Day Six
Fitting a CDRom drive
To fit the CDRom drive you will need to acquire an external
unit like the SCSI box from Power Computing. Commodore were
developing the CDRom for the A1200 just before they went
bust, but sadly never saw the light of day
Anyway, the CDRom drive is a pretty standard external SCSI
device, and nothing unique to Amiga, so you can get these
anywhere.
On the back of the unit you need to both set, and make a
note of the unit number. In this case Unit 0. You can set
the number from 1-7, but each SCSI device that daisy chains
on to the CD must have a different unit number
Next you will need an SCSI connector. This can be taken
direct from the computer card inside, or via a connector
like the Squirrel shown. These were made by HiSoft originally
but now can be obtained from Analogic in Kingston London
Make sure when you get the connector you get the software
for it too.
The Squirrel comes with its own Centronics cable connector
Whilst you technically don`t need to terminate the end
of this single unit chain, its worth getting a termination
block all the same. I got two for about £2 off the Bay.
Termination will become important, and having a block
now gives you the facility to keep moving the block on
at each successive SCSI addition.
One bad thing about the Squirrel is the space required
by the side of the A1200 for the connector. I usually
lift the SCSI CDRom above the connector to save space
And now the technical stuff...
First, install the SCSI device software for the Squirrel
Remember this is only the software for the device itself
and you will now have a SquirrelSCSI tool in the C directory
and the SquirrelSCSI device in Devs.
However, to get the CD working you need a driver for this
and a file system that it can understand So go get AmiCDFS
from Aminet and using DOpus extract the LHA file into a folder
Then copy the CD0 `Tooltype` to the Devs:DosDrivers drawer and
AmiCDFS file system to the L directory. There are different
versions for different processors. Always make sure you rename
the AmiCDFS_30 ( say ) to just AmiCDFS
Nearly done. Now fire up CED or a text editor and open the
CD0 tooltype and edit just two items from the mount file.
The SCSI device should read... ` SquirrelSCSI.device` or the
device you are using, and the Unit number to Unit 0, or
which ever Unit No you chose
And that is that ...
Next I will show you how to add a hard-drive SCSI box
but not now.
So grab your cover CD from Amiga Format and start copying
useful stuff across. Also if you got access to a PC burner
download files from Aminet and transfer them to the Amiga
via the CDRom. Easy peasy.. as they say.
Now I have the CD and accelerator installed I can start working
on the image of the Amiga. I will need some Workbench enhancements,
the first being MUI to enable me to use some of the better
software for the Amiga.
With this in mind my next task will be to get bigger storage
and so the external SCSI is next, and then I can think about
fitting a printer and a modem.
Wanna know what to do with it ?