The Squirrel. A review for JAM by Neil Cartwright. 15 January 1995
Produced by HiSoft. RRP ÂŁ75.95, including overnight courier service. As an A600/A1200 user, are you fed up with the problems of expansion? If so then the Squirrel, a brand new piece of hard-ware, is the thing you've been waiting for. Made and distributed by HiSoft, the Squirrel utilises the PCMCIA card slot by turning it into a standard 50 way SCSI-2 connector. The device is simplicity itself. Fitting the hardware is a case of plug-in and go. What this means for the A600/A1200 user is that they are no longer bound by the limitations of IDE hard-drives, but they can now use a whole range of SCSI devices which are widely available in the PC world. And at a price which is much lower than Amiga specific hardware.
Most significantly this includes CD-ROM drives, but also back-up devices like conventional tape-streamers, the more expensive DAT drives, removable media drives, and flopticals. So the Squirrel offers a great deal of expansion but let's get down to the nitty-gritty and see how it actually performs.
I'm an A1200 user and before my Squirrel arrived I had no experience of using SCSI firsthand, but had heard a few horror stories about problems with boot-up once devices were attached with conflicting SCSI IDs. So I was a little wary.
Fortunately for me (but not for him) my friend has just blown up his Warp Engine and with it his main SCSI access. Thus he was able to lend me all his SCSI equipment so that I could test the Squirrel. This consisted of an Apple CD300 CD-ROM, an internal Archive Corporation 150 MB tapestreamer, and a 1.3 Gb hard-drive. The tape-streamer and hard-drive were placed in a standard PC mini tower. The three devices were daisy chained and the machine booted.
Initially my machine booted as normal but none of the devices appeared. At this point I would recommend reading the excellent Squirrel user manual. It tells you that on the first boot-up none of the devices will be recognised because the 'squirrelscsi.device' and software drivers have not been installed.
Turning my attention to the software provided I was impressed. Three disks are supplied in a good quality disk wallet. The first disk contains the Squirrel drivers and the other two, a collection of shareware programs. Installation of the software is easy because Commodore's Installer is used. It is recommended that you have an internal hard-drive to use the Squirrel, but the install program will generate a number of boot disks. These allow a user with no internal hard-drive to boot from a SCSI hard-drive/Squirrel combination, or boot Amiga-specific CD titles direct from a CD-ROM.
One major problem with SCSI devices, especially older equipment, is determining their SCSI ID numbers. The Squirrel allows up to seven SCSI devices to be chained at one time, but for this to work each must have a unique ID.
A very handy utility is included, called 'SCSIMounter', which searches for devices attached and gives you the ID numbers for them. So if you have a CD-ROM and hard-drive attached, but only one is shown, then you know both have the same ID and one must be changed.
Reassuringly all the SCSI equipment I've used allows SCSI IDs to be changed via a switch on the back of the unit or through internal jumpers.
Having overcome the problems of ID numbers so quickly, and following a re-boot so that the changes could take effect, both the CD-ROM and hard-drive sprung into life.
The first test was to use SysInfo to test the speed of the SCSI hard-drive. It said 1.5 MB per second which conflicted with the 3.5 MB I was quoted by HiSoft. However the speed does depend greatly upon the hard-drive used and upon how far you trust SysInfo.
More practical tests, like moving 3 MB files into RAM and then writing them back and archiving large files, showed that the Squirrel was perfectly adequate in transferring data to and from the SCSI drive.
The CD-ROM performed almost flawlessly. SysInfo gave a transfer rate of 300 Kb per second, which is the correct rate for a dual-speed, and data transferred without problem to my internal hard-drive. PhotoCD's loaded into ImageFX and Photogenics without worry, and the audio capability of the CD-ROM also worked.
HiSoft provide a number of useful utilities with the Squirrel which allow for the full utilisation of an attached CD-ROM. The first is AmiCDROM, version 1.15.
AmiCDROM is a commercial quality CD file system, supporting ISO9660, Rock Ridge extensions to ISO9660, and Macintosh HFS. Installation is as simple as running the
supplied installation script. This sets up and pre-configures everything, and is offered as an alternative to the supplied cd.device.
Second is CDDA, version 1.12. CDDA is used for reading CD Audio data via SCSI for those drives which support it. Whilst not the sexiest looking program in the world (Shell only), its performance is exceptional. Flawlessly playing stereo 8 bit through an Amiga, or recording 44.1kHz 16 stereo direct to hard disk. This is very useful, very small, and it works.
The only problem I experienced was when recording to the hard-drive at a high sample rate. The audio was garbled, although the recorded sample file played back fine. This must have been due to my internal IDE drive being too slow.
Other goodies include two audio CD players. These are JukeBox and YACDP. I prefer the later because it allows you to play CDs via SCSI, providing your CD-ROM is capable of this, meaning that the audio is piped into your monitor speakers. Be warned though that this does significantly slow your machine down.
Simple software support is also given for users that wish to prep and partition a SCSI harddrive via the Squirrel. SquirrelHDToolBox supplies the conventional HDToolBox with arguments which make operation of SCSI drives through the Squirrel a snap. It looks the same and works the same, but allows easy access to external SCSI drives.
The Squirrel manual is particularly extensive in this area and clearly guides users through the preparing, partitioning, and use of hard-drives.
One important thing I haven't mentioned yet is that the Squirrel can be hot-start enabled. This means that providing the correct drivers have been installed during boot-up (eg. CD0: in DOSdrivers) then the Squirrel can be plugged in at any time.
A good example of how useful this is has just occurred. When writing about the audio capability of YACDP in the paragraph above I realised my Squirrel was not attached, so I plugged it in. Within a few seconds the CD-ROM was recognised, I inserted a music CD, ran YACDP and started playing the music. Satisfied that it did work, I stopped the CD and unplugged it again.
The other major use of this feature is that although the limitation on daisy chaining SCSI units is seven, you can remove any one of those at any point and replace it with another. Or remove the whole lot and take it to a friends house and just plug it in. This is very handy.
What I'm in the process of doing is building an Amiga mini tower. This will be a standard PC mini tower and will include an internal CD-ROM, a tape-streamer and a SCSI harddrive.
Previously these things were only available to A1200 users who had the new accelerators, which have a SCSI option, and 'big box' Amiga users. Now we too are included and, compared to the aforementioned SCSI expansions for accelerators, the price is very similar.
Price comparisons are worth mentioning. If you want CD-ROM capability for your A600/A1200 then consider this. A Zappo CD-ROM drive (or a variant of this) will cost you about ÂŁ190.
The Squirrel and a twin speed CD-ROM drive will cost you roughly the same. But for an extra ÂŁ50 you can get a PC mini-tower with power supply that gives you expansion capabilities. Try adding a hard-drive or tape streamer to a Zappo drive. I don't think there is much of a choice really.
Don't worry if mass data storage or access to SCSI equipment is not you immediate goal. Say you want a CD-ROM so that you can look at a few data CDs, but also want to play CD32 titles or CDTV titles. Well HiSoft have made provision for this also. They have provided CD32 emulation software. The Squirrel is intelligent in this respect. If you put a CD32 title into the CD-ROM and re-boot then the CD32 title will be booted, because it has a higher priority than an internal hard-drive. No messing about there. It is designed to operate transparently without any user intervention.
Options allow you to degrade your Amiga to allow particular CD32 titles to run, for example turning off Fast RAM, but also to execute alternate startup-sequences. These are stored on your hard-drive, on a per title basis, in a specific drawer called TitleStartup.
They are named according to the title of the CD. So if you try and boot the Microcosm CD and a file which has the same is contained within the TitleStartup drawer, then that startupsequence will be run instead of the startup-sequence on the CD.
This is particularly useful for CDTV titles which tend to use commands that don't work on WB2.0 upwards, and so crash the machine. You can exclude those commands and hopefully get the disk working.
I am happy to say that I do not have any CD32 games, but the few demo disks I tried did work. Including some with CDXL footage. CD32 software will not run on a Squirrel equipped A600 due to lack of AGA.
So, in summary, the Squirrel is affordable in comparison to other SCSI expansions (which require a newish accelerator). Performs the job it is designed to do flawlessly and invisibly. Supports CD32 and CDTV, and comes with a wide selection of software support for both hard-drives and CD-ROMs. The hardware is well made, the manual is clear, concise and well produced, and if you can't get it running then you can call the technical help line for the first 30 days.
If you want SCSI access on you A600/A1200, or you want a CD-ROM plus expansion then the Squirrel is for you. This is the best piece of hardware I've ever bought and I suggest that A600/A1200 users consider their needs very carefully before dismissing it. Well done HiSoft and thanks.
Š Neil Cartwright. 15 January 1995