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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon Dec 05, 2022 6:09 pm

Since you don't have an A-Max hard drive partition, there's probably no point going beyond the system boot disk for you at this stage.

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon Dec 05, 2022 6:11 pm

Just one last warning, if you decide to go the software-only route (probably have no choice) if you have a System disk loaded after booting up then decide to slap in, say, Mac Paint - you might have to swap disks every 2 seconds about 50 times before Mac Paint loads. It can be brutal. HDD FTW :ugeek:

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abraxxious

Posted Mon Dec 05, 2022 7:39 pm

Thanks again intric8!

So, if I am understanding this correctly, Amax is capable of booting System 6 off Amax converted disk images?

So by using Img2Amax I could image a set of Mac System 6 disks 9for instance) to something that I could then load in to Amax to boot to a Mac OS 6 desktop, albeit slowly?

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon Dec 05, 2022 9:40 pm

So, if I am understanding this correctly, Amax is capable of booting System 6 off Amax converted disk images?
Yes. You either boot off original Mac disks via a Mac floppy drive, or A-Max format disks that were originally Mac images and converted. (Or a hard drive partition, which we've already gone over.)

Worth noting that when you boot A-Max up into System 6, you're really looking at 1 computer at that point - a Mac. You can't see your Amiga drives, in other words. And, since you don't have a Mac floppy drive, you'll only be able to see A-max format disks. Which means, at least at first, only the System 6 ... system.

The A-Max II Plus (Zorro) card allows you to read and write native format Mac disks on your Amiga, but of course that requires a big box Amiga with Zorro slots.

When running A-Max 2.5x, you can specify one of your Amiga partitions as a transfer partition. You use the A-Max Transfer utility to copy files between the two.

But yeah, you can't access any of your Amiga partitions directly from the Mac desktop. This is because A-Max is really a port of the Macintosh OS that happens to be running on Amiga hardware at that point.

If you ever do get an A-Max partition running, it seems that A-Max has a limit of about 300 MB, so that also means that you can't create a huge A-Max partition. I would stick with 250 MB or less.

Also, A-Max works very well with software that is system friendly, but falls down when software tries to go directly to the hardware. A lot of games bypass the OS, and talk directly to the Mac chips, which on the Amiga, aren't there.

Fortunately there are a lot of games that are system friendly, and do work with A-Max. And, a ton of productivity software, which is really where the gold is hidden.

From a software perspective, A-Max 2.56 was the last of the 2.xx versions (which I have and can share later if anyone is ever interested).

UPDATE:
I think I misspoke earlier. I used a 1GB SD Card and I think I made the A-Max a ridiculous 250MB partition, WB a 50MB partition, and the remainder an Amiga "Work" partition.

I'm also running an ICD AdSpeed at 14Mhz and so, yeah. Once my 128K ROMs load. Sys 6 starts in like 3-4 seconds. :D

UPDATE 2:
I have all of the System disk images. One would need to use Chris' Img2Amax tool to write them to actual floppies on an Amiga. I didn't have to personally do this because I used a Floppy Emu which actually comes with System 6 dsk images on it and I installed them from there to the HDD.

But the Img2Amax tool should be able to be used to create an Mac img into an A-max system disk. (And again, for a floppy setup, just the 1 disk is probably all it takes).

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abraxxious

Posted Mon Dec 05, 2022 10:19 pm

:) Again I was not as clear as I could have been, sorry. :)

What I meant was, with Amax II is it possible to boot into System 6 with NO floppy disks of any kind. In other words, System 6 disks converted to Amax format, then converted to ADF's and mounted via a utility like Diskmimic.

In other words, can Amax be pointed to alternative "pseudo" floppy drives that contain ADF's - ie DI0: - an ADF disk image mounted as device Di0:?

I don't mind have a directory of converted ADF's that I have to mount, but I draw the line at physical floppy disks. :)

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon Dec 05, 2022 11:01 pm

Nope.

Think of A-Max software that you launch as a "bridge" between the Amiga and a Mac. And it's more on the Mac side (setting up preferences, etc.) Once you "boot" you're in Macintosh land. There's no accessing ADFs/etc as far as I know. You're on a Mac in A-Max, and they don't speak Amiga language.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon Dec 05, 2022 11:09 pm

You could use Disk Mimic to launch A-Max, but then you'd be stuck once it was time to insert the System disk (unless you, like, inserted a real disk). :^)

User avatar
abraxxious

Posted Tue Dec 06, 2022 2:00 am

Bummer. Seems like my only hope is if David decides to write a Parceiro driver for Amax. :(

Oh well, on to the next project. :)

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stevelord

Posted Tue Dec 06, 2022 5:22 am

Having a regular SCSI with SCSI2SD, could I set up a partition on that to use with AMAX? Also, is it possible to prepare a Mac HD image in advance using something like Basilisk or vMac? I'd quite like to run Mac software on my CDTV if that's possible.

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Dec 06, 2022 7:45 am

Having a regular SCSI with SCSI2SD, could I set up a partition on that to use with AMAX?
Only if your HD has an Amax driver (like the Starboard's Stardrive).





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