From WinUae to the real thing.

[slestebe]

Hi.
I have been using WinUae for a long time, and finally i went crazy on ebay, and bought some of the real thing, and I do not regret.
(in two months I have bought 4 Amiga computers, and a lot of books, and software.)

One of the computers I bought was a A1200 and a micro Design International Inc. LaserBank Subsystem SCSI enclosure.
I want to use the SCSI unit with my A1200. But I havent used a Amiga in a long time, and I do not want to destroy anything.
The only cable on the outside of the unit looks like it is supposed to connect to the Paralell port on the Amiga, can this be correct?

Here is a picture of the unit.
 

[Lando]

Hi, welcome to amiga.org.  The cable on the SCSI unit would have to connect to a SCSI interface on the A1200 - you can't connect it to the parallel port, even though it might fit.

The A1200 doesn't come with SCSI as standard (anly the A3000 and A4000T have that)

For the A1200 you can buy a PCMCIA SCSI interface called the "Squirrel", or you can get a SCSI addon for the Phase 5 "Blizzard" range of accellerator cards.  Certain "Apollo" accellerator cards also have a SCSI option.

I can't see the picture but if the SCSI unit came with the A1200 when you bought it, then the A1200 may have a SCSI interface already fitted.

[Morley]

In order to use any SCSI unit on your 1200 you need a SCSI controller. You just can't connect your 25 pin connector from the SCSI enclosure, it has to go into a 25 pin SCSI connector. The parallell port and the SCSI standard are NOT pin-compatible, you'll probably burn some circuits if you try to connect them.

If you want a SCSI controller, I can personally recommend the Blizzard 12x0IV accellerator with its optional SCSI controller. If you can get hold of one of these, you'll gain an extra 25 pin d-sub contact at the back of the 1200 which you can plug the SCSI enclosure into :-)
Other alternatives are the Squirrel SCSI controller etc, but the Blizzard is IMHO the best alternative.

[MayhemMaybe]

Good thing you asked before you plugged. SCSI does not plug into the parallel port even though one form of SCSI cable has the same format, called D-25 I think.

The Amiga 1200 did not come with SCSI natively so a card needs to be added to it to use SCSI. Some accelerators have that as an option. There is the Squirrel SCSI PCMCIA card designed to work with the 1200 and 600. Dataflyer SCSI plugs into the IDE hard drive controller and adds a port to the back of the 1200 behind that small removable door under the floppy drive in the back.

By the way, if you do have a 25 pin port (unlabeled) under the floppy drive in the back of the machine that might be a SCSI controller behind it.

[slestebe]

No I bought the SCSI unit after the Amiga.
But my 1200 have a Blizzard 1230 III card installed, do this card have a SCSI controller, or do I have to buy another card?

[Piru]

@slestebe
Check http://www.amiga-hardware.com/blizz1230iii.html
The last picture shows the SCSI-module of the 1230-III. If you don't have it, you could try scanning some amiga auction sites or ebay for one. Good luck with it though, I haven't seen them around much.

1230-IV/1260 scsi modules were much more common, but are not compatible with 1230-III.