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MPDOS - What you need
in Nostalgia | Thursday, August 07, 2014 | 18:28


You'll need for example a Toshiba Tecra 8000 old laptop with Window ME installed. The author have an more detailed list of other systems that works as well, so please check with him. I'm only showing what I had and the precise setup I used to get it working perfectly.


So, it means that if you want to get the MPDOS working _at once_ (without having to test and be unsure about the configurations otherwise) just do as I do :)or Trip like I do!

I tried with 4 other machines, some with an additional 2mb PAR: PCI card with WindowME and WindowsXP, but it did not work very good or not at all for me. The MPDOS is very strict on what the PAR: port can do for magic and I got a lot of headaches trying different BIOS setups and messing around with IRQ and PAR resources in Windowsso, if you have the time please do, but don't blame me or the MPDOS author if it didn't work.

The Toshiba Tecra 8000 is an old laptop which you can get cheap on EBAY. With its PAR port I managed to get almost 950kb of transfer rate which is just sufficient to read the floppy and emulate it for the Amiga 500. If you want to write on the disk drive, you'll need a 2MB PAR: card or port or maybe a different old laptop that feature this, but that is your own discovery and task, as I don't know anything else that will work other than the tutorial and equipment I show here.

First some movies to show it in action, then look at pictures below to review the procedure how to get there!


Play Video: Video above shows the BIOS settings, and booting WinME



Play Video: Configuring PC and MPDOS properties



Play Video: ADF image (demo Odyssey by Alcatraz) booting with MPDOS!



Notice in the video that when you press "SIMULATE", you need to RESTART your Amiga either by power on, or by resetting normally with keys (as I do in the video above). MPDOS will start to emulate a floppy drive and the Amiga will load the demo as normal.

Quite KEWL!
Picture from my 90's boy room showing the location of my Vidi Amiga digitizer!



The Toshiba Tecra 8000



1: Install WinowsME as normal on your Tecra8000. Then enter the BIOS and make sure the PAR LPT port is set to "Std. Bi Directional". See the video below. This is what my BIOS looks like, so if you want just copy what you see in the video to your BIOS and the Tecra8000 should be all okey.



2: Connect the power supply, mouse, TV modulator (if you want), some sound cables and open up the Amiga as shown. Note my own ATX power supply there. You can build it too following my tutorial on my site here :)

POWER OFF ALL EQUIPMENT BEFORE YOU START TO CONNECT STUFF...common sense really.



3: Zoom in on the floppy drive cable and its power cable. Notice that the red line on the floppy cable appear to the left (away from the drive) on this model. Do NOT focus on where the red line is on the original cable, as on your model is may be the other way around, and I had severe problems focusing on this red line, as the MPDOS cable also have a red line and the manual stated to connect it as the original floppy cable was connected. For me it made sense to make sure the MPDOS red line was also connected as the picture above...NOT. That failed and I blew one CIA chip of the Amiga 500.

So, in real easy steps. Just remove the power cable and the floppy drive cable now. Ignore everything else.



4: So, locate your MPDOS cable (which you need to purchase along with its software). Notice that the red line is now facing towards the floppy drive. Notice also 3 cables that are pre-cut from the author (read the MPDOS manual for what they are for). Connect your MPDOS cable as the one above here, and you should be all okey!



5: Now connect the PAR end into the Tecra 8000 port. (note that I have glued mine to make sure it don't fall apart, I must really say that the cable you buy will appear to be quite loose, so better to secure it yourself).



6: All connected now. We are ready to do some magic. Power on the Tecra8000, letting it boot into WinME. Then start MPDOS and turn on your Amiga.



7: Start MPDOS (after you installed it of course). Then set the properties as shown in the video above or see the pictures below.



8: You do not really have to focus on anything else here than the LPT Port Joystick (set that to custom) but very important to set the LPT Port Floppy to 378 (which is the same as it should show in Windows - see the video above)




Please review these related article links:
Click to open urlMPDOS for AMIGA/ATARI index


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Posted by: Old-schooler, Stone Oakvalley | Publisher: Website Designer, Stone Oakvalley
Last revised: December 07, 2022 - 17:31 | Page views: 2146

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