What type of emulator do I need to do these things?

[soopytwist]

Hi guys. I recently bought an Amiga600HD with the intention of removing the FDD and fitting an SD or USB floppy emulator. I already have an A500+ but I didn't want to modify it so that's why I bought the A600 plus they're smaller and easier to get out and play.

There are few things I'll need to be able to do and I'm confused as to what type of floppy emulator I need.

1. Be able to use an external FDD with the HxC (the external drive has only an ON and OFF switch so is classed as DF1 and cannot be changed).

2. Load .IFF pictures from real floppies in the external drive and copy the files to an "empty" .ADF on the SD card. Then load this .ADF into WinUAE on my PC.

3. Boot an .ADF of Relokick on the HxC SD card to "downgrade" the kickstart ROM to 1.3 to load older Amiga games. I used to have to do this on my A500+ to load some older games and I know you had to do this on the A600 too but can you do that from an .ADF?

4. Install multi disk games such as Monkey Island 2 from .ADF on the SD card to the A600HD's internal HDD (it has Workbench 2.04 on it).

5. The type of emulator I want should have the next and previous buttons so I can scroll through games and also set-up disk swapping tracks.

Thank for your help!

[soopytwist]

So yeah. Got this A600HD and would like a HxC but need my questions answering. Anyone?
I've sent messages to Lothrek got nothing.

[gonk23]

Perhaps you should consider a different approach for what you're trying to achieve, without needing to use an FD emulator at all. Based on your questions, I assume you want to be able to: (i) run a bunch of games from the HD; and (ii) transfer files (e.g. IFF images) from your old floppies to files that you can use on your PC within WinUAE.

You might be better off getting a Compact Flash (CF) replacement for your HD (e.g. from Amigakit), and adding 1 or 2 extra MB of RAM on top of the in-built 1MB chip RAM. Then you can use WHDLoad to install/run games directly from your CF HD. This software also has the ability to downgrade the Kickstart for each game, if required. I think what people do is that they load the OS, WHDLoad, and games directly onto the CF (using a CF PC adaptor) within WinUAE, then plug the CF into the A600. You can then also copy any files from real floppies onto the CF hard drive, then plug it back into the PC to transfer files.

I haven't actually done this with an A600, but I'm sure there are people on the Amiga forums that have.

[soopytwist]

Well yes there is that. It's certainly the cheapest option. However I do want be able to load games from SD card so I'd still like one of these.

I suppose the quickest way to do this would be to copy the .iff's to the HD from floppy now - then get and install an HxC, load the .iff's into emulated D-Paint and save them to an empty.adf on the SD card. Then load that into WinUAE on my PC. This will work right?

Basically what I'm asking is can a HxC save an .iff image (or any other file type) to .ADF on the SD Card.

[gonk23]

Basically what I'm asking is can a HxC save an .iff image (or any other file type) to .ADF on the SD Card.

Effectively, yes. The Lotharek HxC SD emulator only reads/writes HFE disk-image files, so you'll need to convert ADF to/from this format using the HxC PC/Mac/Linux software. See documentation for details. I believe the cheaper Gotek emulator (with or without HxC firmware) can read/write ADF files directly, although I'm not familiar with this one (I only have the Lotharek HxC rev C cased).

[Jeff]

I believe the cheaper Gotek emulator (with or without HxC firmware) can read/write ADF files directly

Not without, or at least with lots of problems

Anyway about the HxC : You can all you can do with a floppy disk drive.

[soopytwist]

Well it seems all of Lotharek's eBay listings have ended now so I can't buy one anyway

[Jeff]

Well it seems all of Lotharek's eBay listings have ended now so I can't buy one anyway

Lotharek is actually busy with a very big order, that's why he did renew the ebay lists .
Anyway this still available and you can purchase it directly to its online webshop : http://lotharek.pl

[soopytwist]

Well it seems all of Lotharek's eBay listings have ended now so I can't buy one anyway

Lotharek is actually busy with a very big order, that's why he did renew the ebay lists .
Anyway this still available and you can purchase it directly to its online webshop : http://lotharek.pl

Does he still use Paypal though?

So I'd like to get the SD FW (the slim one in the white floppy drive sized case). Only because it has the LCD and the buttons whereas the slim version doesn't.
The slim version would be easier to fit though because it'll fit the existing disk slot on the A600, but I won't have the LCD or buttons if I get that one.

With the SD FW I'll need to modify the disk slot so the drive bay will fit. Does anyone have a guide on how best to do this? I'm not sure where I'd need to cut in the case for it to fit properly.