Conference hydra::amiga_v1

5322.0. "Write AmigaDOS floppies on a PC?" by DREA01::MARSHALL (Rob Marshall - Customer Service Dresden) Mon Jan 06 1992 05:55

    Well, I took the plunge and bought myself an A2000 with WB1.3.  Now I'm
    trying to figure out how to get stuff from a PC here at work onto the
    Amiga.  I know that there are a lot of different programs available,
    like Msh, CrossDOS, etc...but I was wondering if there is anyway to
    write a 3.5" diskette at work that I will be able to read on the Amiga?
    At this point, I am just interested in copying over some text files
    that I want to be able to read.  IOW I am not currently trying to write
    MS-DOS files, I just want to be able to take some text (ASCII) files
    off of my Ultrix system, put them on a 3.5" diskette in a PC here at
    work and then be able to read them with an editor (Memacs).  Is that
    possible without any additional software?  
    
    BTW I bought my system here in Germany, and PCutil does NOT seem to be 
    on the Extras disk...is it supposed to be?  I found it in the document-
    ation, but I can't find it on the disk.
    
    I do have access to the PD software through a large chain store here
    (Karstadt), so I will be looking for Msh to help solve the problem for
    the long-term, all I'm looking for now is a "quick and dirty" way to
    get some files read on the Amiga.
    
    Thanks,
    
    Rob
    

    Re .0:
    
>   Well, I took the plunge and bought myself an A2000 with WB1.3.
    
    Welcome to the club.  Enjoy!
    
>   Now I'm trying to figure out how to get stuff from a PC here at work
>   onto the Amiga.  I know that there are a lot of different programs
>   available, like Msh, CrossDOS, etc...but I was wondering if there is
>   anyway to write a 3.5" diskette at work that I will be able to read on
>   the Amiga?
    
    Get/use CrossDOS anyway.  It does such a good job with MS-DOS disks
    that there's no reason to do otherwise.  (Once your startup-sequence is
    set to mount your floppy drives from CrossDOS' mountlist, all you'll
    have to do is refer to them as DI0: ... instead of DF0: ...)
    
    It's MUCH harder for an MS-DOS system to read/write an AmigaDOS
    diskette than conversely.  The difference is due to MS-DOS' use of
    sector-level I/O (requiring inter-sector gaps) as compared to the
    track-level I/O done by AmigaDOS.  You'll also find that the MS-DOS
    format is the "lowest common denominator" for data exchange among
    dissimilar systems, including both the Amiga and the Macintosh.

    
    I recommend Cross-DOS. It is less than $20 is is money well-spent. It
    reads, writes, formats, and so on, 720K DSDD disks.