013)
swirlythingy (23:42 7/3/2013)
bhtooefr (11:50 8/3/2013)
Macc (11:44 11/3/2013)
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Andy startin-bailey |
Message #121969, posted by Macc at 10:01, 5/3/2013 |
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Banging my head against a wall here but i dont seem to be getting anywhere fast, all I want to do is put the Acorn Archimedes version of Elite on a floppy and play it on an Archimedes, does anyone know how to do that? All I can find is about emulation and its doing my head in!
First post and its a cry for help, sorry! I did do a quick search and started to see the .adf extension, I do hope this doesn't turn out to be like how its done with Amigas! I ended up selling mine due to the convoluted way of doing that! |
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vanpeebles |
Message #121970, posted by vanpeebles at 11:20, 5/3/2013, in reply to message #121969 |
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One way would be to put the elite zip file on a pc formatted floppy and then format a second floppy on your acorn to adfs. Then unzip the file to the acorn formatted disc on your acorn.
If you unzip the files on a pc to a pc formatted disk it mucks up all the file types etc. |
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Andrew Rawnsley |
Message #121971, posted by arawnsley at 12:10, 5/3/2013, in reply to message #121970 |
R-Comp chap
Posts: 600
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It'd also be helpful to know which model of Archimedes, and what version of RISC OS.
If you're not sure which version of RISC OS it is, it should say on the title screen when it starts up, or by pressing menu over the Arch/Acorn symbol in the bottom right corner, and going to the right off "Info".
This will help us know what advice to give - the oldest Arch's only had low density disc drives, for example, and RISC OS 2 couldn't read DOS format discs (but 3+ can). |
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Paul Vernon |
Message #121972, posted by PaulV at 12:41, 5/3/2013, in reply to message #121969 |
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If you can transfer files to your Arc already, you can do this natively if it's an ADF disc image.
Use !ADFImager on the Arc to write an ADF image directly to a formatted floppy.
Easy.
ADFImager can be downloaded here:
http://mdfs.net/Apps/DiskTools/
If you can't use ADFImager then you need to be looking at using OmniFlop on a compatible IBM PC clone machine... By compatible, I mean one with a suitable disc controller and floppy drive. Not all PC disc controllers are equal.
http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniFlop/OmniFlop.htm
Paul |
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Philip Webster |
Message #121973, posted by pwx at 12:43, 5/3/2013, in reply to message #121969 |
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I did do a quick search and started to see the .adf extension, I do hope this doesn't turn out to be like how its done with Amigas! I ended up selling mine due to the convoluted way of doing that! I'm using ADFImager to back up some magazine coverdisks - it's very, very simple to use and not at all convoluted. Here's the download link:
http://www.cimbrae.co.uk/Computer/software/adfimager.htm
Note: you will need ABCLib to get this to work. Might be in your !System directory. |
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Martin Bazley |
Message #121974, posted by swirlythingy at 14:37, 5/3/2013, in reply to message #121969 |
Posts: 460
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Banging my head against a wall here but i dont seem to be getting anywhere fast, all I want to do is put the Acorn Archimedes version of Elite on a floppy and play it on an Archimedes, does anyone know how to do that? All I can find is about emulation and its doing my head in! You have omitted the single most important piece of information we might be able to use to help you: in what format is the copy of Elite you already have stored? Where did you get it? Where, and how, are you keeping it? Why do you wish to transfer it to a specific different format, as opposed to transferring it to your Archimedes any other way (or, heaven forbid, using an emulator)?
All we can surmise is that it's currently not on an Acorn formatted floppy and you would like it to be, for reasons that are unclear. |
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Bryan Hogan |
Message #121975, posted by helpful at 15:12, 5/3/2013, in reply to message #121969 |
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Not sure why you'd want to be messing about with disc images when Elite is available as a zip file from here:
http://www.phlamethrower.co.uk/riscos/elite.php
Open the zip on RISC OS and drag the application to wherever you want to put it. |
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Andy startin-bailey |
Message #121976, posted by Macc at 16:07, 5/3/2013, in reply to message #121975 |
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Sorry everyone if I wasnt clear, im using an A3010, have no hard drive, just floppy, RISC 3.10.
Just want the game on a disk that I can put in the Arc and play. Ive managed to get all the files from http://elite.acornarcade.com/res.htm inside a zip but as was guessed, i put them on a MSDOS formatted disk and that obviously did not work |
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Andy startin-bailey |
Message #121977, posted by Macc at 16:46, 5/3/2013, in reply to message #121976 |
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Also my PC wont read anyhing formatted on the Arc, just trying to format a disk in DOS on the Arc that i can attempt to write to on the PC (I know a little bit less than nothing when it comes to Acorn machines, just bear that in mind! lol) |
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Martin Bazley |
Message #121978, posted by swirlythingy at 20:30, 5/3/2013, in reply to message #121976 |
Posts: 460
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RISC OS 3.10 should have support for reading, writing and formatting MS-DOS formatted floppies, and the A3010 should have hardware support for HD floppies. And your PC (assuming it does indeed have a floppy drive) should have support for reading discs MS-DOS formatted on your Arc.
Have you considered the possibility that either the Arc's or the PC's floppy drive might be broken?
[Edited by swirlythingy at 20:31, 5/3/2013] |
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Andy startin-bailey |
Message #121979, posted by Macc at 21:45, 5/3/2013, in reply to message #121978 |
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It does indeed have support for formatting in DOS (even Atari bizarrely), when I put the files on the disk when ive formatted it in DOS on the Arc then I get errors when trying to run them (on the Arc), cant remember off hand what they are without doing it again but always errors.
Both drives are fine btw, fully tested |
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Andrew Rawnsley |
Message #121980, posted by arawnsley at 21:46, 5/3/2013, in reply to message #121978 |
R-Comp chap
Posts: 600
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Basically need to transfer the zip over to the A3010 on a DOS floppy, and unpack there.
To unpack, you'll need a version of SparkPlug. David Pilling has a "self extracting" version available from http://www.davidpilling.net/ in the free section, I believe. Have a look there.
The importance of the self extracting version is that it doesn't need anything else. You can transfer it across on the DOS floppy, then copy it to another (Acorn format) floppy alongside your copy of ArcElite zip, and run it. You'll then be able to unpack ArcElite and play it.
Note that for temporary storage during this process, you might wish to use a RAM disc. Click the Acorn symbol in the bottom right, and drag out the RAM disc slider-bar (you'll see a list of sliding bars) to (say) 500kb. This should leave you enough to unpack things, whilst giving you somewhere to store the files when switching discs. |
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Martin Bazley |
Message #121986, posted by swirlythingy at 02:12, 6/3/2013, in reply to message #121980 |
Posts: 460
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To unpack, you'll need a version of SparkPlug. David Pilling has a "self extracting" version available from http://www.davidpilling.net/ in the free section, I believe. Have a look there. Or you might also want to look into the self-extracting version of Infozip.
A warning, though - the reason Elite won't run from the DOS floppy on your Arc is that RISC OS applications expect certain metadata to be present in the filesystem which DOS simply does not provide. It uses this to distinguish between, say, BASIC files and sprite files. This caveat is just as applicable to any archiving program you might wish to run.
So, before you can do anything, you're going to need to format up a bunch of floppies in the native format, and steel yourself for a lot of disc-swapping.
The central dilemma is this:
1) You have only one means of transferring data from any external source onto the Archimedes, which is via DOS-formatted floppy discs from the nearest PC.
2) Placing any Archimedes-native software or files on a DOS-formatted floppy disc will irreversibly corrupt it.
The solution is to exploit a loophole in 2), which is to say that, while the filesystem of the floppy disc itself doesn't have support for RISC OS metadata, the official spec for zip files does. (It's a part of the spec which only RISC OS archiving programs know about, though, so it's imperative you don't touch the zip with any Windows archiver.) Therefore, any zip files you download will still be completely intact, and you can put these onto the floppy without unpacking them.
Now comes tricky bit number 1. After downloading the self-extracting Infozip, you'll need to follow the instructions on the site for setting its type to 'Absolute' on the RISC OS end. (Copying it to a decently-sized RAM disc would be advisable first.) Only after that will you be able to run it.
You may run into tricky bit number 1.5 round about here, in that I am not at all sure whether your computer has enough memory or not. The amount of memory allocated to the RAM disc needs to be big enough to hold the entire decompressed !Infozip application plus the compressed SEA, and on top of that double-clicking on the SEA from the RAM disc will load it into memory all over again! You'll overflow 1MB easily, and may even breach 2MB.
Tricky bit number 2 is the logistical juggle of transferring data from one floppy disc to another on a machine with only one floppy drive. Again, using the RAM disc as an intermediate point may be the best solution here, and make sure !Infozip is the first thing you put on your newly-formatted native floppies, as you'll be using it again. You may be able to get away with running Elite from a RAM disc, but I suspect it wouldn't tolerate the memory restriction. Also, whatever's in the RAM disc vanishes when you turn the computer off.
Oh, by the way, that little collection of Acorn floppies is your new permanent storage, or substitute hard drive. God, I don't miss the 1980s. |
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Andy startin-bailey |
Message #121991, posted by Macc at 12:49, 6/3/2013, in reply to message #121986 |
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I did it, took some mucking around but in a nutshell, I opened up some space on the ramdisk, put the elite.zip in that off a dos formatted floppy, then got a disk with an Sparkplug on it from the pc, renamed its extension to BASIC, run it so it unpacks onto the disk, format another disk in arch format, run the unzip tool remembering first to go into its directory(had to do a good search for that one) and alter a command line then save it, drop the elite.zip onto the now ran and running unzip tool in the icon bar and up pops the elite folder in the ramdisk, insert arch formatted floppy and move the lot across onto it, it worked!
Afterwards I tried to remaster a copy of Populous I have for the Arch, bloody disk knackered up the drive!! Wont format or read anymore despite numerous cleaning disk attempts, bugger!!! |
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Eric Rucker |
Message #121993, posted by bhtooefr at 10:59, 7/3/2013, in reply to message #121991 |
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There is another approach, for what it's worth, to getting ADFs across. It requires that your modern machine have a real floppy port floppy drive, though, not a USB floppy drive.
http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniFlop/OmniFlop.htm will write an ADF directly to disk on a Windows machine.
If it's an 800 kiB or less image, it's best to use double density media, and not high density. (It's also best to write it on a 720 kiB drive, not a 1440 kiB drive, due to head width. That mainly only matters if you're transferring data to an older Archimedes or other old machine that doesn't have a high density drive, though - an A3010 should be able to handle a double density disk written on a high density drive, given that it itself has a high density drive.)
My favorite approach for getting things to my A3020 is altogether much easier, once it's set up, though. Use an ethernet card (for an A3010, I'd recommend an EtherLAN 200 with the 10BaseT MAU - leaves the mini-podule slot open for an IDE card - my A3020 has an EtherLAN 100, though). Then, use your favorite way of sending files across - unfortunately, I've had bad luck with any SMB solutions with RISC OS clients, on my modern SMB servers. And, I don't think I've gotten Sunfish going successfully on my A3020. But, ShareFS works amazingly well, and with a Raspberry Pi, you've got a cheap "modern" RISC OS system that can use ShareFS as well. |
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David Holden |
Message #121996, posted by apdl at 11:20, 7/3/2013, in reply to message #121993 |
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If it's an 800 kiB or less image, it's best to use double density media, and not high density. (It's also best to write it on a 720 kiB drive, not a 1440 kiB drive, due to head width. That mainly only matters if you're transferring data to an older Archimedes or other old machine that doesn't have a high density drive, though - an A3010 should be able to handle a double density disk written on a high density drive, given that it itself has a high density drive.) A HD drive works perfectly when writing DD (720/800K) discs but it's best to use DD discs. If you can't get hold of DD discs then you can use HD but on a PC you *must* tape over the HD hole (at the bottom of the disc opposite the write protect slider) otherwise the drive will switch itself into HD mode and you'll get junk. However if you do this then don't rely on the disc for more than a short period.
BTW there's absolutely no difference in head width between DD and HD drives. HD uses a faster rotational speed and a higher flux level to write more sectors per track. That's why you shouldn't normally use HD discs for DD. The old data might not be completely erased and may 'leak' back over time. |
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Eric Rucker |
Message #121998, posted by bhtooefr at 11:39, 7/3/2013, in reply to message #121996 |
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Maybe it's my Apple-centricism as far as retrocomputing goes - I know that if you write to a DD disk (on real DD media) on an Apple HD drive (whether it's attached to a Mac or Apple II), it's perfectly readable and reliable on any Apple HD drive, but it can be unreliable on an Apple DD drive (the DD drive's head has trouble picking up the signal). |
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Andy startin-bailey |
Message #122002, posted by Macc at 23:03, 7/3/2013, in reply to message #121993 |
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That seems a better approach Eric, ive got an old clunky PC tower I use for all various retro operations that Im using for this too (I transfer onto 3" disks for spectrum and Amstrad, plus +D 3.5" and ST 3.5", all on this machine), Ive got the bios set up for 720k floppy already and can write to DD so this, in theory, should be a cinch!
Now all ive got to do is dismantle the Arc and clean the drive head after the Populous catastrophe!
Anyone point me in the direction of a "one stop" archive of Arc games? Wouldnt mind trying some more! Elite really is the best on this machine! |
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Martin Bazley |
Message #122003, posted by swirlythingy at 23:42, 7/3/2013, in reply to message #122002 |
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Anyone point me in the direction of a "one stop" archive of Arc games? Wouldnt mind trying some more! Elite really is the best on this machine! http://www.iconbar.com/downloads/
Unfortunately, that's pretty much the best we've got. Serious software preservation efforts for the Archimedes on anything like the scale seen for other platforms are, sadly, conspicuously absent. There's some people working on it (I think it might be more than one now), but nothing to see yet. |
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Eric Rucker |
Message #122004, posted by bhtooefr at 11:50, 8/3/2013, in reply to message #122002 |
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There is a bay somewhere in Sweden, in which pirates frequent. There are tales that one pirate brought some antiques - old acorns, as it turns out, and planted them, and they grew into giant oaks, and people spread the seeds.
But, I don't advocate piracy. That would take money away from the commercial RISC OS market, and that would be a bad thing.
[Edited by bhtooefr at 11:52, 8/3/2013] |
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Andy startin-bailey |
Message #122017, posted by Macc at 11:44, 11/3/2013, in reply to message #122004 |
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Cheers for the help guys, im struggling with the floppy drive now, ive cleaned the heads thoroughly after a bad copy of Populous went through it to no avail, I made a video of its behavior here;
http://youtu.be/PE47urOHv-I
Are the heads had it do you think? |
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The Icon Bar: General: Archimedes file to disk |
