SCSI Alternative HDD for Amiga 500

[Snowwie]

I recently bought an Amiga 500 with a Protar A500 external HDD. This HD is only 20MB, so it's quit small.

I would like to know if there are alternatives available for me to get an HDD in the Amiga 500, or, if possible a bigger hard drive for the Protar. The hard drive in the Protar is a Seagate/Conner SCSI 50 pin hard drive, and those are not easy to come by. Are there flash alternatives I can use?

PS, I use Workbench 1.3.

[Brian]

You can still dig up old SCSI hdd's on ebay but there's also new Secure Digital to SCSI alternatives... they are a bit costly but draws less power and are easier to uppgrade cappasity if needed later.

[Snowwie]

I see many SCSI drives for sale, but most of these drives are 4GB - 160GB in size.

Does WB 1.3 even support such drives?
Does the Protar even support such drives?

I am tempted to buy a 4GB version, since that one is only 4 euro over here.
Just to try.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Never heard of the Protar before.  Looked it up on amiga.resource.cx, looks like a nice chassis, then I got to the part about "supports only special Protar SIMMs".  Booo.  

It does say it supports SCSI direct though, so that's a good thing.  They have protarscsi.device driver and a ROM image on there too, I wonder how much you can find out about what version ROM you have, and updating it to the latest?

Nice design, might not be worth the hassle though due to the custom SIMM requirement.  Easier to swap with a GVP sidecar (which also has the stylish design) and is much easier to find updates and RAM for, IMHO.  Guess it just depends on how much you like banging your head against the wall.  

[Snowwie]

I would like the Amiga 500 to be as basic as it can be, with KS/WB 1.3 to be the most compatible with older games.

It is just that the current 20MB harddisk is too small to install lots of games.

The only thing I would like to know if I can use any SCSI hard drive in this Protar, even if its 80GB. (I don't mind if it only can read 1GB, because that's more than you ever need on an Amiga 500.)

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

A lot of older games are not going to be hard disk installable unless you use WHDLoad, in which case you might as well upgrade to 3.1, since WHDLoad doesn't care what ROM version is actually installed, it will load older ROM versions from disk as needed for compatibility.

Does WHDLoad even work under 1.3?  Also you'll be crippling yourself to use 1.3 since the newer versions of Workbench include a much more capable HDToolbox for mounting & prepping/partitioning hard drives.  But, go ahead and use 1.3 if you like making your life difficult!  

[ElPolloDiabl]

I would like the Amiga 500 to be as basic as it can be, with KS/WB 1.3 to be the most compatible with older games.

It is just that the current 20MB harddisk is too small to install lots of games.

The only thing I would like to know if I can use any SCSI hard drive in this Protar, even if its 80GB. (I don't mind if it only can read 1GB, because that's more than you ever need on an Amiga 500.)

Any SCSI 1 or SCSI 2 drive should work.
Amiga started out as 1.3 I say keep it.

[doctorq]

Amiga started out as 1.3 I say keep it.

+1