Newbie (well oldbie that forget everything) help....

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

1 - Yes.  Look for a SCSI CD drive on ebay.  A year or two back there were tons of them, I got one for $2.99 that I still use today on one of my systems.  Search for old Mac drives, or other systems that had SCSI interfaces as standard.  Your mileage may vary.  Also be prepared to learn about SCSI termination.  For starters (assuming you have a hard drive as well) you'll probably want to do something like this:

GVP card ==> Internal hard drive ==> CD drive ==> termination.  You might be able to get away with just a termination jumper on the CD drive.  Or you might need a "real" one.  I'd try that sequence first.

You should update this card to it's latest ROM's.  Either 4.15 or a Guru ROM, if you can find one.

2 - According to this site:  http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/a3001   the optional IDE controller doesn't support drives with more than 1024 cylinders.  This might be useless with a modern CF adapter and card of any reasonable size.  You can look for a SCSI-to-IDE bridge to add a CF, or one of the Kipper2K adapters, or a SCSI card reader, etc.  Good news is, there's lots of other ways of adding a CF.  

3 - Once you add the CD drive, just burn your files to a CD and read them back on the Amiga.  Easy-peasy.  This is what I did before I added other methods to my system (like USB and a FAT-formatted SD card, etc.).  You can also rig up a variety of serial & parallel links, assuming you have an older-ish PC that still has either a serial or parallel port.

A2000's are great, loads of options, I love mine! (see sig, I built it up to this from scratch)  Have fun!  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

If the ram on the accelerator card maps into 32-bit address space, then you'll be fine to add more to the hard card (which would map into 16-bit address space), but you'll want to check to confirm this, some early accelerators did things a bit "weird".  Also it looks like there's a couple different ram board options for the A3001.  RAM8 or RAM32.  A tool like SysInfo should be helpful to confirm this, also check the jumper settings and compare them to that site I linked to earlier.

8/2MB of memory should be fine for casual use.  Obviously you'll want more if you intend to go online, or do graphic-intensive tasks, 3D modeling, etc.  It's plenty to get you started though.  

Buddha is like hen's teeth.  If you decide you want one keep a close eye on ebay, Amibay, etc.  Maybe try posting a "wanted" ad?  I just checked AmigaKit, Vesalia, and AmigaStore.eu real quick, and none of them had it listed.  Maybe email AmigaKit, as well?

What version of Workbench is your system running?  If 3.1 you should be able to burn CD's (with the appropriate CD-burning software) once you add the drive.  If something old like 1.3, not so much.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Good point about the Zip drives, an often overlooked but still very valid method of storing files for older computers.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

need only a $5 buck adapter

Hi Dan, can you clarify on this "$5 adapter"?  You mean the 50-to-68 pin adapter to use the newer 68-pin drives?  Or a 50-to-80 pin?  I've tried occasionally looking for straight 50-pin SCSI drives that would plug in directly, and come up nearly empty in my searches.  Not that I care much because I mostly use CF, but you know...  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

1 - Yes, assuming the ram on the accelerator is in the 32-bit space.  Read that link on the RAM8 board again.  I think you need to set a jumper.

2 - I don't know if the CD-burning software works under 2.04, I've only used it under 3.1/3.9.  I think it was @tenacious who suggested earlier - install the new OS on a new drive, plug in the old drive as a slave (or configured "further down in the chain", since we're talking SCSI) to copy the data over, then once your transfer is complete you can unplug the old drive to keep it as a spare.  

IMHO "all the good stuff" requires 3.1.  I'd go ahead and do the upgrade.