www.theoldcomputer.com

Hi everyone,

A while back my dad died. He used to be an avid user of a Commodore Amiga in the early '90s. I'm in the process of trying to recover old word processor files (probably in Wordperfect) from 3.5 floppy disks, and have downloaded the WIN UAE emulator to help with this. It seems to be up and running with a compatible ROM set, but all I get is a screen telling me to put a blue disc in the drive.

I'm not very tech savvy (but can find my way around eventually). Do any of you guys have any advice about emulating an old Amiga and opening Wordperect files with an aging Vista PC (good processor and graphics card, tho...)

from Pat69

Yes is the answer and wow i now feel old because I also used the Amiga in the 80s to wordprocess.

If you are seeing a blue screen with a hand holding a disk then you must have correctly setup the emulator with a bios. You need to download the wordprocessor used by your dad to create his files. Then tell the emulator to load this file (adf format) as a disk in df0 during bootup.

This should get you into the word processor.

To get the data from the physical disks to your pc will require a floppy interface for usb. I dnt have one but they are available.

Guys, could you step in and help this user take this further. I am out of the country at present and not able to do much more.

Have a look at the following FAQ...

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http://www.lemonamiga.com/help/faq_crossplatform.php

Thanks very much for your help. I will give your suggestions a go!

Best regards (and thanks again)

Pat

OK, thanks to you guys, I got an Amiga emulator going on Windows, with WordPerfect 5 running in DF0 and DF1 slots (adf files).

Maybe I'm being a bit dense, but how can I get the Amiga bench to 'see' the USB 3.5 floppy disk drive that's attached to the PC that's emulating the Amiga? I've tried putting a file path to A:\ in the DF2 slot, but no dice. The WordPerfect functions suggest that there's no disc in DF2...even though there is (and it's not write protected or anything)

And selecting any files via a Windows interface means you just get a message to format the disc, which would erase everything on it!

(It's probably worth pointing out that I only have discs created on an Amiga, not the Amiga itself!)

Thanks for your advice so far, at any rate.

Pat

WinUAE isn't made to be able to read data from real amiga disks. and PC floppy disk controllers arn't as flexable as the one on an amigia. you might try one of the tricks listed here:

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 http://www.amigaforever.com/kb/13-118

i hope this is helpful in some way.

Thanks for the tip, Dragon Mech - some picture of the difficulty is at last beginning to emerge! I'll check out your link - Thanks again for taking the time to try and help.

Best Regards,

Pat

ADFRead v1.1 for creating ADF files from Amiga floppy disks...

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http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?s=9f1e24aa3a655f9677b9717bd84a55e4&t=22596

Great find Alzabo. might have to bookmark that myself.