Chapter 2

Formatting the disk and installing Workbench

The hardfile is formatted before it is mounted. The installer still walks the six disks.

Why any of this

The Amiga 1200 was the last great Amiga Commodore made, and the desktop people built on it is the one worth having back: Kickstart 3.1, AGA, a hard disk, a graphics card for a screen bigger than the chipset could draw, MUI for modern windows, color icons, and WHDLoad so every game lives on the disk instead of in a box of floppies. An emulator or a MiSTer puts that machine back on your desk. Getting to that finished desktop is the work.

You cannot download it ready-made. Workbench and Kickstart still belong to someone, so the disks and the ROM have to be yours, and Commodore’s own installer has to copy them. Everything after that is a recipe of Proceed buttons, the Green Amiga Alien guide, which people have followed by hand for twenty years. These notes turn that recipe into scripts, so someone new to Amiga emulation gets the upgraded A1200 in an afternoon, from disks they own.

The end of the road is a build nobody babysits. AmiPilot can sit inside the running Amiga, click what is left of the installers, and take a picture of the screen, so an AI agent can check that the desktop came up, that the icons are in color, that a game launches, and fix the script when they are not. Every page here is one step toward that.

This is the chapter that stops most people. Partition a blank file with HDToolBox, format it twice with the right boxes ticked, and only then feed the installer its six disks. The host writes the rigid disk block and the formatted volume before the core ever sees the file. The installer is still Commodore’s program, because your disks are the only place Workbench can come from, and the disk changes are the part the pipe can do.

Automated
Load
If WinUAE was quit, load the saved configuration and start it.
On the core, power on with the saved OSD configuration. In WinUAE, wb31_session.py starts with -s use_gui=no so the properties window never opens.
Automated
Instead
The guide expects DH0:NDOS from the hardfile created in chapter 1.
create_system_hdf.sh writes the rigid disk block and an empty DOS\3 volume in one step. HDToolBox does not open. The partition is bootable and named DH0. The volume name defaults to System.
Automated
1–3
Open Disk Drives, put the Install ADF in DF0, and click Start.
The properties click is gone. The named pipe sends floppy0 with the Install ADF, and the session is already running. On the core, the same ADF goes in the DF0 slot before reset.
Automated
4–8
Select DH0:NDOS and choose Icons, Format Disk.
The same script formats the volume before the file is mounted. There is no NDOS icon and no Format Disk menu.
Eliminated
10, cache
Tick Fast File System, Directory Cache, and optionally a trashcan. Name the volume System.
The script formats DOS\3, which is Fast File System with international names and without directory cache. Pass --name for a different volume name. A trashcan is still optional, and the installer can add one.
Automated
11–14
Confirm Format twice and wait until the icon changes.
Those confirms are the format the script already finished. The icon comes up as the volume name, not as NDOS.
By hand
15–24
Open Install3.1, Install, your language, Proceed, Intermediate User, printer, keymaps.
Still the Installer. The pipe does not press Proceed.
Automated
25–35
Each time a disk is requested, press F12, eject DF1, pick the ADF, click OK, and Proceed if copying does not resume.
The F12 gesture is gone. The named pipe inserts the next disk: Workbench, Locale, Extras, Fonts, then Storage. wb31_session.py reads those names on stdin. Proceed, if the Installer waits, is still by hand. On the core the same five swaps are the floppy slot in the OSD.
Automated
36
F12, eject DF0 and DF1, return to the emulation.
The named pipe sends AKS_EFLOPPY0 1 and AKS_EFLOPPY1 1. On the core, clear both floppy slots.
By hand
37–38
Proceed to reboot, then look at Workbench.
The last Proceed is still the Installer. The reboot itself is AKS_SOFTRESET 1 on the pipe, or reset in the OSD.
Once
Tip
Copy the hardfile aside before MUI, icons, or Scalos.
Copy the HDF on the card before those chapters. Restoring the spare file is the undo.

Step numbers follow Chapter 2 in the Green Amiga Alien guide. The words are ours.