Totally new to Amigas. Picked up a A1200HD/40 with a CSA twelve guage accelerator

[xeron]

Hmm... it sounds to me like csascsi.device might be the right device, but that something else is wrong (possibly hardware). Try copying the CD0 icon to SYS:Storage/DOSDrivers and rebooting. When you reboot, it won't try to mount CD0, and you can have a look in the list to see if csascsi.device is still there (i'd put money on it being there).

One thing that worries me is that most sites call the connector on the CSA 12 gauge "Feature connector for optional SCSI controller", which makes me think you need an extra bit of hardware for SCSI to work...

[xeron]

Well, all the Blizzard cards required an extra module to be plugged in for SCSI to work. It wouldn't be at all surprising if the CSA card did too.

Then again, why would it autoconfigure a csascsi.device without the SCSI module present?

OK, things to try:

1) All possible units from 0 to 7
2) A different SCSI CD-Rom drive
3) Shaking your fists and shouting at it
4) Getting some nimble fingered person to put a new capacitor on
5) Get a PCMCIA network card and copy things from the CD-Rom in your PC

[xeron]

A null modem cable will also do the trick. Download NComm from aminet, and set it up to use serial.device, unit 0, 38400 baud (thats probably the best speed to use on the Amigas internal port).

Then use HyperTerminal (or something better to send files with ZModem.

[xeron]

pete_pumpkin wrote:
Yeah , that might be the way to go. I've tried changing the IDs etc. What I keep on getting is some 'scsi handler error' at startup.  

I think it basically means the csascsi.device is being opened OK, but it is failing to get any response back from the CD drive.

with the nullmodem , would that be only usefull for file transfers

Just for filetransfers. Autobooting from CDs on an A1200 takes quite some doing, to be honest. There is a CD32 emulator on Aminet which attempts to boot CD32 games, but the CD drive has to be connected locally (IE on the IDE or SCSI bus).

Umh also my CPU on the amiga gets so hot, that I'm getting worried that it'll melt a hole in the carpet etc(I'm missing the expansion cover), is this normal?

Hmmm... 68030 based cards usually get hot enough to be uncomfortable to touch, but usually run OK without any heat sink or fan. It might be an idea to put the A1200 on a couple of blocks or something to get some airflow under the case.

[xeron]

pete_pumpkin wrote:
I can hardly beieve it, after almost giving up, I've finally got it to work  :-D

HOORAY! :-D

Anyway I'm excited    :-D  I just need to read back in the previous posts and work out how to unpack the .dms files onto my HD;

You can't directly unpack a .dms file to your hard disk. DMS files are compressed track-by-track floppy disk images, and can only be unpacked to real disks (or virtual disks).

In fact; if you don't want to have to use a real disk, we could use RAD. RAD is the Amiga's "Recoverable Ram Disk" (dunno why it isn't RRD, but hey...).

If your workbench install is fairly standard, you should be able to type this into a shell:

1. Work> Mount RAD:

If no error appears, you have created a virtual floppy disk! If an error appears, come back and we'll try and fix it :-D Next:

1. Work> dms write CD0:whatever.dms to RAD:

If the disk is a valid AmigaDOS disk, you can now copy files from RAD: to your hard disk.

!IMPORTANT! Before rebooting your amiga, type "RemRAD" into the shell, otherwise the Amiga will try and boot from the RAD disk instead of your hard disk. (or shut the power off, that'll kill it, too

Well thanks everybody (inparticular Tickly) for helping me out with getting this machine up and running the way it should  :-)

No problem! I'm always happy to help people keen to learn about my favourite computer platform!

[xeron]

IIRC, a standard WB3.0 or 3.1 install has everything installed and ready to use RAD, you just have to mount it. I could be wrong. Your "SD0" appears to be some strange 3rd party RAD, which Pete probably won't need.

Just the standard, included with WB3.x RAD should do the trick.