Noob with A1200/SCSI questions

[shufflemoomin]

Hi to all,

I'm obviously new to the forum and also sort of new to the Amiga. I owned one as a teenager and never did anything but play games on it. I decided to pick up an A1200 as a blast from the past. I have the machine on the way and also an external SCSI CD-ROM drive. What's the best way to hook this up to an A1200? What options are available to me? I keep hearing about PCMCIA inputs and I assume this is the only way?

If this is the only way, what cards should I keep my eye open for, as I assume they have to be Amiga compatible and have Amiga drivers of some sort?

Any help and advice you can give for someone hoping to rekindle his love of Amiga would be appreciated.

Shufflemoomin

[Crumb]

Hi to all,

I'm obviously new to the forum and also sort of new to the Amiga. I owned one as a teenager and never did anything but play games on it. I decided to pick up an A1200 as a blast from the past. I have the machine on the way and also an external SCSI CD-ROM drive. What's the best way to hook this up to an A1200? What options are available to me? I keep hearing about PCMCIA inputs and I assume this is the only way?

If this is the only way, what cards should I keep my eye open for, as I assume they have to be Amiga compatible and have Amiga drivers of some sort?

Any help and advice you can give for someone hoping to rekindle his love of Amiga would be appreciated.

Shufflemoomin

A cheap way to connect your CD-rom is using a surf squirrel. Anyway I would use a pcmcia compact flash reader or maybe SD reader to transfer data. You could get a  Blizzard IV 1230 for general use. If you just want whdload games perhaps with a 8MB ram memory you have enough.

[Amiduffer]

Any reason in particular for using SCSI beyond a CD drive?

There were two types that allowed you to attach SCSI equipment. The SquirrelSCSI which attached to the PCMCIA port, and an pcb card that would connect to Blizzard type accelerators and use the blank space in the upper right of the rear of the 1200 for the port.

A better way is the Subway that Amigakit is selling.

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=137&lcsid=ed6f56d80a971f171c77f33b97fe77f4

You'll have more choices if you use this, plus, if you can locate one, get an indivision, so that you can use any regular VGA monitor and you won't be stuck with C= monitors, since they're at the end of their life spans.

[scuzzb494]

Best way is with a Blizzard fitted with the SCSIKIT as suggested. This way you can free the PCMCIA for an ethernet network card and get on broadband. Here is a pic of one of my set ups with two external SCSI hard drives, SCSI CD-ROM, SCSI ZIP Drive plus on the pic a modem which now has ethernet PCMCIA on broadband. I also now have a 17" monitor.

The other links show option with a Squirrel interface and the other links show the Blizzard and the port at the rear. Quite easy to set up, though the KIT may be a touch harder to get hold of.

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/my_amiga_large.jpg

PS: Can anyone explain the significance of the CD in the picture ?

Feed the Squirrel... http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz97.htm

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/a_scuzz_nov02/a_scuzz_nov02_220.jpg

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/a_scuzz_nov02/a_scuzz_nov02_221.jpg

scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

[Tension]

Welcome to Amiga.org -- You'll never leave!!

[shufflemoomin]

Thanks to all for the replies.

The reason I wanted a CD-ROM drive is I've been using WinUAE to play my old games for years. I don't have any Amiga games around any more and I assumed there'd be some way to get these .adf files over to the Amiga, either to load from HDD or to get them onto Amiga floppies.

What's the quickest, easiest or cheapest way to get data from a PC over to an Amiga these days?

Thanks again to everyone
Shufflemoomin

[mousehouse]

If you're on an A1200 I think your best guess is a PCMCIA/Flash adapter and stick a flash card in it... Then on your PC install WinUAE and use that to put files on the flash card...

Or use a IDE2CF adapter in your Amiga and use WinUAE to edit the complete disk on your PC ;-)

You could also get a supported PCMCIA networking card...

[ck1200]

Welcome for one newbie to another, i'm also going to be looking at cf drives and a accelerator as a first upgrade step with 3.1 rom

[shufflemoomin]

I like the idea of a PCMCIA CF reader. Can you use any one of them in an Amiga or do they require specific support? What brands/models should I be on the look out for?

Thanks again
Shufflemoomin

[amigakit]

We sell the EasyADF PCMCIA Compact Flash Transfer Kit with Amiga compatible 4GB Compact Flash here:

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=440

[Amiduffer]

Thanks to all for the replies.

The reason I wanted a CD-ROM drive is I've been using WinUAE to play my old games for years. I don't have any Amiga games around any more and I assumed there'd be some way to get these .adf files over to the Amiga, either to load from HDD or to get them onto Amiga floppies.

What's the quickest, easiest or cheapest way to get data from a PC over to an Amiga these days?

Thanks again to everyone
Shufflemoomin

Well, you've certainly got some nice options then. The Blizzard SCSI kit and SurfSquirrel/SquirrelSCSI are pretty hard to find, but show up on ebay once in a while. That's if you want to use your SCSI CD drive.

You can get the PCMCIA Compact Flash adaptor from Amikit, which is an easy way to transfer files back and forth.

Amikit also sells the USB kit, so that you can connect all sorts of devices, CD drives included.

Another way is with a null modem cable and Amiga Explorer (included with Amiga Forever), you can move files back and forth between the PC and Amiga quite easily.

A few people have done a little modifying of the 1200 case and installed a laptop CD drive inside, since it uses IDE.

[shufflemoomin]

We sell the EasyADF PCMCIA Compact Flash Transfer Kit with Amiga compatible 4GB Compact Flash here:

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=440

Unless I'm missing something by a country mile: I buy this kit you linked to which gives me the hardware & software to transfer files over on a CF card? Is this really both hardware and software for only £14? Surely that can't be right?

Shufflemoomin

[dougal]

Another way if you want a CDROM drive is by getting an IDE cdrom drive and connecting it to your Amiga's IDE port.

With regards to transferring from Amiga to PC / PC to Amiga, a PCMCIA CF card reader/writer is your best and cheapest option. Very Very usefull and VERY cheap.

[Amiduffer]

Unless I'm missing something by a country mile: I buy this kit you linked to which gives me the hardware & software to transfer files over on a CF card? Is this really both hardware and software for only £14? Surely that can't be right?

Shufflemoomin

Yes, he's correct. Its that easy and that cheap.

[shufflemoomin]

Fantastic! Sold!