Thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed exploring the CD32 with me in this series. Here are some links mentioned in the video. If you'd like to see any items in more detail then let me know, I think the Terrible Fire and the Joypad deserve a future short episode. Neil - RMC ProCon Joypad (Now named KTRL): eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=85056 SupaDuper - Terrible Fire RAM & IDE TF328 card: www.amibay.com/showthread.php?95444-CD32-TF328_plus-IDE-cable-and-CF-adapter_With-Riser Beaps73 Gotek Analogic Drive: th-cam.com/video/NNOo3cJn_fc/w-d-xo.html
I agree with you, the TerribleFire is a much better solution than the big one hanging out the back. I like the idea of the stacked system you showed @9:05. Far more logical and appealing design.
The SX1 also has nothing to secure it in place other than gripping on to the edge connector. They fixed this in later models but it was quite precarious on mine.
Just wanted to say a huge thankyou for producing this series on the CD32. Honestly, if I hadn't watched them I wouldn't have ventured into my parents loft to find it, clean it and replace those reversed caps. It would have stayed lost and forgotten. But now she's alive and upgraded with the TF328 and CF card with hundreds of games! Great piece of kit and probably the best way to play all my favourite Amiga games without mucking around with emulators. Great work! Looking forward to seeing future videos. Now to rescue the A500.
12:28 Watch out with using metallized antistatic bags over powered PCBs. They're conductive and can short things out. I learned this the hard way.... For applications where there's going to be powered circuitry, you'd want to use the antistatic bags which are clear and have that black grid/diagonal pattern. They aren't conductive.
Came here to say exactly the same thing. My understanding was that the metalic A/S bags work by bringing all the pins on your components to the same potential so any shock doesnt go through the device. Thats not good for running hardware.
So the metallized bags are best for transport/shippment? and the ones with black grid can be used inside the cd32 or on a similar solution in an A1200? Any links to where to buy the ones that works?
I bought a CD32 from Rumbelows for £90 when they were closing down in the 90s. I worked for ICL and we had a contract with Commodore on their last days repairing A1200 and CD32 systems and managed to acquire an FMV module. A couple of years later I got bored of it and swapped it for an Atari Jaguar which I knackered by plugging a SNES PSU into it! Wish I had kept it now!
I gather that some UK museums and other institutions used remaindered CD32 units for in-house displays, notably the London Transport Museum. The small museum I work at has just been donated six screen displays, which were originally housed in another major UK museum many years ago. The device controlling the display sat in a small enclosure in the pedestal, and the space look too small for the majority of PCs of that vintage. However they are roughly CD32 sized. Most of the pedestals have been dismantled, but two are still intact with the controlling device in the bottom. My task this week is to dismantle one of the pedestals and take a look.
Paul Grayson that sounds interesting, if you wouldn't mind sharing and pics or your findings that would be awesome. I'm @theretromancave over on twitter
I'll post photographs sometime next week, if I get time. The problem is finding somewhere to dismantle them as they're currently lined up against a wall in a used corridor.
Thanks to this video I now have an upgraded CD32 as well. Wonderful bit of kit, effectively have a full A1200 experience with expanded ram in a small, console like box. Well worth it for anyone with a CD32 gather dust out there.
Yet another reason why the CD32 is actually a pretty cool machine to see, and another terrible shame to know us Americans never got to cherish such a beast of a system.
Great video! Thanks for mentioning CDPD - I was an artist and programmer at Almathera in the early nineties. I didn't have much to do with the public domain CDs - my biggest project was called Video Creator, you could make 90s psychedelic videos to go along with any audio CD. Prototyping CD-ROMs back then was expensive, IIRC we paid £100 every time we wanted to burn a CDR gold disc. It was a great time but heartbreaking to be so close to the demise of Commodore.
Your "Trash to Treasure" series has become my favorite ever since I've subscribed to you. I also think that I learned more about the Amiga CD32 in the series more than any article I read online about it, and I enjoy the background music you've selected for these videos as well.
I recently just got into your videos, and I'm loving them. As someone who is into electronics and building them, you instill a lot of confidence that I could possibly find an old school "broken" computer and fix it up internally and externally.
Just an FYI, anti-static bags are electrically conductive. Others have experienced short-circuits after making the mistake of assuming that they insulate.
Thank you, the SX1 was supplied with one in the case and I received advice that this was safe. A couple of others have raised concerns so I looked into it and yes, the advise is correct but only with the right anti-static bag. Some are conductive some are not and you should check which type you have to be safe. Thanks for pointing it out.
I did love a game of Chaos Engine co-op back in the day with a mate and more often than not we were pickled with a few bottles of cider, rum and some 90's alcopops and howling with laughter and blowing stuff up! Skidmarks was another great game we played too. Would be nice to see a review of some good old games in action again from the good old days!
What a fantastic video. I remember getting mine in 1993. I also remember the quirky nature of it as well. You had to run through the entire start up sequence before Theme Park would load. I really want one again, but will have to wait until debts are paid off.
Excellent series; I quite enjoyed it. Coincidentally, I came just across a few CD32 titles I had acquired in a Commodore haul last year -- now I really want a CD32 console for my cave. Well done, as usual. Keep up the great content.
Thanks for the suggestion. I do have my original A1200, actually, but it's all about collecting the preserving the hardware for me. My search continues...but the hunt is half the fun. 🔎
I loved this episode, made me want to get a CD32 again. I had one back in the day, along with a Competition pro control pad (I HATED the stock control pad), but silly me, I swapped my CD32 for a 6x CD-ROM upgrade for my Amiga 4000/040. You have done a wonderful job here at showing the potential the CD32 had, and I'd love to add this to my web site about the Amiga - specifically on the CD32 page.
I don't know how common these are but my CD32 came with the "TVi Modem/Remote" module which uses the AUX port and gives you a 2400bps modem and remote control. My CD32 came from a bank up here in Canada who used these for home banking over dialup.
It was funny seeing those Underground PD disks in your disk box. The guy who ran that PD library lived around the corner from my house and I'd often pop there in the Amiga days to pick up new software and get it copied fresh while I waited. :)
It's a good thing the Amiga CD32 has a keyboard and mouse option. Time and again, consoles have lacked a keyboard, and still people have tried to convert computer games to console format. They are still doing this with the ZX Spectrum Vega, but there just is no substitute for a keyboard sometimes, not to mention a mouse. I can barely aim with a control stick if I am playing a first person or third person shooter, to say nothing of point-and-click games.
this video just blows my mind. Back in the '90 I knew about some A1200 conversion kit, rare and expensive, but internet wasn't a thing yet. So it's time for amiga renaissance. Whole my life I belived thant the keyboard socket is a s-video, just in some fancy place😂
Hey this video wasn't CD at all 😉 A ROMming good time. Thanks for educating me on many aspects I didn't know. All of a sudden I want a CD32. I wonder if it can do email... 🤔
Just dug out a whole lot of old console and Amiga stuff in the loft and saw this advert on an old Amiga Format from Analogic, presumably for a brand new CD32 stacked out with an SX32 with RAM and 030... £149..... Plus ça change!
I could tell you a lot about the CD32 and other Amiga stuff. I was an Amiga developer from day one to the death. I programmed Music Maker, one of the CTDV launch titles, which was probably the first time you could play virtual; instruments on the CDTV keypad along with CD audio. UK and German developers were way ahead of the USA at that time. Music Maker was a very expensive production. But it wouldn't run on the CD32. Why? Because without telling anybody in development the engineers removed the CDTV's CD frame interrupt, which gave perfect sync between the CD audio and the interactive stuff. Another developer and still a good mate of mine, Dave Parkinson, programmed an excellent software device called SpoolyDevice which made great video streaming off CD possible without hardware like the 3Cube chip used around that time for MPEG-1 decoding. Guess what? SpoolyDevice also used the CD frame interrupt for decoding and sync. This is a typical example of Commodore's chaotic management. But sometimes it was funny. When the CD32 was just a test bare-bones board I was the only one in the UK who could produce CD gold disks - because I ported the writer software for the Philips writer from PC to Amiga. But I was not under an NDA for the CD32., and the engineers at Commodore UK needed me. When I was at Maidenhead I had to hide under a desk if senior management came downstairs. The interactive installations at the London Transport Museum used a bank of CD32 motherboards. I programmed the audio in ways which was only possible because of the brilliance of the Amiga sound chips. You could drive a bus and hear the real sound of the engine and gear shifts according to the accelerator pedal. What I saw, and I doubt you will ever find, is a CDTV-II, including hard disk and 68030 processor. Most of those of us who worked on CDTV thought the CD32 was a joke, I'm afraid.
Nice evaluation of the system. I remember at the time there was a big dilemma whether Amigans should buy a PCMCIA CD-ROM for A1200 or try and expand the CD32 to an Amiga 1200 with FAST RAM and CD-ROM spec (important as the memory bus on AGA is not clock doubled like it is on the A500/1000/2000 etc so you lose up to 50% CPU speed with CHIP RAM only). There was also a very rare Canadian Commodore machine which was basically a CD32 motherboard plus 2 or 4mb FAST RAM in an Atari XEGS/Mega ST sort of small CPU box and external keyboard (A4000 looking keyboard I think). There was an image of an advert for the machine so hopefully it is still findable.
Saved on disk swapping at least. I quite liked the audio upgrade to "talkies" CDs offered. FMV was a mistake, in reality Video Sprites was the more practical option for most hardware of the time. The shape of the gamepad is fine, I wish it had a better D-pad though, Competition Pro gamepad was the best. I'm fond of the CD32 but I'm not living in the right region to collect it heh.
Hi Neil, Thank you for providing such an amazing TH-cam channel! I’ve been enjoying various episodes for quite some time, and your restoration series is a particular favorite. I’m planning to visit the cave soon and am really looking forward to meeting you and seeing the incredible collection in person. By the way, could you tell me the model number of the SONY 14" CRT TV (not PVM)? I used to have one for my AMIGAs and Game consoles back in the day and am now on the hunt to find that exact model again. Best wishes to everyone involved in your wonderful venture.
Great stuff. Almost got one of these when released but the Amiga scene was clearly on it's way out. So I held off for a PS1. Still a little bit tantalizing today for the nostalgia factor.
Before my A1200 I had a CD32 and an A600 - used' the CD32 as a very slow serial CD-ROM drive for it. Would love to have upgraded it with an SX-1 or 32 just because I thought it was a nicer looking machine, but I found a cheap A1200 with more room for expansion
I’ve got an rgb mod on mine, looks really nice going into my cm8833II monitor but weird stuff happens when I put it through my bvm via the extron switcher... I do think it’s clever how much you can do with them but don’t you find as soon as you add the keyboard (which you really need if you’re playing older games) do you find it takes up more room than a nice 1200 running whdload... Cool snes pad though, those controllers are silly money
CE was more for developers than for users but there may well be a leaked one out there I don't know of you can boot to. PS2 also yes. I wonder if there was ever an obscure GUI for Nintendos with those floppy drives used mainly for piracy.
While not an OS as such, did you know the famicom had an optional keyboard, basic interpreter and tape drive? Consoles huh. XD Then again, it WAS called the famicom. As in 'family computer'. That name certainly implies something more than a games console, and indeed, with optional extras it was. I just rather doubt those add-ons were particularly common. XD (The NES of course, while technically the same hardware, never got any such thing, and thus was always a game console and nothing more.)
Funny, I'm wanting to add a Cdrom drive when I get a Vampire card for my 1200. I'd be interested in another video, along with a mention of the Akiko chip. Another interesting video!
Cheers! Akiko is mentioned in pt1. I'd like to know more about what it can do especially in the case of emulation e.g using Akiko to speed up the display on a 68k Mac emulator. Having said it doesn't seem to take much extra RAM and CPU power to out perform Akiko with brute force.
Well it was an A1200 with a slow CD drive, technologically it was not amazing. Like the A1200, it had a very modestly clocked 14Mhz '020 CPU which was hampered by a mere 2MB of Chip RAM. It's cool in a way that it is possible to turn it into a fully fledged computer, but that was really an expensive way of getting back to the computer it had originally been.
I already had a fairly beefed up Amiga 1200 when the CD32 came out. I got mine discounted and I used it as my first CD player and as a CD ROM for the A1200. There was a cable that you could use to make two Amigas communicate and share drives, so a lot of the time I had them hooked together so I could use cover-disks. I finally gave mine away to a charity store in 2003 because I was moving in with my fiancé. Women and large volumes of techie crap don't tend to get on well.
The youth of today don't know they are born. They click "colour fill" & before their little fingers have left the mouse button its filled in. I kind of miss the slow fill in. Looking back now, it has charm & character. You know that little processor was really _really_ working hard to fill :-)
Yeah, though having written a few basic graphics routines in my day it makes me wonder why it was as slow as that... XD Assuming the graphics hardware isn't overly convoluted, to fill an area you have to determine the bounds of the area and draw pixels inside it. Determining the bounds is not trivial for a general case. But I was mostly dealing with drawing filled polygons. For those, the general strategy was to break a polygon into triangles, and clip them, then break into triangles again. (because a clipped triangle may no longer be a triangle) You would then break these general triangles into flat-bottom or flat-top triangles. (most decompose into both.) And run a variant on bresenham's line drawing algorithm on the vertical edges to determine the endpoints. (this is why you need to split most triangles, because at some point one of the edges ends and a third edge begins.) You then fill the polygon by drawing horizontal lines. Given how most graphics systems work, the fastest thing you can draw is horizontal lines, followed by vertical lines. (vertical lines are slower due to memory layout issues.) Unless video memory is particularly convoluted, drawing a horizontal line is simply a matter of setting a start address, then setting a loop for x number of pixels (with x being the length of the line), then drawing each pixel, which makes the inner loop of this little more than writing a byte (or more at higher colour depths) to memory, and incrementing/decrementing the loop variable (depending on implementation) and possibly the memory address by a fixed increment (especially for modes that are multiple bytes per pixel) Obviously, the fastest shape you can draw this way besides lines is filled rectangles, since all the logic you'd need for triangles can mostly be dumped and remains constant for the entire shape. My point being that a filling algorithm on a computer that doesn't have an overly complex video memory layout is basically only about 2 operations per pixel drawn in a horizontal line, and an extra instruction or two for each line. Even something like a Commodore VIC-20 can fill something like 450,000 pixels a second in an optimal loop. which should be good enough to fill the whole screen in under 1/5th of a second... For a flood fill tool there is of course complexity involved in determining what should get filled and what shouldn't, but it still surprises me those old flood fill tools were slow enough to take many seconds to fill a complete screen...
flood filling doesn't determine bounds beforehand and then break the areas into polygons. It works pixel by pixel starting with the pixel under the mouse. Fills the pixel, then examines the color of the neighboring pixels, then calls itself recursively for each one of them if they are the same color. This is very slow, but generic enough to fill any complex area.
As a child of this new millennium, I know very much about hardware restrictions, mostly because I would have to try and see how I could get a new game running (probably at about 10 fps) on my crappy old computer :) Or I would just quit and play a game that's older than me and call it a day.
New to the channel but awesome content. Especially the Amiga stuff. Have you ever used an aca500 expansion? I don’t have version 2 of it as I bought the original years ago along with an aca1232 which bumped up everything. Just curious if you played around with any of those expansions from Individual Computers
Great review! The vga output should be a little better quality but looks ok. I runout of my cd32 hefesto riser, I wish send you my riser to review before, too late :p
Hi good series I have a Cd32 but the extra keyboard I use is a CdTv keyboard that was modified to work with the Cd32 purchased from a Company in Lichfield who were a wholesaler for the trade in the day, linked with a serial adaptor and then linked to my a1200 to transfer programs from Cd a bizarre way but works well ttfn Rich
Wow, I didn't know there were modern mods developed for the CD32! I might actually give a try to that terrible thing if my ProModule turns out to be irrepairable. On the other hand, ProModule is SO much more. You really should check it out, with Fast RAM and 68882 the Gunship 2000 absolutely flies! (bad pun intended ;P)
Thanks a lot for the video, very well done (and I really like your voice!). I also have my CD32 which I bought 1993 and also have a SX-1. Thanks for the AmiBay-TF-Link; I really consider buying it, although I am quite happy with the SX-1 (except space required :-)). I am still not sure how to handle the Gotek stuff and how would be the workflow to fill the CF card (and where would I get that adapter), but this is something, I am interested in for my machine.
Christ, I'd love a nice RGB out for my CD32 without modding it or spending ridiculous amounts of money on an expansion. Forget the extra memory, a cheaper expansion that gives me RGB out, and maybe a floppy and IDE port would be ideal. I can dream I guess.
be carful that type of bag is metalized and conductive on one or both sides, it would be better to use one of the pink or blue "Anti-Static" bag instead of the "Static Dissipative" bag that you used.
The cd32 permits a fantastic path to Amiga gaming, but is sadly an outdated contender compared to consoles of that generation; nevertheless, another great video.
Thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed exploring the CD32 with me in this series. Here are some links mentioned in the video. If you'd like to see any items in more detail then let me know, I think the Terrible Fire and the Joypad deserve a future short episode. Neil - RMC
ProCon Joypad (Now named KTRL): eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=85056
SupaDuper - Terrible Fire RAM & IDE TF328 card: www.amibay.com/showthread.php?95444-CD32-TF328_plus-IDE-cable-and-CF-adapter_With-Riser
Beaps73 Gotek Analogic Drive: th-cam.com/video/NNOo3cJn_fc/w-d-xo.html
jesus christ i read this in his voice, get out of my head.
I agree with you, the TerribleFire is a much better solution than the big one hanging out the back. I like the idea of the stacked system you showed @9:05. Far more logical and appealing design.
Hello perhistoricBanana, Retro Man Cave here. You're also reading this comment in my voice.
ffs
The SX1 also has nothing to secure it in place other than gripping on to the edge connector. They fixed this in later models but it was quite precarious on mine.
A real treat to see so many of these mods and add-ons in action! Had no idea about some of the newer stuff on offer.
Just wanted to say a huge thankyou for producing this series on the CD32. Honestly, if I hadn't watched them I wouldn't have ventured into my parents loft to find it, clean it and replace those reversed caps. It would have stayed lost and forgotten. But now she's alive and upgraded with the TF328 and CF card with hundreds of games! Great piece of kit and probably the best way to play all my favourite Amiga games without mucking around with emulators.
Great work! Looking forward to seeing future videos.
Now to rescue the A500.
12:28 Watch out with using metallized antistatic bags over powered PCBs. They're conductive and can short things out. I learned this the hard way....
For applications where there's going to be powered circuitry, you'd want to use the antistatic bags which are clear and have that black grid/diagonal pattern. They aren't conductive.
Came here to say exactly the same thing. My understanding was that the metalic A/S bags work by bringing all the pins on your components to the same potential so any shock doesnt go through the device. Thats not good for running hardware.
Here's good explanation about antistatic bags and static shielding bags: th-cam.com/video/imdtXcnywb8/w-d-xo.html
So the metallized bags are best for transport/shippment? and the ones with black grid can be used inside the cd32 or on a similar solution in an A1200? Any links to where to buy the ones that works?
Just use a ziplock sandwich bag.
Came to the comments to say the same thing. An anti-static bag floating around inside a classic console made me cringe.
I bought a CD32 from Rumbelows for £90 when they were closing down in the 90s. I worked for ICL and we had a contract with Commodore on their last days repairing A1200 and CD32 systems and managed to acquire an FMV module. A couple of years later I got bored of it and swapped it for an Atari Jaguar which I knackered by plugging a SNES PSU into it! Wish I had kept it now!
It’s videos like this that confirm my belief that this is one of the best retro channels on TH-cam.
I gather that some UK museums and other institutions used remaindered CD32 units for in-house displays, notably the London Transport Museum.
The small museum I work at has just been donated six screen displays, which were originally housed in another major UK museum many years ago. The device controlling the display sat in a small enclosure in the pedestal, and the space look too small for the majority of PCs of that vintage. However they are roughly CD32 sized. Most of the pedestals have been dismantled, but two are still intact with the controlling device in the bottom.
My task this week is to dismantle one of the pedestals and take a look.
Paul Grayson that sounds interesting, if you wouldn't mind sharing and pics or your findings that would be awesome. I'm @theretromancave over on twitter
I'll post photographs sometime next week, if I get time. The problem is finding somewhere to dismantle them as they're currently lined up against a wall in a used corridor.
Thanks to this video I now have an upgraded CD32 as well. Wonderful bit of kit, effectively have a full A1200 experience with expanded ram in a small, console like box. Well worth it for anyone with a CD32 gather dust out there.
Yet another reason why the CD32 is actually a pretty cool machine to see, and another terrible shame to know us Americans never got to cherish such a beast of a system.
Great video! Thanks for mentioning CDPD - I was an artist and programmer at Almathera in the early nineties. I didn't have much to do with the public domain CDs - my biggest project was called Video Creator, you could make 90s psychedelic videos to go along with any audio CD. Prototyping CD-ROMs back then was expensive, IIRC we paid £100 every time we wanted to burn a CDR gold disc. It was a great time but heartbreaking to be so close to the demise of Commodore.
great video RMC! Ive never seen an SX-1 in action before, so that was a nice touch.
Your "Trash to Treasure" series has become my favorite ever since I've subscribed to you. I also think that I learned more about the Amiga CD32 in the series more than any article I read online about it, and I enjoy the background music you've selected for these videos as well.
My friend bought a CD32 and SX1 instead of a 1200. Always admired the CD drive. I've got them kicking around somewhere.
I recently just got into your videos, and I'm loving them.
As someone who is into electronics and building them, you instill a lot of confidence that I could possibly find an old school "broken" computer and fix it up internally and externally.
Just an FYI, anti-static bags are electrically conductive. Others have experienced short-circuits after making the mistake of assuming that they insulate.
Thank you, the SX1 was supplied with one in the case and I received advice that this was safe. A couple of others have raised concerns so I looked into it and yes, the advise is correct but only with the right anti-static bag. Some are conductive some are not and you should check which type you have to be safe. Thanks for pointing it out.
I did love a game of Chaos Engine co-op back in the day with a mate and more often than not we were pickled with a few bottles of cider, rum and some 90's alcopops and howling with laughter and blowing stuff up! Skidmarks was another great game we played too.
Would be nice to see a review of some good old games in action again from the good old days!
Fire and Ice, a blast from the past. Great video and look forward to a add ons extra time follow up.
What a fantastic video. I remember getting mine in 1993. I also remember the quirky nature of it as well. You had to run through the entire start up sequence before Theme Park would load. I really want one again, but will have to wait until debts are paid off.
Thank you for bringing back childhood memory!
You're welcome thanks for watching :D
Excellent series; I quite enjoyed it. Coincidentally, I came just across a few CD32 titles I had acquired in a Commodore haul last year -- now I really want a CD32 console for my cave. Well done, as usual. Keep up the great content.
MindFlareRetro 🖒if you have a 1200 you can "emulate" a CD32 so that might be an option for you?
Thanks for the suggestion. I do have my original A1200, actually, but it's all about collecting the preserving the hardware for me. My search continues...but the hunt is half the fun. 🔎
So great to see you breathe new life into this formidable device. Seeing the floppy again took me way back.
I loved this episode, made me want to get a CD32 again. I had one back in the day, along with a Competition pro control pad (I HATED the stock control pad), but silly me, I swapped my CD32 for a 6x CD-ROM upgrade for my Amiga 4000/040. You have done a wonderful job here at showing the potential the CD32 had, and I'd love to add this to my web site about the Amiga - specifically on the CD32 page.
I don't know how common these are but my CD32 came with the "TVi Modem/Remote" module which uses the AUX port and gives you a 2400bps modem and remote control. My CD32 came from a bank up here in Canada who used these for home banking over dialup.
wow! that was really informative. I have the cd32 and never really knew it had that much cross compatibility and those cool expansions
Awesome stuff. I really want a CD32 now.
It was funny seeing those Underground PD disks in your disk box. The guy who ran that PD library lived around the corner from my house and I'd often pop there in the Amiga days to pick up new software and get it copied fresh while I waited. :)
It's looking smart now, indeed, especially with the board at the back - with the connector exposed, it looks like a part is missing.
Nice job!
I had completely forgotten about chaos engine until I saw this post. I loved that game!
"..the form factor of our sleek console takes a turn for the worse."
Brilliant. 😀😂 Great video.
Quite impressed with your progress. Maybe someday I'll get one of these.. I have to many projects as is.
It's a good thing the Amiga CD32 has a keyboard and mouse option. Time and again, consoles have lacked a keyboard, and still people have tried to convert computer games to console format. They are still doing this with the ZX Spectrum Vega, but there just is no substitute for a keyboard sometimes, not to mention a mouse. I can barely aim with a control stick if I am playing a first person or third person shooter, to say nothing of point-and-click games.
loved this journey. thank you for a most entertaining set of videos.
This has really made me want a CD32, IV never played one before
Very educational video series, RMC. Didn't know half of this was even possible.
Fantastic mate, brilliant series, absolutely love how you took this machine and revived it. Top man.
Wow, I had no idea that you could turn a CD32 in to a fully functioning Amiga 1200 computer.
Ahhh the memories of Amiga. :) I loved my 500 until the day I had to retire it for desk space. :)
Rtype was my favorite Amiga Game. I had an amiga 500 with extra floppy drive and HD expansion pack
this video just blows my mind. Back in the '90 I knew about some A1200 conversion kit, rare and expensive, but internet wasn't a thing yet. So it's time for amiga renaissance. Whole my life I belived thant the keyboard socket is a s-video, just in some fancy place😂
Hey this video wasn't CD at all 😉 A ROMming good time. Thanks for educating me on many aspects I didn't know. All of a sudden I want a CD32. I wonder if it can do email... 🤔
Just dug out a whole lot of old console and Amiga stuff in the loft and saw this advert on an old Amiga Format from Analogic, presumably for a brand new CD32 stacked out with an SX32 with RAM and 030... £149..... Plus ça change!
I would be interested to see more on the TF328 expansion. I have a CD32 with a dying CD drive so I think this could give it a new lease of life.
Rob Ert no problem once I have the fleshed out backplane with additional ports I'll give it a review episode 🖒
Wow i never knew the cd32 was so expandable, awesome!
Great video. It's now the ultimate CD32. I think the TF expansion card will be my next Upgrade.
Phillip "Charley from the Darling Buds of May" Franks as the young scientist in that CD32 ad.
I could tell you a lot about the CD32 and other Amiga stuff. I was an Amiga developer from day one to the death. I programmed Music Maker, one of the CTDV launch titles, which was probably the first time you could play virtual; instruments on the CDTV keypad along with CD audio. UK and German developers were way ahead of the USA at that time. Music Maker was a very expensive production. But it wouldn't run on the CD32. Why? Because without telling anybody in development the engineers removed the CDTV's CD frame interrupt, which gave perfect sync between the CD audio and the interactive stuff. Another developer and still a good mate of mine, Dave Parkinson, programmed an excellent software device called SpoolyDevice which made great video streaming off CD possible without hardware like the 3Cube chip used around that time for MPEG-1 decoding. Guess what? SpoolyDevice also used the CD frame interrupt for decoding and sync.
This is a typical example of Commodore's chaotic management. But sometimes it was funny. When the CD32 was just a test bare-bones board I was the only one in the UK who could produce CD gold disks - because I ported the writer software for the Philips writer from PC to Amiga. But I was not under an NDA for the CD32., and the engineers at Commodore UK needed me. When I was at Maidenhead I had to hide under a desk if senior management came downstairs.
The interactive installations at the London Transport Museum used a bank of CD32 motherboards. I programmed the audio in ways which was only possible because of the brilliance of the Amiga sound chips. You could drive a bus and hear the real sound of the engine and gear shifts according to the accelerator pedal.
What I saw, and I doubt you will ever find, is a CDTV-II, including hard disk and 68030 processor. Most of those of us who worked on CDTV thought the CD32 was a joke, I'm afraid.
"Stag series Alt Alt Alt"? That's some, uh, dedicated archival work by somebody right there...
I would like every single possibly conceivable follow up video to this.
Nice evaluation of the system. I remember at the time there was a big dilemma whether Amigans should buy a PCMCIA CD-ROM for A1200 or try and expand the CD32 to an Amiga 1200 with FAST RAM and CD-ROM spec (important as the memory bus on AGA is not clock doubled like it is on the A500/1000/2000 etc so you lose up to 50% CPU speed with CHIP RAM only). There was also a very rare Canadian Commodore machine which was basically a CD32 motherboard plus 2 or 4mb FAST RAM in an Atari XEGS/Mega ST sort of small CPU box and external keyboard (A4000 looking keyboard I think). There was an image of an advert for the machine so hopefully it is still findable.
What a ride! simply amazing! :)
Have a great weekend!
I've been waiting for this video to pop up, good way to spend a snow day.
Saved on disk swapping at least. I quite liked the audio upgrade to "talkies" CDs offered. FMV was a mistake, in reality Video Sprites was the more practical option for most hardware of the time. The shape of the gamepad is fine, I wish it had a better D-pad though, Competition Pro gamepad was the best. I'm fond of the CD32 but I'm not living in the right region to collect it heh.
Nice to see it all coming along.
Hi Neil,
Thank you for providing such an amazing TH-cam channel! I’ve been enjoying various episodes for quite some time, and your restoration series is a particular favorite. I’m planning to visit the cave soon and am really looking forward to meeting you and seeing the incredible collection in person.
By the way, could you tell me the model number of the SONY 14" CRT TV (not PVM)? I used to have one for my AMIGAs and Game consoles back in the day and am now on the hunt to find that exact model again.
Best wishes to everyone involved in your wonderful venture.
Thank you and I look forward to meeting you. The TVs are mostly Sony KV-M14U or 14P models
Great stuff. Almost got one of these when released but the Amiga scene was clearly on it's way out. So I held off for a PS1. Still a little bit tantalizing today for the nostalgia factor.
“Welcome to my humble little home, Robert”
Before my A1200 I had a CD32 and an A600 - used' the CD32 as a very slow serial CD-ROM drive for it. Would love to have upgraded it with an SX-1 or 32 just because I thought it was a nicer looking machine, but I found a cheap A1200 with more room for expansion
Wonderful Amiga gaming setup.
What's our animal fact for this episode?
Scientists have shown that Wild dolphins call each other by name.
Good fact! Until next time 🖒
Great video. Until next time!
I’ve got an rgb mod on mine, looks really nice going into my cm8833II monitor but weird stuff happens when I put it through my bvm via the extron switcher...
I do think it’s clever how much you can do with them but don’t you find as soon as you add the keyboard (which you really need if you’re playing older games) do you find it takes up more room than a nice 1200 running whdload...
Cool snes pad though, those controllers are silly money
10:36 I really need to make a joke about a "Packard Bell game console" in my next Nostalgia Mall YTP…
This man needs more subs.. awesome content.. and yes please we want a 4th episode!
Snow day watching man cave!! :-). Whoop!
PS3 wasn't the first either way, as there is a "linux kit" to PS2
Otherwise Great video!
Raimar Lunardi And didn't the Dreamcast have a version of Windows CE?
CE was more for developers than for users but there may well be a leaked one out there I don't know of you can boot to. PS2 also yes. I wonder if there was ever an obscure GUI for Nintendos with those floppy drives used mainly for piracy.
While not an OS as such, did you know the famicom had an optional keyboard, basic interpreter and tape drive?
Consoles huh. XD
Then again, it WAS called the famicom. As in 'family computer'.
That name certainly implies something more than a games console, and indeed, with optional extras it was.
I just rather doubt those add-ons were particularly common. XD
(The NES of course, while technically the same hardware, never got any such thing, and thus was always a game console and nothing more.)
KuraIthys those add ons came with the Famicom as standard for years. They were a tax thing in Japan to avoid taxes on a gaming machine.
There was a keyboard extension and BASIC for the Famicom. Excite Bike needs that keyboard and a tape to save.
Funny, I'm wanting to add a Cdrom drive when I get a Vampire card for my 1200.
I'd be interested in another video, along with a mention of the Akiko chip.
Another interesting video!
Cheers! Akiko is mentioned in pt1. I'd like to know more about what it can do especially in the case of emulation e.g using Akiko to speed up the display on a 68k Mac emulator. Having said it doesn't seem to take much extra RAM and CPU power to out perform Akiko with brute force.
It’s actually a really impressive machine,very surprising as nobody talks about.
Well it was an A1200 with a slow CD drive, technologically it was not amazing. Like the A1200, it had a very modestly clocked 14Mhz '020 CPU which was hampered by a mere 2MB of Chip RAM. It's cool in a way that it is possible to turn it into a fully fledged computer, but that was really an expensive way of getting back to the computer it had originally been.
Some great games shown. And Rise of The Robots.
MarkTheMorose hah yes a patron put me up to showing ROTR when I asked what they wanted to see. The mad man.
I already had a fairly beefed up Amiga 1200 when the CD32 came out. I got mine discounted and I used it as my first CD player and as a CD ROM for the A1200. There was a cable that you could use to make two Amigas communicate and share drives, so a lot of the time I had them hooked together so I could use cover-disks. I finally gave mine away to a charity store in 2003 because I was moving in with my fiancé. Women and large volumes of techie crap don't tend to get on well.
Roadkill was the best game ever!
The youth of today don't know they are born. They click "colour fill" & before their little fingers have left the mouse button its filled in.
I kind of miss the slow fill in. Looking back now, it has charm & character. You know that little processor was really _really_ working hard to fill :-)
Yeah the delay could be fun. I made 1 pixelwide “domino tracks/labyrinths” and watched the fillroutine go around in spirals all over the screen :-)
Yeah, though having written a few basic graphics routines in my day it makes me wonder why it was as slow as that... XD
Assuming the graphics hardware isn't overly convoluted, to fill an area you have to determine the bounds of the area and draw pixels inside it.
Determining the bounds is not trivial for a general case.
But I was mostly dealing with drawing filled polygons.
For those, the general strategy was to break a polygon into triangles, and clip them, then break into triangles again. (because a clipped triangle may no longer be a triangle)
You would then break these general triangles into flat-bottom or flat-top triangles. (most decompose into both.)
And run a variant on bresenham's line drawing algorithm on the vertical edges to determine the endpoints. (this is why you need to split most triangles, because at some point one of the edges ends and a third edge begins.)
You then fill the polygon by drawing horizontal lines.
Given how most graphics systems work, the fastest thing you can draw is horizontal lines, followed by vertical lines. (vertical lines are slower due to memory layout issues.)
Unless video memory is particularly convoluted, drawing a horizontal line is simply a matter of setting a start address, then setting a loop for x number of pixels (with x being the length of the line), then drawing each pixel, which makes the inner loop of this little more than writing a byte (or more at higher colour depths) to memory, and incrementing/decrementing the loop variable (depending on implementation) and possibly the memory address by a fixed increment (especially for modes that are multiple bytes per pixel)
Obviously, the fastest shape you can draw this way besides lines is filled rectangles, since all the logic you'd need for triangles can mostly be dumped and remains constant for the entire shape.
My point being that a filling algorithm on a computer that doesn't have an overly complex video memory layout is basically only about 2 operations per pixel drawn in a horizontal line, and an extra instruction or two for each line. Even something like a Commodore VIC-20 can fill something like 450,000 pixels a second in an optimal loop. which should be good enough to fill the whole screen in under 1/5th of a second...
For a flood fill tool there is of course complexity involved in determining what should get filled and what shouldn't, but it still surprises me those old flood fill tools were slow enough to take many seconds to fill a complete screen...
flood filling doesn't determine bounds beforehand and then break the areas into polygons. It works pixel by pixel starting with the pixel under the mouse. Fills the pixel, then examines the color of the neighboring pixels, then calls itself recursively for each one of them if they are the same color. This is very slow, but generic enough to fill any complex area.
As a child of this new millennium, I know very much about hardware restrictions, mostly because I would have to try and see how I could get a new game running (probably at about 10 fps) on my crappy old computer :) Or I would just quit and play a game that's older than me and call it a day.
Impressive stuff. The CD32 isn’t a great console, but it’s a decent early 90s PC.
Oh yeah, and both the 3DO and Saturn could use MPEG carts!
Wonder what is cheaper at the moment a CD32+Upgrades or an Amiga 1200+upgrades?
New to the channel but awesome content. Especially the Amiga stuff. Have you ever used an aca500 expansion? I don’t have version 2 of it as I bought the original years ago along with an aca1232 which bumped up everything. Just curious if you played around with any of those expansions from Individual Computers
Computer Doc hi and thank you! I have not used an ACA. I have a Blizzard 1230 IV which is a very nice little accelerator
Great review! The vga output should be a little better quality but looks ok. I runout of my cd32 hefesto riser, I wish send you my riser to review before, too late :p
great video :) always wanted a cd32 - they're a cool bit of kit :)
Hi good series I have a Cd32 but the extra keyboard I use is a CdTv keyboard that was modified to work with the Cd32 purchased from a Company in Lichfield who were a wholesaler for the trade in the day, linked with a serial adaptor and then linked to my a1200 to transfer programs from Cd a bizarre way but works well ttfn Rich
The Best Retro Console with the Dreamcast ! Ilove Both!!
Yes! Have been looking forward to this. Awesome.
Wow, I didn't know there were modern mods developed for the CD32! I might actually give a try to that terrible thing if my ProModule turns out to be irrepairable. On the other hand, ProModule is SO much more. You really should check it out, with Fast RAM and 68882 the Gunship 2000 absolutely flies! (bad pun intended ;P)
spavatch I bet it does. I hope the modern mods get some acceleration soon that would be the icing on the cake
Thanks a lot for the video, very well done (and I really like your voice!). I also have my CD32 which I bought 1993 and also have a SX-1. Thanks for the AmiBay-TF-Link; I really consider buying it, although I am quite happy with the SX-1 (except space required :-)).
I am still not sure how to handle the Gotek stuff and how would be the workflow to fill the CF card (and where would I get that adapter), but this is something, I am interested in for my machine.
Christ, I'd love a nice RGB out for my CD32 without modding it or spending ridiculous amounts of money on an expansion. Forget the extra memory, a cheaper expansion that gives me RGB out, and maybe a floppy and IDE port would be ideal.
I can dream I guess.
Mr Tom FTW the TF add ons are a lot cheaper than those old sx1 units, you might be pleasently surprised
Proud owner of a Competition Pro pad. =D
The PS3 wasn't even Sony's first console that can run desktop OS. There was a linux installation kit available for the PS2.
Underground PD! I used to use them all the time
- preserves old technology- uses USB floppy driveRetro Man Cave pins own comment >:(
I'm not sure I understand the frownie face here
Great restoration job!
Another brilliant trash to treasure Neil 😁😁😁 Kim 😁😁😁
Hey thanks Kim, hope things are productive in your own Cave mate
I had no idea the CD32 had a large enough user base to justify the creation of stuff like this.
Rest in peace Jops and Jools.
Hello mate really enjoyed your video I love the Amiga computers it's so cool to see that a cd 32 works like a1200 great machine hope u are well mate
I subscribed, keep on with the cd 32 and modern solutions for it, I feel so isolated and ignorant when I see the new stuff posted
be carful that type of bag is metalized and conductive on one or both sides, it would be better to use one of the pink or blue "Anti-Static" bag instead of the "Static Dissipative" bag that you used.
I'm thinking of getting one now, thanks.
Funny thing is a cd32 can also be used as a CD drive for an a1200 if need be with addons as well.
I have an FMV Card(the flakey version) Won't sell it though. Going to try this with my SX1, although I may have damaged the Hdd port. Nice video.
Wonderful video Neil!
Wow, Amiga really took some ideas from Sega then haha. Congrats on no dislikes so far!
"To be this good will take Sega ages" pbs.twimg.com/media/C1Ur-zYXEAEOEM3.jpg
The cd32 permits a fantastic path to Amiga gaming, but is sadly an outdated contender compared to consoles of that generation; nevertheless, another great video.
Nice setup, congrats!
Steve Martino thanks Steve. Adding the RGB out will be a nice final touch but I'm enjoying a lot of games now as it is
Damn nostalgia ville love this content and channel long may it continue
I use a hacked amiga 500 keyboard with my cd32. Doesn’t look great, but it get the job done.