Three wires on SPI with MCP3201 ADC?

Hello

I am wanting to use multiple, up to nine, MCP3201 12-Bit A/D Converter with SPI Serial Interface in a project. Datasheet: http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1669366.pdf

It has three connections for data out: CLK, Dout and CS/SHDN. I would like to use three wires instead of having a separate line for each CS, treating the Chip Select as Slave Select - SS as descibed here: Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) - SparkFun Learn

If this works, am i right in thinking I would need to read all the bytes from every chip in order, starting from the last chip in the string?

Thanks
Karl.

That suggestion in the SparkFun tutorial is very rare to see in practise. I've never seen a datasheet for a chip which works in that mode.

Unless your datasheet specifically says that it works in that mode, then it's not going to work. Your datasheet does not show this mode. In fact, there's no MOSI pin on your device so it can't physically work.

You must have one CS wire per chip. You may do that with a "port extender" or some other kind of multiplexer that saves on Arduino pins but the MCP3201 won't work without it.

If this works, am i right in thinking I would need to read all the bytes from every chip in order, starting from the last chip in the string?

I guess you're writing about the second way described on that page. It states that this is used for shift registers and some LED drivers. Both are not SPI devices and the described way will not work with an SPI device (at least none I'm aware of). You have to have a separate CS line for every chip you want to connect to the SPI bus. But if you don't have enough pins for that you can use a shift register to provide this information.