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AmigaFox

Posted Thu Feb 09, 2017 6:17 pm

Hello all, sorry for not posting for awhile, been kind of down lately, I haven't really posted much anywhere. Anyway, this is a question that I came up with recently and I was wondering what you guys thought. I notice that on the back of my external floppy drive there's another connector on the back that looks like the floppy port on the Amiga, so I assume you can daisy-chain multiple drives together just like the C64? Two floppy drives is okay, but sometimes I think about having a third one. I would use it like this:

DF0: Workbench 1.3

DF1: ProWrite

DF2: blank disk for saving documents

I have considered hard drive options, but they can be hard to find for the A500 and the only ones I do find on ebay come with European power supplies. There's an accelerator that can use CF cards as hard drives, but I think it is a bare PCB board. And then I think to myself, "Do I really need this? Is it really that inconvenient to swap disks? The only non-gaming thing I'm doing with my A500 is writing, I'm not trying to do animation or edit video."

So what I am asking is, if you guys felt that two floppy drives wasn't enough for you, would you add a third one or get an HDD?

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Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Thu Feb 09, 2017 6:45 pm

Buying a GVP hard drive is the single best purchase I have ever made in terms of classic computers. The 2nd best is the MT-32 sound synthesizer for DOS. Both were over $100 and I have zero regrets. Besides having a hard drive, many GVPs can be upgraded with up to 8 mb of ram, which has a huge impact with later/slower games in my experience. I have two floppies, adding more never really crossed my mind... You get into serious chip ram problem after two drives, occasionally I experience it with just the two. You can chain up 3 extra floppy drives in total, so 4 drives altogether. But when you're talking about the later games you just might find them telling you to turn off those drives you just bought. Wing Commander is going to do that to you I know. Having a 1200 might alleviate this problem, due to the extra chip ram, but keep in mind even single disk games can be hard on the loading. Uninvited did not feature an HD install program, it has but one disk, and after playing it for five minutes I knew I had to put it on my hard drive. Too much loading. If anyone is considering buying a hard drive for their Amiga, I could never discourage such a thing, best decision I ever made.

In terms of application software, in your example with Pro-Write; then yes, that would work. Of course Pro-Write itself is a system disk, so you wouldn't even need Workbench in DF0:, as it has workbench on it - unless you had some special reason to have Workbench load itself on a desperate disk. Even some applications might be hungry for that memory though.

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Feb 09, 2017 8:06 pm

I love Shot97's response, and while more in-depth than I could offer I can at least offer my anecdotal experience.

(First off, sorry you've been down - hope you are feeling better these days.)

If you went Shot's route, and it fits within your budget, you'd be pretty surprised at how fast your machine boots up if you have WB installed to HD. It's really dramatic. Is it necessary? That's up to you. But then you'd be pretty shocked at how quick ProWrite loaded, too, to get to writing.

I should point out that I get the floppy thing. I will never (well, probably never) willfully install WHDLoad on any machine. If a game was created BITD that didn't include a HD Install option, I think so be it. Case in point - I would never try to install Bard's Tale onto HD. But, I do have 2 floppies, and I love playing the game with two floppies. There comes a point where the constant disk swapping becomes too distracting to the story.

That all being said, you're talking about writing, which is a very different mindset. But... if you're seriously considering a 3rd floppy, I'm with Shot. If it doesn't hurt your finances, go for a hard drive option. And continue to save your writing on floppy should you desire. But 1 HD and 1 floppy would be a really great way to go.

Edit: I should point out that one of my 1200s had WHDLoad installed on it when I bought it, and I rather love it. I've not added to it, but I've enjoyed the software that was loaded onto it.

User avatar
AmigaFox

Posted Thu Feb 09, 2017 8:33 pm

Shot97 wrote:Buying a GVP hard drive is the single best purchase I have ever made in terms of classic computers. The 2nd best is the MT-32 sound synthesizer for DOS. Both were over $100 and I have zero regrets. Besides having a hard drive, many GVPs can be upgraded with up to 8 mb of ram, which has a huge impact with later/slower games in my experience. I have two floppies, adding more never really crossed my mind... You get into serious chip ram problem after two drives, occasionally I experience it with just the two. You can chain up 3 extra floppy drives in total, so 4 drives altogether. But when you're talking about the later games you just might find them telling you to turn off those drives you just bought. Wing Commander is going to do that to you I know. Having a 1200 might alleviate this problem, due to the extra chip ram, but keep in mind even single disk games can be hard on the loading. Uninvited did not feature an HD install program, it has but one disk, and after playing it for five minutes I knew I had to put it on my hard drive. Too much loading. If anyone is considering buying a hard drive for their Amiga, I could never discourage such a thing, best decision I ever made.

In terms of application software, in your example with Pro-Write; then yes, that would work. Of course Pro-Write itself is a system disk, so you wouldn't even need Workbench in DF0:, as it has workbench on it - unless you had some special reason to have Workbench load itself on a desperate disk. Even some applications might be hungry for that memory though.
Thanks for replying. I just read the thread you made about your hard drive experiences, I'm glad things worked out for you in the end. I always thought the GVP hard drive was exclusive to Europe since the last one I saw on ebay came with a European electrical plug and I heard GVP was/is based in Germany or The Netherlands (I could be wrong though and I probably am).

The Pro-Write disk I use is a backup made by the previous owner of my A500, so maybe that's why I have to have Workbench in DF0? It's version 3.1.2 if that makes a difference?

@intric8 (thanks for your concern, I'm feeling better than I was. I checked the email account that I use with this forum and I saw that you sent me a PM weeks ago. It reminded me how long it's been since I last logged in.)

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Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Thu Feb 09, 2017 9:03 pm

Great Valley Products was based in Germany? Sure the hell sounds like a California company to me. Wherever it was I will say this; the hard drive market on the Amiga was overwhelmingly based in America, not Europe! One gander at an American Amiga magazine would make that clear, with a good 35% of the advertising about hard drives/ram upgrades/accelerator cards. Europe? Games... Games... more games...

I had no problem finding the drive, it was just the cost... And I'm sure the RAM has much to do with that cost as well. My GVP is powered by the Amiga by the way. It does indeed have a plug for external power; but it should not be needed in most cases.

Were you saying that the disk in DF0 is the Workbench disk of ProWrite, not your actual Workbench disk? It has been so long since I needed to use the floppies I couldn't tell you if it had a separate Workbench and program disk. That would make more sense in your scenario. Either option will work of course, if all you're doing is writing then a floppy would be cheap and should cause no issues. A hard drive does indeed make everything so much faster. If you can find one and the cost is okay, I don't think anyone would regret it. But if all you're doing is messing around with certain applications than you may not regret a 3rd floppy either... If you do get a floppy drive, make sure to get an aftermarket drive with an on/off switch! The Commodore drives do not have a switch for this, meaning in the event a program needed more memory, you'd have to either unplug the drive or run a special utility to turn it off.

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Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Thu Feb 09, 2017 9:17 pm

Hi. I think the bare CF Flash board you are referring to might be the ACA500 or the ACA500Plus that replaced it. Those are wonderful devices for the A500. It will not only give you a system HD but a second HD for media so you can transfer things back and forth from your modern computer. The other nice thing about them is that they come with 3.1 and 1.3/1.2 ROMS preinstalled, so you can easily select which kickstart you want to use. You can also enable or disable the accelerator and do other things that make it a pretty good deal when you consider how pricey actual real HD expansions are for the A500.

That said if you really want an actual Hard Drive, the GVP and the Supra 500XP HD would be the ones I would look for. I had both of them back in the day. The GVP is nice because the RAM on the A500 model is IIRC standard 30 Pin SIMM. Unlike the GVP A2000 boards that used a custom RAM module that is really hard to find. I think it looks a little nicer too as it matches the case better then the Supra. IIRC the Supra 500XP is the newer model over the Supra500 and it has DIP sockets for adding RAM ICs.

GVP was for sure based in the USA, specifically PA as i still have a little manual for my controller in the A2000.

User avatar
AmigaFox

Posted Thu Feb 09, 2017 9:31 pm

Shot97 wrote:Great Valley Products was based in Germany? Sure the hell sounds like a California company to me. Wherever it was I will say this; the hard drive market on the Amiga was overwhelmingly based in America, not Europe! One gander at an Amiga magazine would make that clear, with a good 35% of the advertising about hard drives/ram upgrades/accelerator cards. Europe? Games... Games... more games...

I had no problem finding the drive, it was just the cost... And I'm sure the RAM has much to do with that cost as well. My GVP is powered by the Amiga by the way. It does indeed have a plug for external power; but it should not be needed in most cases.

Were you saying that the disk in DF0 is the Workbench disk of ProWrite, not your actual Workbench disk? It has been so long since I needed to use the floppies I couldn't tell you if it had a separate Workbench and program disk. That would make more sense in your scenario. Either option will work of course, if all you're doing is writing then a floppy would be cheap and should cause no issues. A hard drive does indeed make everything so much faster. If you can find one and the cost is okay, I don't think anyone would regret it. But if all you're doing is messing around with certain applications than you may not regret a 3rd floppy either... If you do get a floppy drive, make sure to get an aftermarket drive with an on/off switch! The Commodore drives do not have a switch for this, meaning in the event a program needed more memory, you'd have to either unplug the drive or run a special utility to turn it off.
Sorry about that, I think I heard that misinformation from someplace that I can't recall, I think it was from someplace that also had comments like "no one in America had an Amiga", so no wonder. Again, sorry for the misunderstanding.

Also, the Pro-Write disk doesn't have any workbench files on it, so that's probably why I need workbench in DF0.

I think I'll keep an eye out for an HDD. I'll wait and see.

@Zippy Zapp The ACA500 was what I was referring to. It sounds great, but what concerns me is that if it is a bare PCB, wouldn't it be vulnerable to static shock?

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Feb 09, 2017 9:34 pm

GVP A2000 boards that used a custom RAM module that is really hard to find.
Truth. Trying to find RAM for the GVP 2000 boards is like trying to find a mint condition Secret of Monkey Island sitting on the sidewalk with a "FREE" sign on it.

ZZ beat me to it, but yeah - GVP is USA based (USA! USA!) ;) from PA. I have a ton of their expansion boards for the 2000.

Also, they make a really slick enclosure for the ACA500, too.
Attachments
IMG_6785.JPG
Label on the outside of one of my expansion board boxes (I/O).


User avatar
Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Thu Feb 09, 2017 9:48 pm

With the enclosure, it looks nice. Someday when there are no hard drives to get a hold of, I may go down that road... But not today! :D

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Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Fri Feb 10, 2017 9:51 am

AmigaFox wrote:@Zippy Zapp The ACA500 was what I was referring to. It sounds great, but what concerns me is that if it is a bare PCB, wouldn't it be vulnerable to static shock?
Nah. It does have a plexiglass top where the cards plug in so you can handle it there. The only thing you have to be worried about with static is touching the exposed contacts or pins of the ICs. As long it is plugged in and you don't touch it, which there really is no need once it is plugged in, then it isn't a problem. It is easy enough to handle it by its edges. I have plenty of Commodore bare board devices and have not run into any issues with using them that way.

One thing I do, though, is discharge any static electricity before I use the computers. I just touch a bare piece of metal on my PC case or I also usually have a static wristband grounded that I can touch the contact of to discharge.





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