I really did not have a plan to restore this item originally as part of my collection reconstruction, but at that nice price, just there in front of me, I could not resist to just buy it to further re-construct my entire collection of Amiga related hardware I had back in the days from 1989 to 1998.

As I have written before, I'm really trying to hold of all the items I once had back in the days based out of memory and this insurance list I wrote down back in 1994.

But, the Surf Squirrel SCSI was not part of that list, that appered on the "death note" from 1998 (Hall of Shame) where I sold my Amiga 1200 + hardware online where the Surf Squirrel PCMICA was clearly listed.

Now, the Surf Squirrel SCSI was purchased by me in 1996 (as discovererd during my My hunt for Amiga CD32 movie where this Squirrel device actually replaced my Amiga CD32 to act as a CD-ROM solution to my Amiga 1200). Since this device also had support for 7 SCSI units, I did also connect not just a SCSI CD-ROM reader (Media Vision CDR-H93MV - Double Speed - 1994 - 50-pin), but also a SCSI HDD to it. Further, since Surf Squirrel SCSI was aimed at faster Internet - this was for sure a well beloved item in my collection as during 1996. I had during that year started gaining access to the WEB, FTP etc. via my US-Robotics Courier V.32 biz fax with ASL and this high-speed serial port from the Surf Squirrel.

I started digging into my old HDD to find the presence of "squirrelserial.device", "squirrelscsi.library" and they where exactly where they would have been during a device installation inside "Devs", "Libs" including "DosDrivers" etc.

So, I fired up my Amiga 1200, inserted the Surf Squirrel Device, realizing that testing this was gonna be a nightmare. First, I needed to test with serial text receive and send, which was ackward since the "SER:" is default assigned to the Amiga 1200 own serial port. Then there was the cable issue. I had no null-modem cables or adapters that seemed to work. To top it all off, my SabreTooth 55I pc Motherboard seems to have issues with the 9-pin DSUB serial header / bracket module which caused 2 weeks of headache to just test serial communication properly. Remember, we do not have any tools of any kind to detect the Surf Squirrel device in the PCMCIA port. Further, the device has now activty LED nor POWER LED.

To top of the problems, the Surf Squirrel SCSI cable ends with a AMP / Centronics style connector that naturally did not fit ANY of my SCSI cables, adapters and SCSI HDD's on my stock.

I was really stuck, until ChatGPT suggested me to at least make a loopback 9-pin DSUB tester with just Pin 2-3 connected and nothing else. ChatGPT also helped me creating on-the-fly one-shot C source code, which I compiled with SAS/C 6.58 from within my own programming language tool-chain called SOABS to try and code, compile and connect to the Surf Squirrel and get at least some "hello world" ping feedback from the device. It actually worked!

So, after many tries back and fourth, the Surf Squirrel finally responded with serial test with the loopback, I fixed the PC motherboard serial port, and finally I could send and receive data through it. Phew!

You see, the PCMCIA connector on the Surf Squirrel SCSI device was kind-of damaged ont the edges of the connector, typically PIN 1, 35 and 34,68. These pins was luckily just GND and Card Detect#1 and was connected to eachother. So, even if the very ends of the connector did not make contact, at least the pins next to them fulfilled a proper connection anyway.

After some coding with ChatGPT, several tools were created to detect the Squirrel card inside the PCMCIA port, verify that serial and scsi devices could open up and connect, and finally a HDToolBox with "squirrelscsi.device" eventuelly managed to connect and respond with "No Device" connected. I'm waiting for the SCSI adapters from EBAY to arrive, in which I can make my own adapter and start connecting the CD-ROM and some of my SCSI HDD's to see if that works too.


I eventually got some adapters I bought from ebay, but they were all the wrong size and I decided to go hard-boiled on the case myself. I plucked apart my current SCSI adapter on-stock and particulary an CENTRONICS 50 pin adapter that was soldered to an PCB card (with the wrong 50-pin High Density). Then, I attached and soldered on painfully 50 DuPont wires and snuck the other end into an standard 50 pin flat cable and into its header.

That way I had now at least an 1-1 connection between original Squirrel SCSI centronics plug > my connector + my cable > where the end of that flat cable was stuck into my Media Vision CDR-H93MV CD-ROM and Quantum ProDrive LPS (LP52S) HDD and it worked straight out of the box with my old A1200 setup. PHEW!

Conclusion is that at least now I have verified that Surf Squirrel SCSI device works 100%. I added some more photos below and more details. I'm extremely happy that I managed to eventually get all the parts (and time) together to create a working solution - that is exact to the same exact configuration I set up back on 13th of June 1996. Talk about 30-years Anniversary - to the day!

Snippet from my My computer history:
Further, I located the Amiga CD32 on some random footage from my room probably in summer of 1996. After 13 June 1996 I had a new CD-ROM solution for the A1200 with SquirrelSCSI / Surf Squirrel (which has been confirmed to be in June 1996) and thus the CD32 had to become "obsolete" for me as I really bought the CD32 to primarly be a easy way to get CD-ROM access from my A1200 through Serial/Parnet. I am still investigating clues on the entire CD32 story and its wherabouts!



2 x Seagate ST34572WC - 4.3GB - 1998 - 80 PIN - Needs SCA-2 connector for 68 or 50 pin + 4 pin molex break out board
1 x Seagate ST39173W - 9.11GB - 1998 - 68-pin (HD68) - Ultra Wide SCSI (SCSI-2 / early SCSI-3 transition)
2 x IBM DDRS-34560 - 4.5GB - 1998 - 68-pin (HD68) - Fast/Wide SCSI (SCSI-2 era)
1 x Quantum ProDrive LPS (LP52S) - 52MB - 1994 - 50-pin - SCSI-1 / early SCSI-2
1 x IBM Ultrastar DDYS-T09170 - 9.1GB - 2000 - 68-pin (HD68) - Ultra Wide SCSI (Ultra2 / LVD, backward compatible to SE)


As suggested by ChatGPT, many of these items are suitable for easy testing, but the SCA-2 connector requirements are a bit "off" to me - as I don't have the rest of the connectivty required (power etc).

Seagate ST39173W: Was last used by me as an internal SCSI storage disk for my music studio and was at one point in time located inside my Yamaha A5000 sampler containing sample loops. I still have the A5000 sampler, but believe it has an IDE device inside or even a much larger unknown SCSI disk - someday I will have to investigate and re-setup my entire 100k+ NOK music studio :-)

IBM DDRS-34560 (1st one): Was last used by me for the Interactive Video Systems (IVS) - Grand Slam / Trumpcard Professional controller for Amiga 500 with WB1.3 and WB2.04/21 multi-boot purposes (GrandSlam device was some years ago completely dead and thrown in the trash).

IBM DDRS-34560 (2nd one): Was last used by me for the same as above (Grand Slam / Trumpcard Professional) tests a decade+ ago.

IBM Ultrastar DDYS-T09170: Was last used by me for the same as above (Grand Slam / Trumpcard Professional) tests a decade+ ago.

Quantum ProDrive LPS (LP52S): When I started testing these SCSI disks with my other recently purchased "GVP Impact Series II A500-HD8" casing (also on lowres #4 party), the Quantum ProDrive LPS (LP52S) contained a fully working bootable Amiga WorkBench2.1 with 3 partitions! The installation was not mine and I have no idea where it came from, or how it ended up in my stock. Maybe I once downloaded an Amiga HDF image file and wrote it onto this many many years ago to test on my very old and cranky Interactive Video Systems (IVS) - Grand Slam / Trumpcard Professional controller for Amiga 500?

Did I buy the HDD on ebay like decades ago?
Did I find it in trash stores here in Norway?
Did I purchase it from a guy in Denmark that I met in our old SOASC= forums (2007ish)?

It baffles me how this fully working workbench ended up on that drive and the fact it was still working. The mysterious thing about this Workbench is that it was not setup with Norwegian keyboard, but British of all things.

I added a screenshot of the Workbench screen below. I will further dig through that disk (even undelete files) to figure out what the heck this originates from. It seems that there are at least two names appearing in savegames on the disk image, which are "Matthew Miller" or "Matt" and also a chap named "Chris". Anyway, I have added the complete IMG of the entire SCSI disks ("Quantum ProDrive LPS 52MB Amiga Workbench 21 Unknown Origin.zip"), added all the files that where undeleted along with an LHA archive collection of the 3 partitions below. Maybe others know what the heck the HDD originates from?




All-in-all I'm glad I took the chance of this card working and then working hard for 2 weeks narrowing down a testing scheme, set up serial cables and further make plans to get the SCSI devices to work.

Is this device still usable today? Well, to be honest, if you are gonna get the A1200 onto internet today, you use a PCMCIA network card with either WIFI/WEP or standard RJ45 connection to your internet router. The need for a modem is pretty much dead these days.

Further, the need to connect NOISY, WHINING physical SCSI disks from the age of late 90's is kinda off-putting, when my Amiga 1200 is already enjoying the luxery of internal IDE to CF adapter, running easy accessible Compact Flash card as HDD. So, it basically boils down to having the option of connecting a SCSI CD-ROM and read physical disks onto the Amiga 1200 - and that is probably one of the actual use cases I can see for this device in 2026. Further, having an extra Serial Port might some day become handy. So, I would basically conclude that it was worth the risk and money - while still having a real life proper use case still applicable. It is after all a device I knew and loved back in my teen years, so for me its also "useful" for that reason alone.

We also have to consider the harsh fact that the first version of this device came out in the worst year of humanity of 1994 - when Commodore went bankrupt, making this device a rare and obscure item for most folks out there. Not to mention the actual physical amount of units sold. Anyway, I bought mine (version 2) during 1996, which was also the same year my sister gave me the Media Vision CD-ROM. That all-in-all kind of knocked the use case for my Amiga CD32 straight off - and thus it was forgotten and now I'm unable to figure out where my Amiga CD32 went (another headache very difficult to sort out).


I will probably upload the source code and test programs I created with the help of ChatGPT as they served me well. Prototype style of software, so they are what they are. Finally, within April or May 2026 I will conclude how the SCSI CD-ROM and SCSI HDD's testing went.


Most importantly, pictures of Surf Squirrel exists on the internet, but not too many images of the board itself. So, I have scanned this in 1200 DPI resolution to help others in their quest for this device. Please check the TIF downloads at bottom of this post!

The rest of the story is written below the images below.