One card can carry several complete systems — your own Workbench, Coffin, AGS, a games collection — and a boot menu asks at power-on which one to start. Amiga Imager builds such a card from images you already have: it copies their partitions onto the new card and adds the menu. The source images are only read, never changed.
The menu is AmiBootLoader, Amiga Imager's own boot manager. It lives on a small partition of its own, needs Kickstart 2.04 or newer, and switches Kickstart ROM and Emu68 version per system on a PiStorm.
.hdf, .img or .hda,
with FFS, OFS or PFS3 partitions.An imported partition starts at auto size: its content plus a little free room — not the size it had in the source image (a 2 GB Workbench may become 450 MB). To change that, select the row and type a size, or let a partition take the rest of the card. Larger is always fine; smaller than the content is not — the editor shows Needs at least … MiB and turns orange, and the build stops with a clear message. The image grows by itself; Fit Image to Partitions shrinks it again.
The editor also shows each imported partition's size in the image; Same Size as in the Image gives it that size back with one click (never less than its content needs).
DOS\7
automatically.DH0: whose games live on DH1:). On the card they wait under
neutral names (MBA0, MBA1 …), not mounted; when you pick that system,
they get their own names back while it runs. Systems never see each other's partitions.Every system starts with the card's ROM unless you choose Kickstart for this system in the
partition editor — Coffin, for example, needs its own. Emu68 loads the ROM only when the Raspberry Pi
starts, so when you pick a system with another ROM, the menu switches the card over and asks you to
press Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga once: that restarts the Pi, and the system comes up with its ROM.
Switching off and on works too. Systems that share a ROM switch as before. For Coffin r65, use the ROM
that ships inside the image (DEVS:Kickstarts/coffin.rom).
When an imported system needs changes to run on the card, the partition editor shows Adjust for
this card. The switches are on by default; every changed file keeps its original beside it
(.orig, .old).
bsdsocket.library from the Roadshow archive set in Settings.| Key / input | Does |
|---|---|
| ↑ ↓ or 1–9 | select |
| Return, a mouse click, joystick fire (port 2) | start |
| any key | stops the 10-second countdown |
| K | start and keep: from then on the card starts that system directly |
| Esc | a Shell on the menu partition |
| R | the rescue shell (when switched on, see below) |
The system started last — on a new card, the first one — is highlighted and starts by itself after ten seconds. From any running system, double-click Boot Menu on the BootMenu disk to pick the system for the next start; that is also how you get the menu back after K.
Each system keeps its own drive icons. The card adds its own volumes in a second column:
BootMenu (the hard drive with the boing ball) at the top, then shared data partitions.
EMU68BOOT sits in its usual place. A shared partition never takes a name one of the systems
uses — a second Work becomes Work2.
Next to Boot Menu, the BootMenu disk carries Boot Menu Prefs. Double-click it in any running system to:
Changes take effect at the next start.
Without the HDMI option the menu shows on the Amiga's own video output only. With it, the menu partition gets a small Picasso96 + VideoCore setup and the menu opens on HDMI (power-on takes a few seconds longer). It needs your 3.2 ADF folder and downloads Picasso96 and Emu68-tools — or uses your iComp Picasso96 archive if you chose one.
Settings → PiStorm → Exchange Partition adds a FAT32 partition EXCHANGE at the end
of the card (4 GB by default). A Mac or PC sees it as an ordinary drive; on the Amiga it appears as
EXCHANGE: in every system that has fat95 — for music, downloads or WHDLoad
archives. Its size comes off the Amiga partitions; the card size stays.
With Boot menu: rescue shell switched on in Settings → Build, R in the menu
restarts the Amiga with every partition of the card mounted (MBA0, MBB0 …) and
opens a Shell on the menu partition with the usual commands from your 3.2 ADFs — the way into a system
that no longer starts, e.g. Copy MBB0:S/Startup-Sequence.orig MBB0:S/Startup-Sequence.
Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga brings the menu back. It uses the Amiga's own video output.
Amiga Imager adds one line, AmiBootLoader RESET, to each system's
S:User-Startup; it puts the card back so the next start shows the menu. If a system
hangs before that line, the next start runs it again. To get out: switch on while holding both
mouse buttons, choose Boot Options, select BOOTMENU, and boot.
| State | |
|---|---|
| FFS, OFS, PFS3 images | works — tested with Workbench 3.2.3, Coffin R58 and r65, AGS2 |
| Kickstart per system | works — Coffin r65 on its own ROM next to 3.2.3 (A1200 PiStorm32-lite) |
| SFS partitions | cannot be read yet — the import sheet shows them greyed out |
| AmiKit | works — AmiKit 12.2 on Emu68 1.0.7 next to 3.2.3 and Coffin r65 on 1.1, also over HDMI (A1200 PiStorm32-lite) |
| AmigaVision, System One | not tested yet — please try them |
| Menu over HDMI | works — A1200 PiStorm32-lite, Emu68 1.0.7 and 1.1 |
| Exchange partition, rescue shell | new — please try them |
| Classic / emulator cards | build, but tested much less than PiStorm |
BootMenu:S/AmiBootLoader.log from the card — it records every menu run.