⚠️ WARNING

That's almost all you need to know about the Amiga's parallel port and sampling capabilities - but not quite. There's also a WARNING!

It is quite easy to KILL AN AMIGA by doing unexpected things to its parallel port. Specifically, you're likely to kill one of your Amiga's CIA (Complex Interface Adapter) chips and they're both expensive and difficult to replace in A1200 and A600 machines. They're easier to replace in an A500/+, but still expensive. Samplers use the parallel port, so take lots of care. ABSOLUTELY DO NOT:

• plug in a parallel port sampler, or any other parallel port device, while the Amiga is turned on
• unplug a parallel port sampler, or any other parallel port device, while the Amiga is turned on
• connect or disconnect audio cables from the sampler if the sampler is plugged into the Amiga and the Amiga is turned on (because you might knock the sampler out of the parallel port and cause a short)
• say bad things about the CIA chips within their earshot

If you get 'lucky' and kill your cheap sampler cart but not your Amiga, then as long as you have some basic soldering skills you can replace the AD and switch chips for a couple of dollars.

And it goes without saying, but we'll say it anyway: we're not responsible for damage caused by anything you stick in your Amiga's parallel port, even if it's something you made based on these schematics which we've made available for free and done our best to test before publishing. We've tested our design extensively on two Amiga 600s, four Amiga 1200s, two Amiga 500s and one Amiga 500+. We make no promises about compatibility with the Amiga 1000 and its slightly different parallel port spec - we've never even seen one in real life, frankly. They were (and still are) pretty rare in Europe/UK.

By the way, here's some extra advice for free: don't plug or unplug ANYTHING when your Amiga is turned on. You can fry something even by fumbling around at the back with a phono cable and accidentally raking some IO pins, causing a short. Just don't do it!