Reading PC Disks
One of the most frequently asked questions is how to transfer files to and from the Amiga from other computers. Fortunatly this is made very easy by the Amiga's ability to read PC formated disks.

Below is our step by step guide to transfering files from a PC or Mac to your Amiga.

A note on disks
In recent years Amiga disk drives do not seem to have kept up with the competition. Almost any PC you buy now comes with a High Desity disk drive capabile of writing 1.44 Megabytes of data onto a High Desity Disk. Most Amiga's, with the exception of the A4000 come with a double desity disk drive which can only get 720 Kilobytes of data onto a PC formatted disk. When transfering files to and from your Amiga you will need to bear in mind which type of disk drive you have, and thus what type of disks you can use. Unless you have an A4000 or an external High Density Disk Drive it is safe to aaume you can only read and write Double Density disks, these are the disks with only 1 hole (the write project/enable shutter) in the top left hand corner. If you do own an Amiga 4000 or an external High Density Disk Drive you can read both high density and double density disks. High density disks have two holes, the write protect/enable shutter in the top left and an extra hole in the top right. The also ha ve the added advantage of being able to fit twice as much data on as a Double Density disk.

So now you've got your disks sorted out you'll need to know how to read them on your Amiga. If you have an Amiga running workbench version 2 or higher then all the software you need comes as part of the standard Operating System installation. If you're st ill running workbench 1.3 or below you'll need to get your hands on some extra software or upgrade your opperating system to workbench 2 or 3.

Workbench 2.x and above.
Assuming you installed everything correctly you will find an icon labeled PC0: in your storage/dosdrivers drawer or your workbench partition. Clicking on this icon will enable your Amiga to read PC disks. If you want to be able to make this more permanant moving the icon into the devs/docsrivers drawer will enable this feature everytime you turn on your Amiga.
When you insert a PC formatted disk it will appear on your workbench screen as a floppy disk icon, much like a normal AmigaDos disk. Do not worry if another icon labeled "DF0:BAD" also appears on the workbench, this is just the Amiga's way of telling you you've inserted a non-amiga disk. If you want to copy files to and from the disk using the command line you can either refer to it via it's name, or it's device, which will be PC0: if it is in your internal drive and PC1: if you have an external or second drive and are using that.
If you don't have a PC0: icon in either of the drawers mentioned above then it hasn't been installed. You can install it from your original workbench disks using the installer utility supplied.

Worbench 1.3 and below.
Unfortunatly these early versions of workbench do not come with any utilities to read PC disks. There are 3rd party pieces of software available that can do the job, however if you are serious about using your Amiga you should really consider upgrading to a more modern Operating System.
However in the meantime you will need a piece of software called CrossDos. Various versions of this have been given away on Magazine coverdisks throughout the last few years, or it can be ordered from Consultron. You should be aware though, that it costs about the same as an upgrade to workbench 3.1!
There are also public domain utilities available from the Aminet, the most notable being MessySid.
Guides to using both these pieces of software will be availabel very soon...