CD ROM FAQ Installation

Information in this page updated: 24 Sep 95


10. Installation hints

10.1 SCSI

Most of the people have difficulties connecting a simple SCSI drive to their amigas. Often because it's so simple and nearly all CD-ROM drive manufacturers do not supply a manual, but rather limited description of jumpers and ports on the housing.

But there is nothing mysterious: simply connect the power and the scsi-cable to the device. Prior to that you should find a free ID on you scsi bus (CD-ROMs normally take ID 2 or 3). If your drive is the last one on the bus, do not remove the terminator resistor packs, but remove them from the former last drive. if you mount it somewehre in- between remove them. Only one device may be terminated on the bus at a time. All these guidelines should be found also in your SCSI- controllers manual.

To physicaly mount your device you need a 5.25" drive bay in your Amiga. Currently only the A2000, the A3000T and the A4000(T) do have such bays. All other models need a external housing for the drive. Please note that all CD drives with drawers can only be mounted in a horizontal position else the disk will fall out of the carrier. Drives with a caddy may be operated horizontally and vertically.

The drive is not visible in hard disk tools like the HDToolbox. It's "not a disk type 5" which means a fixed medium type device. To check if your drive is there use some kind of scsi inquiry tool, scsi mounter or similar. (Note: The Toshiba 3401 does not like synchronous transfers initiated by the host. Clear the appropriate flags!) To access it, install the device driver kit you have chosen. This will mount the CD-ROM drive for you and AmigaOS will recognise it as a read-only-device.

After the physical mounting the driver will do the logical mount to the operating system. All you do is start the installing routine and enter scsi-device ("scsi.device", "gvpscsi.device" etc.) and the CD-ROM drive's ID (default 2) on the bus. Leave the rest to the defaults of your software. All known filing systems install a handler in L: and a CD0: icon in DEVS:DOSDrivers. It's common sense to name the CD-ROMs CD0:, CD1: etc. so stick to it. After you reboot you should see a CD0: icon on your workbench screen - of course you must insert some CD first.

10.2 AT-Bus/IDE

Because you can not connect a standard IDE CD-ROM drive directly to the Amiga you'll need some kind of interface (VOB CD-ROM Kit e.a.). These kits come with detailed installation guidelines so all I can say is: be careful, read it twice and then try it. All additional tips and tricks are of course welcome, send them to me.

For the software it is common to emulate a fake scsi.device with limited ID support. So your CD-ROM drive may have unit 2 fixed. But all Kits come with their own filing system...

10.3 Utilities

All Utilities that are not related to the filing system itself or that are not installed during the setup of the filing system, again need the scsi-device ("scsi.device", "gvpscsi.device" etc.) and the ID of your drive. Only the new YACDP 1.2 features some kind of automatic search for the first CD-ROM on the first found scsi-compliant device (compared to an internal list). So look in the documentation where to setup device and unit settings.

The audio-players support many features but not all drives do. So first check in the players documentation if your special drive as able to do all the things the player offers. (e.g. NEC drives do not offer all kinds of the audio mixer modes available in the "jukebox") CDDAviaSCSI is supported only for few drives, even if your drive can transfer CDDA, the player may not be able to read it since your drive uses a different access method. NEC is one of that drive type.


Back to main