Irritating Frequently Asked Questions
Copyright 1996 by Warren Block (wblock@rapidnet.com)
Version 1.5
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Distribution
This document is freeware. It has been copyrighted to assure its availability
to everyone. Fred Fish and the Aminet are explicitly allowed to include this
document in CD-ROM or floppy compilations; others should ask first. Please do
not modify this file without permission.
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Q. What is this?
A. Irritating questions are those that are asked over and over. They can be
answered a thousand times, and the next day somebody will ask again. While
asking questions is a time-proven way to gather information, many long-
time Usenet users get sick of answering the same old thing. So here's this
FAQ. Odds are pretty good that you'll get this instead of a custom-written
answer; don't take this personally. In fact, the next time you see
somebody ask that question, you can do the same thing. (Please realize
that in some cases, I have intentionally left out some detail to avoid
clouding the issues.)
Q. I feel so guilty. What can I do to atone for having asked some of these
irritating questions myself?
A. When someone else asks, help answer them. Eventually the crippling guilt
will fade. Probably.
Q. You seem to write a lot of these FAQ things. Why?
A. Because so often a question is asked, and never gets answered, or worse,
gets a wrong answer. That really bugs me. It's a big waste of time; for
instance, look at how much time has been wasted in discussions of
MaxTransfer, and even now it's still widely misunderstood.
It would be nice if I could do this type of technical writing for pay.
Anyone at Viscorp or other Amiga companies are welcome to contact me
regarding that type of thing.
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Sections
*Really* Irritating Questions
Aminet
Emulation
Disks And Storage
Memory
Expansion
Monitors
Networking
Miscellaneous
Other FAQs That Answer Irritating Questions
*Really* Irritating Questions
-----------------------------
Q. Could my MaxTransfer rate be too high? What should it be?
A. My initial reaction to questions about MaxTransfer is usually a shout of
"Bite me! Arrrrrggggh!" This usually frightens off everyone except the
really serious. MaxTransfer has almost nothing to do with transfer rates.
It sets the Maximum Transfer SIZE, and is needed to deal with many IDE
drives that are built assuming that they'll be used only in rock-stupid PC
hardware. If you have an IDE drive, 0x1FE00 will work in most cases.
For more details, see the A1200 Hardware FAQ (a pointer to which is at the
end of this document).
Q. What should I do to people who keep associating MaxTransfer with speed?
A. Make up bizarre explanations. See if you can get them to try every value
from 0 to 256K in increments of four bytes. Or you can just have them try
DiskSpeed with various values, but that's not nearly as much fun.
Q. Will PC parallel-port devices work on the Amiga?
A. No. PC parallel-port devices like tape drives, Ethernet adapters,
digitizers, and storage devices (the parallel version of the Zip or EZ
drive) are operated by tiny ants, and the Amiga doesn't have ants, or even
an anthill. Really, there are two problems: some of the lines on the Amiga
parallel port are not software-controllable, and most of the manufacturers
of PC parallel-port devices will not reveal details of how to program
these devices. This is no great loss, since an adapter and software would
probably cost about the same as a low-end SCSI interface, and would
operate at only 30-50K per second.
If you want to share a Zip or EZ drive between an Amiga and a PC, get the
SCSI version of the drive and an inexpensive SCSI adapter for the PC (like
the Zip "Zoom" or the Adaptec 1505, both about $50).
Q. Jumper J213 on the A4000 motherboard looks like I can get 8M of Chip RAM.
Does it work?
A. Yes, it does, but don't tell anybody. If it really worked, do you think
everybody would still be using 2M of Chip? I'm always tempted to tell
people to try it and report back if their machine blew up. No, it doesn't
work, it was there for future chipsets that never materialized.
Q. I have a Connor hard disk, and...
A. There is no such thing. There is a brand spelled "Conner;" perhaps that's
what you mean.
Aminet
------
Q. What is Aminet?
A. Aminet is a huge collection of Amiga software; in fact, it's the largest
collection of computer software for any type of computer. Anyone with an
Internet connection can use it, or it can be obtained on CD-ROM from
Cronus. See http://www.amigalib.com/index.html
Q. How do I use Aminet over the Internet?
A. Step 1: Find your closest Aminet mirror. Look in the list at
http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/~aminet/change.html
Step 2: Access this mirror site with a web browser or FTP software.
Q. How do I find files on Aminet?
A. Download the INDEX file or INDEX.Z (the gzip-compressed version). This is
a complete listing of all the files, along with short descriptions.
Emulation
---------
Q. Is there an Amiga emulator that runs on PCs or Macs?
A. Yes. See http://www-users.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/~crux/uae.html
Q. What about that other one, you know, the one that shows the Kickstart hand
and then locks up?
A. It's a fake. It doesn't work and never has.
Q. Can the Amiga emulate PCs or Macs?
A. Yes, and a host of other machines. See the misc/emu directory of Aminet
and the Usenet newsgroup comp.sys.amiga.emulations for more information on
the numerous commercial, shareware, and public domain emulator packages.
Disks And Storage
-----------------
Q. Can PCs or Macs read and write Amiga disks?
A. Short answer: No. Get over it.
Longer answer: While the Amiga does use PC-type floppy drives, it uses the
custom Amiga chips to control them, and writes entire tracks at a time
with *no sector gaps*. A PC or Mac with special floppy controller hardware
might be able to copy whole Amiga disks. Reading and writing specific
files would require the special hardware *and* an OFS or FFS filesystem to
work with it. (There's supposed to be an FFS filesystem for Linux; with
this, you could read Amiga hard disks, but the hardware problem still
keeps you from reading floppies. Take a deep breath and deal with it.)
Q. Can Amigas read and write MS-DOS floppy and hard disks?
A. Yes, no problem. Later versions of the Amiga operating system came with
CrossDOS, which does just that. There are also some utilities of this type
on Aminet. (Slight catch: many Amigas have only double-density floppy
drives; on these machines, you can only use 720K MS-DOS disks.)
Q. Can Amigas read and write Macintosh floppy and hard disks?
A. Yes, within hardware limitations: most Amigas have only double-density
floppy drives, and they are incompatible with the older multi-speed Apple
drives. Desktop A4000s came with high-density drives, which can read and
write Mac high-density disks. See misc/emu/CrossMAC_Demo.lha on Aminet.
Q. Will high-density disks work when formatted to double-density?
A. Not reliably. It'll often seem to work, then fail at the worst possible
moment.
Q. My Amiga has a double-density 880K floppy. If I replace it with a regular
high-density PC floppy drive, will I be able to use high-density disks?
A. No. Amiga high-density floppy drives are modified versions of those used
in the PCs. See hard/hacks on Aminet for experimental projects on
modifying standard drives.
Q. Do the Iomega Zip and Jaz drives and Syquest EZ and SyJet drives work on
the Amiga?
A. The SCSI versions, yes. You don't need custom software to use them, but
there are both commercial and PD utilities for using the custom features
of the Zip. Repeating: you don't need custom drivers to run them, just
treat them like standard hard drives.
Q. Can I read MS-DOS-formatted Zip, Jaz, and EZ disks on the Amiga?
A. Yes. See the Aminet files disk/misc/ZIPMount_12.lha and
disk/misc/MountDos100.lha.
Q. Can I use 3.5-inch hard drives in the A1200?
A. Yes, although you might have to slightly modify the internal shield and
heavily modify the IDE cable. And you might very well need to replace the
power supply to cope with the drive's higher power needs. And set the
MaxTransfer value to 0x1FE00 for all partitions. Other than that, it's
pretty simple.
Q. Will EIDE drives work in the A1200 or A4000?
A. Yes. Plug it in, set MaxTransfer to 0x1FE00 for all partitions, and go.
See the A1200 Hardware FAQ (pointer in the Other FAQs section) for
information on slow spin-up and disabling reset of these drives.
Q. Will EIDE (ATAPI) CD-ROM drives work in the A1200 or A4000?
A. Yes, with the proper software and maybe a cable. Search for "atapi" in the
disk/cdrom directory of Aminet.
Q. How big can a partition be? How about a whole drive?
A. Safe limits: 2G per partition, 4G per drive. You might safely go with a 4G
partition, but why? If you must, there are some options:
AFS: (file system) Email support@flevel.demon.co.uk
giga.device: (device driver) disk/misc/giga171.lha on Aminet
Guru-ROM: (replacement ROM for GVP controllers) Support for drives larger
than 4G. See http://www.amigalib.com/index.html
Q. Will low-level formatting ruin my hard drive?
A. Probably not. On a few old IDE drives, it might. Many recent IDE drives
simply ignore the low-level format command and pretend they did it. For
SCSI, you should generally not need to low-level format the drive (and
some SCSI drives ignore the command, too). If you must do a low-level
format, make sure you give it adequate time to finish; interrupting it
will leave the drive in a sort of brain-dead mode, and it won't be able to
do much of anything until you successfully complete a low-level format.
Q. My friend and I have the same hard disk, but our parameters (blocks per
track and surfaces and such) are wildly different. Both machines work,
though. Why?
A. SCSI and IDE drives both work by block number. The computer requests a
read or write to a certain block number, and the drive handles the rest.
As long as the settings (surfaces*blockspertrack*cylinders) don't go over
the total number of blocks available, it'll work. The cylinders and
surfaces parameters are really mostly vestigial (like your appendix), and
may someday be replaced with a "total blocks" value (unlike your
appendix).
Q. How do I use a tape drive from the Amiga?
A. There's commercial and shareware software (look in the Aminet biz/demo
directory). Then there's BTNtape, a PD tape device handler (on Aminet,
disk/bakup/BTNtape30.lha). With this and most of the Amiga variants of the
Unix "tar" program (in the util/arc directory of Aminet), you can read and
write tapes that are interchangeable with other systems.
Tar for MS-DOS: ftp.mcs.com:/mcsnet.users/les/dos-gnutar/
Tar for Mac: ftp://sumex-aim.stanford.edu/info-mac/cmp/suntar-205.hqx
Q. Why does the A2091 SCSI controller run so slowly in the A3000 or A4000?
A. It just does. See the A4000 Hardware Guide section on the A2091 for more
details (a pointer to the Guide is at the end of this document), or
various programs in the disk/misc and hard/drivr directories of Aminet.
Q. Does the A3000's SCSI interface support "Fast SCSI"?
A. [by Ralph Babel] No, but upgrading it to do so is *extremely* simple:
First, replace the standard WD33C93A SCSI chip by a WD33C93*B*. Be sure to
provide the appropriate input clock on pin 7 (DIP) as described in section
3.1.16 of the WD33C93B data sheet. Finally, rewrite Commodore's
scsi.device driver to select the proper clock divisor (see section 3.1.3);
take the new input clock into account when dealing with incoming and
outgoing SDTR messages, and set the WD's FSS bit accordingly. The driver
should replace the one in ROM.
Q. What SCSI controllers are available for the A4000?
A. The A4091 and Fastlane are both Zorro-3 Fast SCSI-2 controllers, but
can be difficult to find. Fast SCSI-2 controllers are available for
accelerators, either built-in (Warp Engine) or optional (Cyberstorm).
If the slower performance of plain SCSI-2 is acceptable, most Zorro-2
boards work fine in the A4000; of these, the most popular are the
Oktagon and DKB Rapidfire.
Memory
------
Q. Is there an adapter to use SIMMs for the motherboard memory in an A3000?
A. Yes. See http://users.informatik.fh-hamburg.de/~plewka_j for one, or email
75507.317@compuserve.com for another.
Q. Does the Amiga use special SIMMs? Can they use SIMMs with parity?
A. Amigas that use standard 72-pin SIMMS (not all of them do) will work with
either 32-bit (without parity) or 36-bit (with parity).
Q. Can I use an 8M SIMM on the motherboard of an A4000?
A. Yes, in place of two 4M SIMMs. The motherboard memory limit is still 16M
Fast, 2M Chip.
Q. Can I use a 16M SIMM on the motherboard of an A4000?
A. No.
Q. Can EDO SIMMs be used in an Amiga?
A. In some of them, yes. It depends on the particular model. All DKB boards
are reported to work (by DKB); the A4000 motherboard is probably okay; and
the Blizzard 1230 and 1260 are okay (try before you buy for any RAM
expansions). Unless the RAM expansion has specific provisions to take
advantage of EDO SIMMs, they won't run any faster than normal SIMMs.
Expansion
---------
Q. My A2000/A3000/A4000 has PC ISA slots. Can I use PC cards in there?
A. Only if you have some sort of bridge board. This can be either a PC
hardware emulator, or a special purpose board made just to allow the use
of PC cards. See http://www.infinet.com/~erd/GG2 for one possibility.
Q. If I add a math coprocessor (FPU), will my machine run faster?
A. Only on floating-point math, and the operating system and most
productivity software doesn't do much (or any) floating-point math. The
major use for FPUs is for ray-tracing graphics software.
Q. The A3640 can be used in an A3000, right? How?
A. See http://wwwcip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/user/orknorr/a3640.html
Monitors
--------
Q. Will a CGA monitor work on an Amiga?
A. Yes...barely (only 16 colors, and probably only in NTSC). There are those
of us who say that even a color composite monitor is better. Check the
pawn shops.
Q. Will an EGA monitor work on an Amiga?
A. If it does CGA mode and you can come up with the appropriate interface
circuitry, it'll work as CGA. See the previous question for comments on
using CGA.
Q. Will the 1084 monitor work on a PC?
A. Only if you have a genuine CGA board in the PC (not a VGA board emulating
CGA), and are willing to build an appropriate adapter cable. It'll be
mostly useless with modern PC software.
Q. Can I use a VGA monitor on the Amiga?
A. A multisync-type VGA monitor that syncs from 15 KHz and up will work with
all Amigas, but most recent monitors don't sync that low (standard NTSC
VGA is 31.5 KHz). The A3000 has a built-in deinterlacer port that will
work will all standard VGA monitors, and equivalent boards can be added to
the A500, A2000, and A4000.
Other options:
ECS machines (the A3000 and later A500s and A2000s) can also display a
productivity mode at about 29 KHz (with limited colors, and lots of DMA
contention).
The AGA machines (A1200 and A4000) have custom hardware that allows some
screens to be displayed at adjustable higher sync rates, from 23 KHz and
up. This will work with many VGA monitors, and the VGAOnly driver will
force these screen modes to operate at even higher frequencies so that
they can be used on some pickier monitors.
Q. What kind of cable do I need to connect a VGA or multisync monitor to the
Amiga DB23 video connector?
A. See the Aminet file hard/hack/ami2vga.lha, or the Tips section of the
A4000 Hardware Guide listed in the Other FAQs section below.
Networking
----------
Q. Can I network my Amiga with my PC over a serial cable?
A. Yes. See comm/misc/PC2Am308.lha on Aminet, and other files in the same
directory.
Miscellaneous
-------------
Q. My somewhat older Amiga doesn't have AmigaOS 3.1. It seems kind of
expensive--is it worth it?
A. Yes. Get it.
Q. Does a PC mouse work on the Amiga? Can I use an Amiga mouse on a PC?
A. No and no. The two are electrically different. See the hard/hack section
of Aminet for ways to modify some PC mice for use on the Amiga; also see
hard/drivr/SerMouse221.lha which will let you use a PC serial mouse on the
Amiga. Finally, if you need a new Amiga mouse, consider that the old A1000
mice will work with later Amigas, although you might need an extension
cable or adapter due to the right-angle connector on the A1000 mouse
cable.
Q. Does a PC keyboard work on an Amiga?
A. Not directly, but commercial adapters are available to connect them. See
http://www.worldlink.ca/~dana/at2ami.html for more information.
Q. I've heard of a software emulator called SoftAGA that provides AGA
compatibility for machines without the AGA chipset. Does it work?
A. It's a fake, a joke. You can't upgrade your hardware by changing software,
any more than you can grow taller just by thinking about it.
Q. Will an external modem for a PC or Mac work with the Amiga?
A. Yes, with the appropriate cable. Be aware that some pins on the Amiga
serial port supply power, and should not be hooked up. On the other hand,
most modems don't connect anything to these pins, so it's usually not a
problem. The safest way to connect an external modem is to use a 9-wire
serial cable (only pins 1-8 and 20 connected).
Q. My clock battery has fuzzy white crud on it. Does it need to be replaced?
A. Yes. Your battery is leaking, and the acid can eat into the motherboard.
To do it right, you take out the motherboard and desolder the battery. It
may be possible to clip off the battery leads from the top, without taking
out the motherboard. For a replacement, you can use a standard PC-type
3.6v nicad, a cordless phone nicad, or one of the high-capacity capacitors
(1.0F) now being used for this kind of thing.
Other FAQs That Help Answer Irritating Questions
------------------------------------------------
A1200 Hardware FAQ: hard/misc/a1200hardfaq.lha on Aminet.
A4000 Hardware Guide: hard/misc/a4khard.lha on Aminet.
Amiga Books FAQ: http://eksl-www.cs.umass.edu/~atkin/amiga/books.faq.txt
Amiga FAQ: docs/misc/AmigaFAQ.lha on Aminet.
CDROM FAQ: docs/help/CDROM35.lha on Aminet.
Networking FAQ: docs/help/anetfaq.lzh on Aminet.
SCSI Examples: (Under the Drives section of the A4000 Hardware Guide.)
Zip Drive FAQ: docs/help/AmigaZipFAQ12.lha on Aminet.