The CD ROM Story  by Gus Wrethman  ]] 32 [[ ]] 32 [[ ]] 32 [[ ]] 32 [[ ]] 32 [[ ]] 32 [[ ]] 32 [[ ]] 32 [[ PREAMBLE At last, it is here, the answer to all our problems, the CD ROM. Why the answer to all our problems? PIRACY. As most of you have probably noticed by now, the amount of quality software being released for the Amiga of late has been somewhat sparse. A lot of major software developers have stopped supporting the Amiga due to poor sales. This is not due to a small user base, it is due to PIRACY. If software wasn't pirated, developers could spend more time and more money producing a quality product. CDs are effectively pirate proof, not because they cannot be copied, (because they can), but because of the sheer capacity of a CD. They hold a staggering 660 megabytes, that is over 700 floppies. So, IF a CD game utilises only 20% of its available capacity, it would not even fit onto a 100 meg hard disk. You see, it would have to go onto a hard disk, because CDs are read only, in other words they cannot be written to. THE CD ROM ITSELF Okay, enough amazement, what about the CD ROM drive itself? Basically, there are two models, an internal and an external. The internal model fits neatly into the 5" bay of the A-2000 (or A-4000) - sorry A-3000 owners, you'll need to get the external model. The internal model is a Matsushita C 501. It is a bit of a "no frills" affair and comes packaged in a plain white box containing a 12 page manual, a daisy chain SCSI cable and some mounting screws. You also get a strange looking plastic case, which is the CD caddy. Unfortunately, all of the CD ROM manufacturers seem to have opted for a caddy system instead of the drawer system normally found on audio CD players. The external model is a Texel 5024. INSTALLATION The manual doesn't tell you much, but then again it doesn't need to. All that has to be checked is the SCSI ID of your hard disk. Sorry non hard disk owners. Actually, you don't need a hard disk to run the CD ROM, but you do need the hard disk controller and these can be bought for $100-$400. Each peripheral attached to the SCSI bus must have a unique ID. In the case of GVP controllers, the hard disk unit is ID 0, whereas the A-2091 usually controls hard disk unit 6. If you are unsure what ID your hard disk is, there are any number of PD utilities that will tell you the SCSI ID of your HD is. SysInfo by Nic Wilson is perfect for this. The SCSI ID of the CD ROM is set by small dip switches on the rear of the unit. For the majority of people, the factory default of ID 5 will be fine. Ideally, though, the SCSI ID of the CD ROM should be set to one number larger than the ID of your last hard disk unit. For example; - you have an A-2000 HD. The controller is a A-2091, the SCSI ID of the hard disk is 6. The next number after 6 is 0. (0-1-2-3-4-5-6 then back to the start). Ideally the CD ROM should be set to 0. - you have an A-2000 fitted with a GVP Series II Hard Card and the SCSI ID of the hard disk is 0. Ideally the CD ROM should be set to 1. - you have Brand X SCSI controller, controlling two hard disks, numbered ID 0 and 1 respectively. Ideally the CD ROM should be set to 2. Notice that I say "ideally". The CD ROM does not HAVE to be the next number in the chain, that is why ID 5 is fine for most people. So, before you open up your A-2000 determine the ID of your hard disk and set the ID of the CD ROM accordingly, then DISCONNECT THE POWER. Remove the case of the A-2000 (five screws, two each side and one at the rear) and slide the A-2000 cover off. Slide the CD unit in from the front and sit it in the bay for the moment. Remove the existing SCSI cable from your controller noting the orientation of the lead. This is the cable that connects the hard disk unit to the controller card. Generally, this lead is a "single drive" cable and must be replaced by the "daisy chain" SCSI cable provided. If you already have a "daisy chain" SCSI cable in place, lucky you, you now have a spare. This daisy chain cable has three connectors instead of the normal two. Two of the connectors are quite close to each other and the third connector is at the other end. The single end plugs into the SCSI port at the rear of the CD ROM, the double end plugs into the hard disk unit and the middle connector plugs into the SCSI controller. That takes care of the SCSI connectors, now just plug in the power cable. (There should be a couple of these floating around inside the A-2000. They are a female 4 pin plastic things, usually with 1 yellow, 1 orange and 2 blue leads. They are bevelled on one edge to prevent incorrect installation). This pushes into the male power connector on the rear of the CD ROM. That's it, now screw in the four mounting screws and you're ready to go. This all may sound very complex, but installation (even for beginners) should only take a few minutes at most. THE SOFTWARE With the CD ROM drive comes a 3" floppy install disk, plus 2 CDs, Fish and More Volumes 1 and Vol.2. Before you can use the CD ROM, the excellent Xetec CD ROM software must be installed. A double click on the CDx Install icon brings up the installation program. The program is a breeze to use, the user only has to pick his SCSI controller from a menu, then select the brand of CD ROM the same way. The rest of the default settings will be right for 99% of people. For the more advanced user, the comprehensive Xetec manual covers the other features, (buffers, memory type, cache etc.) Xetec even has a support BBS (U.S.A.). The software is being constantly revised and updated, to add support for new drive types and features. During the installation process, a mountlist is created (devs:mountlist for 2.0x users and devs:dosdrivers/cd0 for 2.1 users), so all that you have to do now is reboot the system and start to explore the immensity of the supplied PD disks. HANDLE WITH CARE The first thing you'll notice after rebooting is that the hard disk light is flashing. It's a minor annoyance, but I think you'll be able to live with it. This "flashing" is similar to the "clicking" of the floppies, in that it is testing to see if a disk has been inserted. Treat the CDs the same as you treat audio CDs, in other words handle them on the edges and insert them "writing up". The data is stored on the "shiny" side only. THE FISH CDs Put the CD into the caddy and slot it into the drive. After a second or two, the icon for the disk will appear on your Workbench. In all ways, the CD system follows normal Amiga traditions, with familiar icons for drawers, tools and the like. It is essentially a HUGE, fast, floppy disk. Forget all the rumors about slow speeds and long access times on a CD, these things are fast, especially if you have extra memory and can increase the buffer size. Fish and More Volume I, has two main directories, Fish, and More (strange that) and three ReadMes. The welcome readme is actually a hearme, as it is a massive 500k sampled audio introduction. Remember, space is no longer a problem. When I first put this disk in, I spent two or three hours looking through the unbelievable amount of data on the disk. Even so, I had barely scratched the surface. The disk contains; 70 animations, 720 pics, 700 icons, 450 sounds, 280 songs, 600 instruments, 180 games, 1700 utilities, 7500 source files, 35 commercial demos and 48 programming languages and all this is on the first disk! The files are grouped by type, rather than by their Fish numbers, so all the anims are together, editors, pictures, languages etc. This is great for some, but may not be so great for others. For BBS sysops, an on-line version is available, with Fish 1-720 in archived format and for the rest of us, non archived versions, called CDPD I & II are also available. Amiga DOS treats these as normal floppies, with the obvious difference being that they cannot be written to or altered in any way. These CDs can be accessed via the CLI or your favorite directory utility (Directory Opus for example). Files can be copied from them in the normal manner. CDTV Not all of us are into Fish disks, so what else is on offer here? How about full CDTV emulation for starters? The newly created XetecCDROM drawer on your hard disk has a few surprises for you. All of the currently available CDTV titles have start-up scripts already written (these are basically a series of simple assigns to assign the system directories to the CD0: device). So all you have to do is put in the CDTV title and double click on the appropriate icon and away it goes. A CDTV troubleshooting guide is in there too as well as a generic start-up. One meg of chip RAM is required for all CDTV games. The CDTV smartcard is emulated by a file called devs:bookmark.device, so high scores and other types of saves normally handled by the CDTV smartcard are supported. I have unfortunately only tried one CDTV game (Barney Bear Goes Camping) which isn't really a game of course, it's educational stuff for 3-6 year olds, but it works perfectly nonetheless (and my 5 year old loves it). AUDIO CDs Yes, it'll play audio CDs too. Just load the disk as normal and double click on the CDDA (Compact Disc Digital Audio) icon. Assuming you have your CD ROM hooked up to a suitable stereo output, you will enjoy the crystal clear sounds of compact disc technology. The audio CDs are played not via the Amiga, but via a suitable lead, connected either at the back of the CD ROM drive itself and routed out through the back of the A-2000, or via a headphone jack in the front of the unit. An adaptor/splitter can be plugged into the headphone jack and a pair of RCA plugs can then be plugged into it. The real bonus here is that audio CDs don't tie up the SCSI bus. In other words, audio CDs are more or less transparent to the Amiga OS and little system overhead is used. Read - use your Amiga for word processing or data entry or whatever and suffer no noticeable slowdown. Perfect! The Xetec software even includes a software remote control. A double click on this icon brings up nice looking CD player that can read the audio tracks from the audio CD. It can be programmed to play the tracks in any order any and number of times. Neat. Program in your selections, press play then close it down and enjoy. Volume can be adjusted via your amplifier or the volume control on the CD ROM itself. The audio output of most CDTV titles is NOT handled this way. The audio is treated in the same way as audio on a floppy (or hard) disk. i.e. played back via the Amiga itself. Having said that, some CDTV titles actually use true Compact Disc audio output. OTHER FORMATS The CD ROM can read IBM, Mac, Hi-Sierra and ISO formats and can even run them with the appropriate emulator. A versatile device indeed. THE EXTERNAL MODEL The external CD ROM is a Texel 5024, and bar the packaging and price ($100 more), is a similar setup. It connects to the SCSI pass through on the rear of your SCSI device and indeed has a pass through on it itself. This is suitable for A-500 and A-3000 owners. The same software comes with this unit as do the SCSI cables. SUMMING UP Good points - quite fast - huge data capacity - very versatile (IBM, Mac, Hi-Sierra and audio) - easy to use - simple to install - plenty of support (BBS and from place of purchase) Bad points - the disks go clunk when you put them in - constant HD light flashing (fix=pull out the LED lead) - a bit expensive at $799 internal and $899 external (though if you are a PD freak, the amount saved in floppy disks will justify the initial purchase) - not a great amount of commercial software available (YET), though there is a stack of PD and educational stuff around. Guiness Book of Records, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, The Bible, Grolliers Encyclopaedia, Cook Books, NASA pics, Connoisseur Art are some examples. WHAT I THINK OF IT I suppose it's pretty plain that I love my CD ROM and don't know how I ever got along without it. I have had it for a couple of months now and it has performed flawlessly. If it cost twice as much (well, maybe not twice) I would still buy it. Some of impending game releases I have seen look awesome and once the software developers start fully utilising this medium, the true potential of the CD ROM will be seen. WHERE I GOT IT I purchased my internal Matsushita CD ROM drive from Amitech at Cronulla. Both Amitech and Sigmacom sell these units, as well as CDTV and CDPD software. You can also get them through Megadisc. Price: $899 external; $799 internal.  ]] 32 [[ ]] 32 [[ ]] 32 [[ ]] 32 [[ ]] 32 [[ ]] 32 [[ ]] 32 [[ ]] 32 [[