A3000 SCSI CD

[MrGiggles]

I just purchased a A3000 off of eBay(all upgraded, 2 Megs of Chip Ram and 16 Megs of Fast Ram. It has a 1 Gig HD. It has been upgrades to OS3.1 ROMS, Super Buster Rev 11, DMAC 4 and Ramsey 7. It also has the latest WD rev 8 SCSI chip.  Had a new battery installed in Nov 2003 along with the int2 hack. It is a rev9 edition of the motherboard and is running OS 3.9). The problem is, the seller sold the SCSI CD Drive and OS separately to someone else, so now I have the Amiga running an OS with no hardware to reinstall the OS if needed. I have several Amigas, but have none with SCSI CD hookups, except for my A570. It has many years since I have messed with the Amiga, although my house is full of the software, so I am rusty with how things are set up. So the question is, to run and external SCSI CD drive, would I need a soecial cable to convert the 25 pin in the rear to a 50 pin of the drive? How do I connect one up? What do I need and where can I get a drive and/or cable compatible with the A3000.

[recidivist]

You should find that an old Apple or other older scsi works,and I think  may have the  25 pin connector.I used a single speed Apple on my A1200 with the scsi adaptor that fit in the back.

[beller]

Any SCSI CD drive will work...I'm currently using a TASCAM drive from my 8 track recorder on my A3000.  Works fine!

[McVenco]

Like already said: any SCSI CD-ROM drive will work just fine with the A3000.

I used to have an Apple/Kodak PhotoCD machine as external CD-ROM drive on my A3000. It was only double speed (still pretty quick at that time when 16x was the maximum), but it worked very fine. Plus, they look pretty neat as well.

I saw one go out for €15 on Ebay a while ago...

[amiga_3k]

A few weeks ago I put an Apple 8600/250 out of it's missery and took it's SCSI internals (Apple branded CD-drive, OEM IBM 2 GB harddrive and OEM ZIP drive) out and put them into an Amiga 2000 with GPV SCSI controller. It all worked after a quick use of Faaastprep (GVP's 'equivalent' of HD Toolbox). Oh, and I had to strighten out the SCSI termination as it wasn't done properly :-S.

For the CD-drive to be recognized you'd be needing a CD-ROM filesystem. I had a quick browse at Aminet and took the first that came up and it worked instantly. Although it has some problems with disk-changes. I haven't looked at that as the Amiga tends to re-boot in just a couple of seconds.

If you're going to use an external SCSI unit, you've got to make sure the internal SCSI termination has been removed.

A less sexy but yet working method is getting a long SCSI cable and route one of the connectors out of the Amiga (together with a power-supply connector) and fix an internal SCSI cd-drive to it. I used to use my Amiga 3000 like that for quite a while.

[MrGiggles]

Thanks for all the advice. I don't believe that software will be any problem. I have quite a few CD drives, but I guess the main problem now is trying to locate a cable turning the 25 pin to the 50 on most of the drives. If I cannot do that, I may have to run it from the internal. I would prefer the connection in the rear of the 3000 though.

[InTheSand]

Google is your friend!

Bucket-loads of them here, for peanuts!

Amazon marketplace - SCSI cables

 - Ali

[motrucker]

OR, if you have any second hand computer stores in your area, they will work. We have a couple that sell new/used SCSI cables for $1.00 each. Also believe it or not, Goodwill stores can be a great source of really cheap computer  parts/cables/??.
The 25 to 50 cables or 50 to 50 cables are very standard SCSI stuff.