CD-ROM interface

[Desolator]

After getting a link to Vesalia's internet store  in another thread I happily discovered that I could afford to upgrade my A1200 to OS3.9 standard.  But I don't know what hardware to buy to get a CD-Rom to work with a non-towered A1200. Any recommendations on what to get?

[Staticman]

You need a 4 way buffered IDE interface and the IDE Fix 97 software. The interface plugs into the IDE slot on your motherboard and allows you to connect up to 4 IDE devices to your Amiga.... such as hard drives, CD-ROMs, zip drives etc.

The CD-ROM drive would have to be external. External CD-ROM drives are more expensive than internal equivalents but should be available from many Amiga stores such as Power Computing or Eyetech.

The Interface will set you back about £20 (I think thats what I paid for mine a year or two back). An external CD-ROM drive can cost anything from £10 depending on what speed. I'd recommend at least a quad (4x) drive but then again new 52x drives are cheap as chips these days. Its up to you.

[Desolator]

Allright, a 4 way buffered IDE interface it is then.

Is it impossible to connect an internal CD-Rom unit to that? I would only need a CD-Rom to install software now and then so I wouldn't mind that it looked ugly, or the interface hasn't the correct ports to connect one?

[Staticman]

It would have to be an external drive  with its own power supply because your A1200 will not have enough power for an internal drive to work.

[alx]

Of course, the actual drive is the same as an internal one - I've got an internal drive mounted inside a little case which a power adaptor plugs into.  So if you want to do it messily with an internal drive you've already got, you could just get an adaptor and standard 4 pin power plug, attatch the right bits together, set the voltage and plug that in.  But it certainly won't look nice :-)