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

[xeron]

I've not use the CSA card, but it looks like the end connector is for SCSI.

Now, amiga-hardware.com says that SCSI is optional, so it may be that another card is attached before you can use SCSI (I know the Phase 5 Blizzard cards did that; its quite common).

You can add an ATAPI cd-rom to the internal IDE port with IDEFIX, but I would recommend at least getting a buffered IDE controller first, as you can technically damage your motherboard putting two devices on the internal port directly. The buffered IDE cards give you two IDE channels and proper 3.5" drive connectors. Click here for an example.

As for DF0:?, what disk are you putting there? If you put an MS-DOS disk in there it won't work, and quite a lot of old games are not standard AmigaDOS disks.

Put a double density disk in that you don't mind losing the data on, and in workbench select "Format" from the Icons menu. If the disk formats OK, the drive is fine.

Remember; the Amiga 1200 can't read high-density disks without an expensive external drive (unlike its bigger brothers the A3000 and A4000).

If you want to get rid of the click, click, click when there is no disk in the drive, download a "noclick" utility from aminet.

[xeron]

@carls

*shrug* just wanted to give a full answer, too. and there was a little bit of extra info in mine. I didn't actually read yours first, admittedly, which I probably should. I just read the top post and hit reply.

[xeron]

aaand i've had another thought. If you didn't want to poke around with IDE CD-Roms, you could always get a cnet (or compatible) PCMCIA network card, and network the Amiga to the PC, to use the PCs CD-Rom. You need a TCP/IP stack like genesis or Miami, and a copy of cnet.device from aminet.

Edit: although, unless you get the motherboard fixed (or its already been fixed), you might have to unplug and re-insert the network card every reboot.

[xeron]

Heh, just as the page was changing i caught your sig in the corner of my eye...

A small but loyal fan base of Amiga nuts is holding its breath

and read it as "A small but loyal base of Amigans is holding its nuts"
 :-o  :-D

[xeron]

Well, if the PSU isn't providing enough juice, you are likely to get all sorts of weird problems. I'd fix that first! If you have an old AT PC case, you can modify the PSU from that to work with the amiga. You can use an ATX PSU too, but thats a little more work.

Instructions are on aminet (aminet is your friend :-D )

AT PSU hack readme
AT PSU hack archive

ATX PSU hack readme
ATX PSU hack file

Otherwise, A500 power supplies typically give more juice than A1200 ones (although not as much as the AT PSU hack), so that might be an option, too.

Also, if you decide to really upgrade your Amiga, and are looking around on ebay or amibench for second hand gear, a very useful link is The Big Book of Amiga Hardware where you can look up information on hundreds of Amiga hardware items.

[xeron]

Well, the CSA twelve gauge isn't a very good card, tbh, and it sounds like its had a rought life. I'd keep an eye out for cheap second hand Blizzard or Apollo cards on ebay if I were you.

030 based cards are nice because they give you a bit more power, but are still pretty compatible with old games (although if you install the games to your hard disk with WHDLoad it generally fixes lots of bugs in the process.

040 based cards will be more pricey, but they allow you to run lots of slightly more up to date software.

060 based cards are expensive, but they'll give your amiga a real kick up the backside and bring it kicking and screaming into 1996  :-D This is the most common processor for "power" users, short of a PowerPC upgrade.

[xeron]

If showconfig shows the 68030 and 16Mb fastram, the CPU is working.

[xeron]

Yeah, if a program needs a library, just copy it into your libs dir. If there are two versions, its best to put the highest version on your hard disk. The way to tell is to do this from a shell:

Version whatever.library

(this will show the version installed on your computer)

Then do:

Version DF0:Libs/whatever.library FILE

(this will show the version of the library you are thinking of copying).

If the version you are thinking of copying has a higher version number, copy it over.

[xeron]

Size is not a reliable way to tell; for starters what if the library author optimised all his routines and they ended up smaller? It should be possible to add a button to DOpus so that you can highlight a file, and click it to get the files version number. I haven't reconfigured Directory Opus in years, and i'm at work now, so i'll let someone else explain that :-D

As for the shell, believe me, its about a gazillion times better than the MS-DOS prompt on the PC. For starters, you don't even need to type "cd" to change directory, just type the directory name, eg:

1.Work:> Apps/
1.Work:Apps>

But thats just the tip of the iceberg! A quick google turned up this AmigaDOS online reference manual

Also, if you find (or download from Aminet) a program called KingCON, it will make your shell a million times nicer. You can do things like type part of a filename, and hit tab to complete it. It will also give your shell window a scrollbar so you can see things that whizz off the top.

Once you have KingCON, it is a little tricky to install for an amiga newbie, but here is a step-by-step guide:

1) if the file is LHA archived, unpack it to ram by typing this:

1.Work> lha x KingCON.lha ram:

(this assumes you have the lha program, but i would be surprised if the previous owner didn't have it installed).

2) in Directory Opus, find the file in "Ram Disk:" called "KingCON-mountlist" and copy this to "Devs:"

3) find the file called "kingcon-handler" and copy it to "L:"

4) Now, still in DOpus, go to "S:", and edit "user-startup" (usually DOpus has some sort of text editor configured to one of the buttons)

5) Go to the bottom of the file and add this line:

mount kcon: from devs:kingcon-mountlist

6) Reboot

7) From workbench go to Project->Execute (or hit Right Amiga + E)

In the dialogue box, put "NewCLI window=KCON:"

you should now get a shell with filename completion, and a scrollbar. If you right click you also get some menus.

[xeron]

Well, the AmigaDOS online reference manual teaches you what all the directories are, but here is a quick rundown:

The "Ram Disk:" (or "RAM:") is a virtual drive that is always present on 2.0 ROM based amigas (and newer). It is for storing temporary files, which all get lost on reboot.

On a basic workbench partition, you'll have the following directories:

"C" (also a "virtual drive", known as an assign, called C: )

This is where all the shell commands live. Some commands are in the ROM, but others live here. You can copy useful commands here, and they will always be available in your shell.


"Libs" (or assign "Libs:")

This is where shared libraries live. Shared libraries allow many programs to use the same routines without each program having its own copy. Its a bit like windows DLL files, except that they aren't given quite so cryptic names.

"Devs" (assign "Devs:")

The root of devs is where we keep "Devices". Devices are like libraries, but they generally provide a standard way for programs to access actual hardware (for example parallel.device to access the Amiga parallel port).

Inside Devs, there are various other directories:

"Devs:DOSDrivers". These are text files that contain information AmigaOS needs to access a drive, for example a CD-rom would put an icon called "CD0" here, containing information about how to access the CD drive. These are called "Mountlists". (the action of adding a drive to the operating system is known as "Mounting")

"Devs:Monitors" contains drivers for different graphics modes, or even different graphics cards if you have one.

"Devs:Storage" is where you put DOSDrivers, Monitors etc. that you want to keep handy, but you don't want to be active every time you boot your amiga.

There are various other dirs in devs, but refer to the online reference for that.

"S" (assign "S:")

This is where scripts are kept, such as "startup-sequence" (like autoexec.bat), "user-startup" (also like autoexec.bat, but for the user to mess with).

It is also the default place to store ARexx scripts, and some programs keep their preferences here.


"Fonts" (assign "Fonts:")

As the name suggests. You can put Amiga bitmap fonts here.


"L" (assign "L:")

This is where filesystems and things like that live. For example, the CD0 mountlist might reference a CD-Rom filesystem kept here. (e.g. L:AllegroCDFS)


"Prefs" (no assign)

This is where all the AmigaOS preferences editors lives.


"Prefs/Env-Archive" (assign "ENVARC:")

(short for "environment archive")

This is where workbench, and other programs, permanently save their preferences files. They also save a temporary copy in RAM:Env (assign "ENV:"). This allows you to change preferences temporarily, and have your stored defaults restored when you reboot.

There are various other dirs, but once again, refer to the AmigaDOS online reference manual.

[xeron]

Hmm... when i said the CD-Rom puts the file there, i was totally wrong. What i should have said is that YOU put it there.

What you'll have to do is this:

* Download a CD-Rom filesystem, such as AmiCDFS and install it
* Find the CD0 icon in Devs:DOSDrivers. In workbench, click once on the icon and go to "Icon->Information"

There should be a list called "Tooltypes", and in there should be "Device" and "Unit".

Device should be whatever the CSA twelve gauge scsi device is called (i don't know offhand, sorry) it could be csascsi.device or something else... i really don't know.

Unit should be whatever SCSI unit number the drive is

With a bit of luck, upon reboot when you put CDs in the drive, an icon should appear on workbench.

BTW, to transfer the files you download to the amiga, you need to format a disk to 720Kb MS-DOS on the amiga. To do this, you need to make sure CrossDOS (which comes with workbench) is installed.

In L:, there should be a file called "CrossDOSFileSystem". If not, you'll need to find your workbench disk and copy it from DF0:L/

In DEVS:DOSDrivers, or Workbench:Storage/ there should be a mountlist called "PC0". If it is in Storage, double click it to mount PC0.

A new icon should appear on workbench, called "PC0:?" or "PC0:Bad disk" or similar. Insert a disk you want to format, and click once on the PC0:? icon. Then right click, and select "Format Disk" from the icon menu.

If it formats OK, you should now have a disk both the PC and Amiga can read.


Edit: oooops! I just remembered that Storage isn't in Devs: at all, its in the root of your workbench partition.

[xeron]

It sounds like you're nearly there. The amigas operating system traditionally provides "scsi.device", which controls onboard SCSI and IDE drives (the name is still scsi.device for legacy compatability, even though it also gets used for IDE drives). Is the drives SCSI ID definately 1?

You're right though, it doesn't seem like anywhere on the internet has any documentation for setting up the SCSI... :-( When I get home (which will be around 6:30pm GMT), i'll write a program to list all resident devices on your system, and you can post the list back and we can look for likely candidates.

[xeron]

"DONOTWAIT" etc.

Yes, some mountlists place the unit and device inside the text file, others place it in the icon tooltypes. Either way should work fine.

[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