Connecting SCSI hard drives to Amiga

Hi all. I've done some Googling on this subject and haven't found a lot, so here I am .

Basically, I have a couple of extra SCSI hard drives that came with a haul of Amigas I picked up a while back. I'm really keen to see what's on the drives (as I know they've come out of Amigas, or were possibly originally in the ones I acquired). I can't find much information on connecting a drive to an Amiga and either mounting it as a second drive, or just as a main drive and seeing if it boots (e.g. has Workbench on it).

I have an Amiga 4000 Tower, but I think that's IDE only, but luckily I also have an Amiga 2000HD that I think would suit as it is SCSI and has a hard drive in it. How simple is it to

- Swap the current 2000 SCSI drive out for one of the other ones?
- Get Workbench to 'see' it so I can look at what's on them?

[Daedalus]

Workbench should be able to see the drives without any additional work once they're plugged it. Amiga Filesystems are stored on the drive itself so plugging it into a different Amiga should work, even if the new host doesn't use that file system.

HDToolbox or HDInstTools should be able to see the drive too, and that will tell you what partitions are available and what filesystems they use, just in case they don't automount.

As regards swapping out the drive, it should be a drop-in setup, once everything is set the same (ID, termination etc.). However, SCSI can access multiple drives on the same bus, so is there a need to remove the original drive? Why not run both of them at the same time?

Hey Daedalus, thanks for your reply . How do I set the ID, termination and so forth on the drive (and determine those settings on the existing drive) to ensure they're the same? As for swapping in/out, I just assumed there would only be one SCSI connector in the A2000HD and one cable with a single SCSI connection, therefore I could only have one drive installed at a time? I might have to pop it open and see...

[Daedalus]

Well, that could be the case, but even so it's a relatively easy job to fit extra connectors to a cable, or to replace the cable. One thing to mention as well is that the connectors must be the same (obviously). There are several different variants of SCSI connector, most just need a simple adapter to work, but some need active circuits to connect. But if the connector's the same you're good to go.

As for termination and ID, there are usually a bunch of jumpers or tiny rotary switches on the drives, and a label describing them. You just have to match them for dropping in, or choose a different ID if you're adding the drive to the existing chain. Termination should only be active for exactly the first and last device on the cable, nothing more, nothing less. And bear in mind that the controller itself counts as a device, so it will have an ID and termination too... SCSI is an excellent bus for classic Amigas but it can be tricky to work with if you haven't had any experience with it before...