Transrom & Transdisk

Since the PC floppy controller can't read Amiga disks, floppy access has to be emulated differently: Floppies are emulated by means of disk files that contain a raw image of the floppy disk you want to emulate. A disk file is an image of the raw data on an Amiga floppy disk, it contains 901120 bytes (880K), which is the standard capacity of an Amiga disk, and can be created with transdisk. To actually run the program, you'll need to install a Amiga Kickstart ROM image from an Amiga. You can't run UAE if you don't have this image. It is not included because it is copyrighted software. It has to be created with transrom.

In the "Amiga Programs" subdirectory you will find the two small Amiga programs that will help you to generate the necessary image files. Transrom will dump the contents of your Kickstart ROM, and transdisk will dump an image of a floppy in one of the drives. As you should know by now, you need to transfer files between your Amiga and the machine you run UAE on. There are several ways how to do this:

• If you are using a null modem cable, you will need a terminal program on your Windows machine and your Amiga. 68000 equipped Amigas are only able to reach approximately 3000cps through the null modem cable. This speed is achieved with the standard serial.device. There are some tools available, which can speed up the whole thing a bit (up to 5500cps). The Aminet is a great source for such tools.

• If you have an Amiga with OS 2.0 or later, you may use CrossDOS. It is a part of the AmigaOS and enables you to read and write DOS formatted floppies on your Amiga. MessyDOS is a freeware program with the same functionality. It can be found on Aminet. If you do not have a high density floppy drive in your Amiga, you will have to use 720kB formatted disks. Compress the disk image with - for example - LHA and copy the compressed file on the floppy. Copy the file to your Windows machine and decompress it.

In either case, you ought to read the documentation for the programs that you use for the transfer.

Now that the tools are on the real Amiga, open the CLI. Both programs write to the standard output (read: the screen), so you'll want to redirect that. Do:

   transrom >RAM:kick.rom

to create a file called "kick.rom" in the RAM disk. This command creates a 524288 Byte ROM image in the RAM disk. This file has to be configured in UAE using the ROM tab.

Now do

   transdisk >RAM:df0.adf

to create a file called "df0.adf" in the RAM disk. Such a file is pretty big, 901120 bytes for one disk image.

NEVER run either of these programs from the Workbench. Always open a Shell
or CLI window to do this.

You can also create disk images in several parts. To create 4 parts of the disk in DF0: do the following:

   transdisk >ram:df0_1.adf -s 0 -e 19
   transdisk >ram:df0_2.adf -s 20 -e 39
   transdisk >ram:df0_3.adf -s 40 -e 59
   transdisk >ram:df0_4.adf -s 60 -e 79

After you copied the files to your PC, you have to merge them again. To do so in the DOS - prompt:

   COPY /B df0_1.adf+df0_2.adf+df0_3.adf+df0_4.adf df0.adf

UAE needs a file "kick.rom" (524288 Byte) and at least one disk image (901120 Byte) in order to boot the "Amiga". Disks can be inserted using the Floppies tab in the GUI.

It is possible to transfer an ADF disk image back to an original Amiga disk. Copy the ADF to an original Amiga and insert a disk into df0. Then, you will also need transdisk in order to transfer the data to the disk. Do the following:

   transdisk -w name.adf

You will have to replace name.adf with the name of your desired file. That will write back to a disk in df0.

NOTE: If you transfer commercial software, you must not distribute the resulting image files, since that would be a violation of copyright law. The Kickstart ROM has to be considered commercial software. You may only use the Kickstart from your own Amiga, and you may not distribute Kickstart ROM files. Please read the license that came with your software for details.