Preparing a CF card for Amiga

OK. The CF card of my Amiga just died. And I promised in my first post that I would make a description of how to install Workbench 2.1 on an old school (non-AGA) machine. Here we go...

Note: AmigaOS cannot handle disks larger than 4GB. Make sure you get a smaller card or only partition the first 4GB (with a good margin).
  1. Get yourself some floppies with Amiga OS 2.1. There are several ways to do this. One is to install an SD card reader and just copy the adf files to the SD card. Another way is to get the floppies from a friend. In any case, you need Cloanto's Floppy & Hard Disk image pack. If you don't want to change your Install disk, make sure you work with a copy.
  2. Boot the Amiga from the 2.1 install floppy.
  3. Now, go to HDTools and start HDToolBox.
  4. In HDToolBox, select your CF card and "Change Drive Type".
  5. Click "Define new drive type".
  6. Click "Read Configuration From Drive" and Continue. It might or might not work. Don't bother if it doesn't.
  7. Set some values. These are not very important, but some kind of example:
    • Manufacturers name: CF
    • Drive name: Card
    • Drive revision: Rev1
  8. Leave the rest of the values as is (some of them might look strange - it doesn't matter) and click OK. Now your Amiga wants to write the values to the Install disk.
  9. Select your new drive type and click OK.
  10. Now, make sure your drive is selected and click "Partition Drive".
  11. Make one partition for Workbench. You may make this up to 2GB, but under 10 MB should be enough for the OS. Set the Partition Device Name to DH0 and make sure that Bootable is set to Yes.
  12. Click Advanced Options for the new partition and then Change File System. Set the MaxTransfer to 0x1FE00. This is the most important step! Now click Enter (important!) and then click OK.
  13. Split the rest of the card into partitions that are up to 2GB big. Call them DH1, DH2, DH3, etc. Of course, Bootable should be set to No for these. Repeat step 12 for all partitions!
  14. Now, clock OK In the Partitioning window.
  15. Click Save Changes to Drive. It will take a while and then the button gets greyed out.
  16. Click Exit.
  17. Now, reset the Amiga (Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga) and reboot from the install floppy.
  18. The Amiga will restart and the new devices will be visible with some garbage names.
  19. Select one partition at the time. The Right click with the mouse and select "Format Disk...". Call DH0 "System" and the rest of them anything you like. Usually, DH1 is called Work. Click Quick Format.
Now, there are two ways to go to install the OS. Either you install from floppies, or you put the CF card into your PC's card reader and copy the complete install from Amiga Forever's hard disk pack using UAE.

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