Installing Amiga Workbench on a CompactFlash card

There are many very good guides around the Internet to installing Amiga Workbench onto a CompactFlash card in order to use the card in place of a spinning hard drive. Most of them go by the route of using the WinUAE / FS-UAE emulation software to prepare and install onto the card. Some opt for downloading a hard drive image and loading that onto the CF card.

I like to dust off my physical diskettes and install Workbench directly on the Amiga computer, much like you would back in the day. Or alternatively, via diskette images on a Gotek device.

Below is my checklist for doing exactly this. Installing Workbench on an Amiga 600 or 1200, equipped with a CompactFlash adapter and a CF card. If you need an adapter, you may consider my AmigaCF which even makes clicking sounds to emulate those of a spinning hard drive.

I am installing Workbench 2.05 onto an Amiga 600, but there will probably not be too much difference to other Workbench versions, and/or the Amiga 1200. In other words, this is not a guide on how to install any version of Workbench -- rather it is a description of how I installed a specific version of Workbench onto my specific CompactFlash card and made it work on my specific Amiga hardware.

Prerequisites

I used the following:

Amiga 600 or 1200. These come with an IDE controller directly on the motherboard.
CompactFlash adapter. I use my own clicking AmigaCF adapter design, but the procedure is the same for any CF adapter.
CompactFlash card. I use cards of a maximum of 4 GB. Apparently, there might be (solvable) problems with cards larger than 4 GB, but I never went for anything larger than 4 GB, as that is more than enough for me. And certainly larger than spinning hard drives in Amigas back in the day.
Workbench diskettes, or images of them on a Gotek. My Amiga 600 was not born with a hard drive, so I had to get hold of the Install Disk. The remaining disks are the same, whether your Amiga came with a hard drive or not. For Workbench 2.05, the needed diskettes are: Install Disk, Workbench Disk, Extras Disk and Fonts Disk. For later Workbench versions, there will be more disks than these. Make sure you have them all.
External diskette drive. Not strictly necessary, but there is a good amount of disk swapping involved, and an extra drive reduces that.

1. Wipe the CF card

Any remnants of modern file systems will need to be wiped from the card. Even brand-new cards come with this from the factory. This is the only step that needs to be done on a modern computer.

Linux

I use Linux on my modern computer, so I do:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdf

where "sdf" is the device name of my CF card reader. Be ABSOLUTELY sure you are referencing the right device, or you will wipe your system instead. You have been warned! You need to reference the device, not a partition on the device, i.e. "/dev/sdf" or similar, not "/dev/sdf1". You only need to let it run for a few seconds, after which the file system partition table has been overwritten, which is enough. Stop dd with Ctrl-C.

Windows

It is possible to do something similar in Windows, by starting up a command prompt in Administrator mode (right-click and select "Run as administrator"):

Run diskpart, and type list disk.
Identify your CF card and note the disk number. Be ABSOLUTELY sure you are referencing the right disk number, or you will wipe your system instead. You have been warned!
Type select disk 9 where 9 is the disk number you identified above. Optionally, type detail disk to get details of the selected disk.
Type clean.
Type exit to leave diskpart.

2. Prepare the drive

Insert the CF card and adapter in your Amiga, and boot the Workbench Install Disk.
When you're at the Workbench screen, open the HDToolbox tool, usually located in the Tools or HDTools drawer on the Install Disk. Don't let the PrepHD, FormatHD, InstallHD and UpodateWB icons distract you for now. The Help button in the middle of the HDTools window will give you a pretty good overview of the next steps.
Click the Change Drive Type button, then Define new drive type, then Read Configuration From Drive.
If an error "Unit is not a disk (type7)!" comes up, don't worry. Just enter your own fictitious Manufacturer, Drive Name, and Drive Revision. I used "Autumn", "Hippo" and "1", respectively. Also, don't worry if your card is reported as having a negative size. "Ok" your way back to the main HDToolbox screen.
Click the Low-level Format Drive button. You will notice brief activity on the CF card.
You may now optionally use the Partition Drive button to change partition sizes. There will be two mandatory partitions of equal size. I chose to let the first partition be around 500 MB, and left the rest for the second partition.
Click Save Changes to Drive, and then Exit. You will be prompted to reboot.

3. Format the drive partitions

Boot back into Workbench using the Install Disk.
Two new drive icons will have appeared on the desktop. Select one of them, and choose Icons -> Format Disk... from the menu. This will take a long time -- several hours for my largest partition.
When one partition is formatted, do the same for the other partition. You may be prompted to reboot.

4. Install system software

If you didn't already, reboot the Amiga and load Workbench using the Install Disk.
Rename the new partitions by selecting the icon and choosing Icons -> Rename... in the menu. The first and in my case smaller partition (not necessarily the first one to be shown on the desktop), must be named WB_2.x, and the second partition Work. This will be the case for Workbench 2.05, but it might be different with other Workbench versions.
From the root of the Install Disk, run the FormatHD tool.
Type y to format, and then twice again to start installing system software onto the card.
You may answer y to the question of whether your normal SYS: partition is located on WB_2.x. Answer any other (easy) questions, such as confirming or setting the time.
While files are being copied, insert any diskette that the system asks for.
At the final question of whether you would like your default system-configuration to be interlace, you probably want to choose n. That works for me, anyway.
Remove diskettes from any drive, and reboot into your new Workbench installation on your CompactFlash drive!