OVERDRIVE çddf,faa,afa,aaf,faf,ffa,aff ³-------------------------------------- ¾Zappo/Overdrive CD-ROM Drive Review ¢By²:¹ Plugster/Defiance ³-------------------------------------- ²Ever since the CD32 arrived on the scene, A1200 owners have been asking for a way to play CD32 games on their machines. It's not an unreasonable request since the machines are virtually identical, except for the Akiko chip that is present only in the CD32. Commodore had promised a CD32 compatible drive, and had even displayed it in Europe, but it never made it to production. Zappo, a UK company, announced a drive that would do the same thing and also beat Commodore at it's own game because Commodore's drive asked the A1200 user to give up his trapdoor expansion slot. Zappo's doesn't use the trapdoor slot; it makes use of the little used PCMCIA slot on the left side of the machine. The Zappo/Overdrive CD-ROM drive (aka the Archos CD-ROM drive) is a standard Mitsumi double speed CD-ROM drive with a special interface allowing the cable with the PCMCIA card connector to be attached. A disk with special driver software is included as well. For our tests, we used a stock Amiga 1200 with no FAST RAM and no accelerator board. We wanted to stay as close to the configuration of a ¶²CD32 as possible. If you've got any FAST RAM or an accelerator board, your results with the Zappo may differ from ours. Setting the drive up is fairly simple once a proper power supply is obtained. The Zappo we received came with a power supply meant for European use. A trip to Radio Shack provided us with the proper power source: A 12 Volt power supply. Just plug the PCMCIA card connector into the slot and install the software (which automatically makes necessary changes to your startup-sequence.) [Take note: The PCMCIA connector has some writing on it. The natural inclination is to have that writing facing up, so you can read it, when you plug the connector in. In fact, the writing should be facing down or the drive won't work. The manual didn't mention this at all.] After rebooting, the computer will automatically recognize any CD placed in the drive just like putting a disk in the disk drive. You can access any ISO-9660 format CD-ROM disc with this method. This makes a wide variety of CD-ROM software available to you, like GIFS GALORE, AMINET and the ULTIMATE MOD COLLECTION to name a few. What I'm sure most of you want to know, though, is how it handles CD32 games and software. By pressing the left mouse button and holding it down while the machine reboots, you are ¶²presented with an option to boot from a CD-ROM. Placing a CD32 disc in the drive, pressing CTRL-LEFT AMIGA-RIGHT AMIGA to reset the machine, and then holding down the left mouse button to get the menu will allow the world of CD32 software to open for you. I was surprised at the number of CD32 titles that ran without any problems at all. Even PAL games were no problem. (Although, they added some steps to the process: You have to put the disc in the drive, reset the machine, hold down BOTH mouse buttons to get the display menu, select PAL, then boot the machine from the menu, then hold down just the LEFT mouse button and select the CD BOOT option. It's confusing at first, but it works like a champ.) We tested a LOT of CD32 software on the Zappo drive. A lot of them worked with the above methods without a problem. Some, however, needed to be booted from the disk version of the drivers rather than the ones installed on the hard drive. We weren't really sure why this was, but it was limited to only a few games. Here's a list of the CD32 games and software we tested on the Zappo drive: INSIGHT: TECHNOLOGY ZOOL WHALE'S VOYAGE ULTIMATE BODY BLOWS TROLLS UNIVERSE SUPER METHANE BROTHERS SUMMER OLYMPIX GUNSHIP 2000 OSCAR NIGEL MANSELL'S CHAMPIONSHIP RACING NICK ¶²FALDO GOLF MEAN ARENAS JAMES POND III HEIMDALL II LOTUS TRILOGY LOST VIKINGS FURY OF THE FURRIES INTERNATIONAL KARATE + BANSHEE SIMON THE SORCEROR BRUTAL FOOTBALL FIRE FORCE DIGGERS DEFENDER OF THE CROWN II DEEP CORE DANGEROUS STREETS CASTLES BATTLETOADS NAUGHTY ONES FRONTIER RYDER CUP GOLF CD FOOTBALL UFO: ENEMY UNKNOWN We, unfortunately, didn't have a copy of MICROCOSM to test on the Zappo drive. This would have provided the ultimate compatibility test. The manufacturer's claim that the Zappo drive emulates the Akiko chip through software. I don't know how true that is, but the drive does run a lot slower than the CD32 during heavy animations that may use the Akiko chip. For example, the GUNSHIP 2000 intro animation runs fairly smooth on a CD32. On the Zappo drive, the animation was choppy and jerky and the sound was slightly out-of-sync. It DID run though. That's one of the reasons we were so interested to see if MICROCOSM would run or not. It wouldn't be very playable if it was as choppy as the GUNSHIP 2000 animation was. We will test MICROCOSM as soon as we get a copy to test. Well, what doesn't work? The following is a list of the games that we tested that didn't work. These games just plain refused to run no matter what we tried. The symptoms of each game are listed to explain possible compatibility issues that may be addressed in the next update to the ¶²Zappo's software drivers. GAMES THAT DON'T WORK ON THE ZAPPO DRIVE SIMON THE SORCERER Error message - "No disk present in device CD0" OSCAR Must boot from the floppy and the game will load, but it crashes soon after. SURF NINJAS Error message - "No disk present in device CD0" CD FOOTBALL Game loads, but options are cycled through by the computer. If one is picked, the game crashes. The game doesn't get far enough to see if the CDXL animations work or not. UNIVERSE Game loads and then crashes right after. DEFENDER OF THE CROWN II Error message - "Bookit only works on CDTV" BATTLETOADS Game doesn't load - black screen is the only result. BANSHEE Error message - "Bans.exe not enough memory available" LOTUS TRILOGY Game loads, displays logo and then goes black. RYDER CUP GOLF Game loads, plays music and looks fine, but as soon as a course is selected, the machine GURU's. According to the manufacturer, an ¶²update to the software will increase CDTV compatibility as well as allow the drive to be used with the Amiga 600 (although, it will not run CD32 software on the 600). ¹SUMMARY ²The Zappo drive is a surprisingly good piece of hardware. I had my doubts when I first heard about it, but it made a good impression on me. I'd really think about buying it if I had an Amiga 1200 instead of a CD32. There are some weaknesses with the Zappo drive though: ¾1) ² The interface that plugs on to the back of the Mitsumi drive to connect the PCMCIA connector doesn't fit well and can work itself loose. ¾2) ² The aforementioned "does the writing face up or down?" problem needs to be addressed. ¾3) ² The manual is not much of a help with any potential problems. This review has more information than the manual contains. ¾4) ² The access time is slow and that may cause problems with discs that access a lot of information all the time, like UFO: ENEMY UNKNOWN, which is slow enough on the CD32. How it will affect a game like MICROCOSM is yet to be seen. (If that game runs at all.) All in all, the Zappo drive bridges a ¶²gap in a way that's similar to the way the Paravision SX-1 bridges the gap for CD32 owners. It's not quite as reliable as the SX-1, but it's got room for improvement and I'm sure it will receive those improvements with software updates.