ScuzzBlog: Diaries August 2025 Entry 27th August 2025: Post 1: Amiga 1.3 - Creating your own WB disks. Amiga 1.3 - Creating your own WB disks. For me there is nothing more rewarding than using the Amiga to create your own working disks. With the most satisfying being the creation of a custom Workbench Disk. Today I will answer a very specific question and then later I will expand on this to create the actual disk. The challenge first was how to copy basic AmigaDOS commands needed to operate the Amiga without a Workbench disk. When you switch on the Amiga you are confronted with a disk insert screen which I guess stumps a few users who do not have a Workbench disk to hand. At this point I would suggest you research just what AmigaDOS commands do and how to create a self booting Amiga disk. In truth you need very few commands on a disk to create a boot disk. I digress ... The question was how to copy AmigaDOS commands without a Workbench disk. The answer is to acquire some old cover disks from the Amiga Computing library, either by downloading or obtaining from EBay. If using an actual Amiga you create an empty disk, and with the emulator simply create an empty disk from the F12 function . Booting an Amiga Computing cover disk opens a SHELL window and allows you to start entering AmigaDOS commands. The computer will execute basic commands that are already on the coverdisk in the C drawer. So first you simply copy df0:C easybench:c where 'easybench' is the name I gave my empty disk. On doing this the computer creates the directory and adds the files in C from the cover disk. The fun now is literally inserting as many disk as you like in DF0: and copying the contents of C from the inserted disk to your 'easybench' C drawer. Pretty soon you will have more than enough to create the basic file structure of a Workbench disk. Next we repeat the process for other key drawers such as devs: l: libs: utilities: s: etc . The 'easybench' disk will in no time be crammed with enough drawers and files to enable the next process of generating a Workbench disk to commence. OK That was a simple explanation of how to copy directories to a blank disk without the benefit of a Workbench disk. I will endeavor to demonstrate in a later blog how to create a self booting disk using these files. Note: I bypass all the processes of installing a disk and creating the CLI/SHELL command by using a pre-created boot disk such as a cover disk. Most Amiga 500 cover disks were self booting as they did not presume the user would use a Workbench disk first. Cover disks are easy to obtain and permit the customisation of your very own Workbench disk. In essence you are simply robbing Workbench files from coverdisks and building your own library. Amiga 1.3 - Creating your own WB disks. One of the problems with WB1.3 is the lack of icons showing installed files. These are the files I copied from the cover disk to the 'easybench' disk. OK onto disk number 2 and this is a directory of the C drawer. Having listed it I simply copy the contents to the drawer on my disk. The files are copied and add to the ones you already have. And now the directory has grown in size. Next disk and contents of the C directory. Same process of copying. And now the C directory grows accordingly. Later I will list the most important files that you need for Workbench. Next up I copy libs. Next up I copy l. Next up I copy devs. Next up throw in a few utilities. In each instance you can add as many files as you like in terms of contents. from various disks. It matters not what you include in the respective directories as long as they originate from the same directory names. More on that in a later blog.

If you can only see this CONTENT window
then click the image above for the full site

Last updated 27th August 2025

Chandraise Kingdom

Keep the Faith
scuzzscink 2025