The Amiga Forever floppy disk can be used to boot any Amiga computer and to access the Amiga over a serial cable connection (faster options are also available). This is one of the data sharing solutions which are part of Amiga Forever, and which are independent from the emulation software, also part of the same package. For example, an inexpensive Amiga 500 without monitor can be used to transfer Amiga floppy disks to the PC (which, regardless of any software emulation, cannot read Amiga floppy disks because of the different hardware).
The same software which is included on the Amiga forever floppy disk is of course also included on the CD-ROM, both in a readily usable directory, and as DMS and LhA archives. However, in this case installation of the Amiga side of the software requires either an Amiga with a CD-ROM drive, or the creation of the Amiga Forever floppy disk by the user (which requires either a PC filing system on the Amiga and a CD-ROM drive on a PC, or an Amiga dealer or friend with an Amiga and a CD-ROM drive, to create the Amiga disk).
In our experience, many Amiga owners still have some precious data on old Amiga floppy disks, and often the same users who purchased a PC some time ago did not upgrade their Amiga with a CD-ROM drive. The special version of Amiga Forever with floppy disk (plus a standard null modem serial cable, well-documented in Amiga Forever) is probably the easiest, and least expensive way for transferring and preserving data still stored on aging Amiga floppy disks.
The floppy disk version is being discontinued because of the increasing difficulty in finding large quantities of DD (Amiga) floppy disks (DD floppy drives are not even manufactured any more), and related disk duplication services. For technical reasons, HD floppy disks cannot be used, as two different formats would have to be used to be compatible with all existing Amiga floppy drives. At the same time, the stock of (very expensive) Amiga Boing! stickers which we had produced is coming to an end. On the good side, this simplification, which will also allow us to manufacture Amiga Forever using a standard CD-ROM container instead of the current double-size box, will mean that the product will be slightly less expensive, and we will pass this saving on to our users. The current release of the Amiga Forever software is very stable, and will not be changed, even with the new packaging.
Additional information, including pictures of the Boing! stickers, FAQ and distribution contact data is available at http://www.cloanto.com/amiga/forever/.
Amiga Web Directory