Transfering Amiga 3000 SCSI disks to a PC.

Version 0.2 (2003-02-27)

Daniel Kahlin <danielkahlinnet>

Contents

• Abstract
• Disclaimer
• Article
• References

Abstract

This document describes how to transfer the contents of an Amiga 3000's SCSI disks to a PC.

Disclaimer

The information contained within this document cannot be assumed to be correct and the author can not be held responsible for any damage this document may cause. Proceed at your own risk.

Article

I assume you have a SCSI card in your PC. I also assume that you have a cable to connect the Amiga's DB25 SCSI connector to the connector of the SCSI card in your PC.

• 1. Power off both the Amiga and the PC.
• 2. Connect the Amiga and the PC using the SCSI cable.
• 3. Power on the Amiga, and allow it to boot.
• 4. Boot the PC with the Redhat rescue disk.

First create device files for each of the Amiga SCSI disks. (This example assumes that the Amiga has 2 SCSI disks, and that you have no SCSI disks in your PC

bash# mknod /dev/sda
bash# mknod /dev/sdb
bash#

Then create the device file for the PC disk you which to use and mount it. (This example mounts the primary partition of the slave disk on the secondary IDE bus)

bash# mknod /dev/hdd1
bash# mkdir /mnt/fat
bash# mount -t vfat /dev/hdd1 /mnt/fat
bash# cd /mnt/fat
bash# ls -l
total 4
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     0            4096 Feb 25 21:03 recycled
bash#

This is the important part. Make raw copies of the Amiga's SCSI disks by using cat. We make each copy twice, such that we can verify that nothing changed during the copying process. It is vital that no disk write activity occurs from the Amiga during this operation.

bash# mkdir amiga
bash# cd amiga
bash# cat /dev/sda > amiga1.raw
bash# cat /dev/sdb > amiga2.raw
bash# cat /dev/sda > amiga1a.raw
bash# cat /dev/sdb > amiga2a.raw
bash# ls -l
total 988192
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     0        105246720 Mar 31 13:48 amiga1.raw
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     0        105246720 Mar 31 13:57 amiga1a.raw
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     0        400691200 Mar 31 13:54 amiga2.raw
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     0        400691200 Mar 31 14:05 amiga2a.raw
bash#

All is well, now unmount the file system, remove the Redhat CD and reboot using CTRL-ALT-DEL.

bash# cd
bash# umount /mnt/fat
bash#

When fully booted into Windows, start a command prompt and select the appropriate directory.

G:\Amiga>dir

 Volume in drive G is DOWNLOAD
 Volume Serial Number is 0C6A-1DD9
 Directory of G:\Amiga

.              <DIR>        01-03-31  14.43 .
..             <DIR>        01-03-31  14.43 ..
AMIGA1   RAW   105 246 720  01-03-31  13.48 AMIGA1.RAW
AMIGA1A  RAW   105 246 720  01-03-31  13.57 AMIGA1A.RAW
AMIGA2   RAW   400 691 200  01-03-31  13.54 AMIGA2.RAW
AMIGA2A  RAW   400 691 200  01-03-31  14.05 AMIGA2A.RAW
         4 file(s)  1 011 875 840 bytes
         2 dir(s)        4 491.70 MB free

G:\Amiga>

To verify that the copying process went ok, use fc to compare the files.

G:\Amiga>fc amiga1.raw amiga1a.raw
Comparing files AMIGA1.RAW and amiga1a.raw
FC: no differences encountered


G:\Amiga>fc amiga2.raw amiga2a.raw
Comparing files AMIGA2.RAW and amiga2a.raw
FC: no differences encountered


G:\Amiga>

All was ok, the redundant files may now be removed.
You may now use a utility such as unadf of adfopus to extract the content from the image files.

References

• The ADF Opus Homepage
  This is a Windows utility to access files in the harddisk image files.
• The ADFlib Page
  a free, portable and open implementation of the Amiga filesystem.

Copyright © 2001, 2003 Daniel Kahlin <danielkahlinnet>