Amiga911 Maker 1.59 is planned to be released in the beginning of 2014, and one of the new features is the possibility to create an Emergency Disk II floppy for AmigaOS 3.9. I have now decided to release two ready-made versions of this disk before the new version of Amiga911 Maker is available.

Emergency Disk II is an enhanced version of the original AmigaOS 3.9 Emergency Disk. It uses the same type of technology as the Amiga911 boot disk, where lzx compression is used in order to fit more stuff on it. The Emergency Disk II also provides some alternative methods for installing AmigaOS 3.9 as well.
In addition to the standard method of using the original CD with a CD-ROM drive, you can make a AmigaOS 3.9 USB pendrive or a Compact Flash card to be used with a CF-PCMCIA adapter. Another method is using an AmigaOS 3.9 ISO image which can be present on any drive that gets mounted on startup. If you still insist on installing from the original CD, you can also use an external USB CD-ROM drive. The USB methods requires that the Poseidon stack is included on the disk, and of course that a supported USB card is installed in your Amiga.

The target Amigas for both disks are A600 and/or A1200, but they should also work with other Amiga models as well. The absolute minimum requirements are a 68020 processor and 6MB RAM. The main difference between the two disks, is that one of them includes a minimal version of the Poseidon USB stack. Because of legal reasons, the disks are missing some system files since they are still under copyright. This means that the disks must be activated by importing the missing files before they can be fully used, this can be done by using the included "Activate E-Disk-II" tool.

For more information, go to: http://amiga911maker.site11.com

I also made a quick video which shows one of the disks in action:


[youtube]QA_NQCPp5zY[/youtube]

This is great!

That totally makes sense!  All of the above that is.

Yeah, I don't know how it'd be possible to boot from the Spider USB card, had the same thought process when I was putting in an Adaptec UW scsi card, no way to use it as a boot drive (not to mention a 10k rpm drive adds a ton more noise and heat to the system).

I did just check, the settings on the Radeon file in the Devs folder on the Emergency disk says "(SETTINGSFILE=EMERGENCY-DISK : DEVS/Picasso96)"  I tried to remove the parenthesis (aren't they essentially commenting out the option?) and changed it to DEVS : Picasso96Settings (as you say, the space is to prevent a smiley ) But still no luck.  

Thanks for all the ideas though, makes me wonder if I could make a copy of the OS3.9 disk and put it on a CD-RW and add a few files to it...

For those who are interested, version 1a of the disks has now been released, and here are some info about the new changes:

* Now there is a third "Lite" variant of the Emergency Disk II floppy available, it allows the user to include even more of the stuff that he/she prefers since the disk will be just a little over 50% full after activation.

* Although the minimum amount of RAM required for using the Emergency Disk II is set to be 6MB, you can actually get it to work with less since the disk contains some workarounds that may free up some memory. This functionality has now been improved, and in low-mem situations it will try to prevent the Workbench from having any background images, and AmiDock might be forced to use a more minimalistic config.

* Fixed a problem where ToolsDaemon could fail to load because the Workbench screen has not yet been opened.

* The "Activate E-Disk-II" tool is now included directly on the Emergency Disk II floppies. After activation you will have to manually delete the file in order to free up some disk space.

* DiskImage is no longer included on the Emergency Disks since ImageMount does a similar job and is also smaller in size.

Use OkayFreedom or something like.

Thanks for your hard work invested into simplifying this process.

It's definitely a huge advantage for an Amiga owner nowadays to not have to rely on CD drives to be able to install or restore OS3.9, especially if you own an Amiga in its original case (i.e. A600/A1200). Not having to attach an externally mounted CD drive in a case, requiring cabling for power / etc is a huge bonus, imho. Brilliant!


Thanks again!

Yes it was my plans of installing AmigaOS 3.9 on my A600 that got me going with this project in the first place

BTW. The sound in my video has now been replaced, and it should now be available in all countries.

Hi.

I've been around, but mostly in lurking / reading mode. Since I sold off most of my Amiga collection, priorities in life have changed, hehe.

How've you been?

Not bad, yourself?

It's good too see you back, I've had spells of not posting for months on end but I always end up coming back.

Most of my Amiga collection is boxed up due to lack of space and time so I mostly just use MOS on my PowerBook for my Amiga fix these days.

Stick around, we really need more old faces around here.