up to approximately 450 pounds . Shop around, since the prices are being slashed each month, with better and better value for the buyer. Everyone's waiting for the new Commodore CD-based console, so stores are clearing stock of CDTVs. OBTAINING THE MACHINE I ordered the CDTV Multimedia package from Hobbyte in mid-February of this year, and after a couple of days of waiting, it arrived, after a few calls explaining that the shop had to wait for another Multimedia pack to come in. The bundle as ordered consisted of: Amiga CDTV main box Remote Control plus batteries. CD Caddy with Tutorial CD Cables to hook it all together. Hookup booklet And: <'Basic Multimedia' pack> Wired Mouse Keyboard External Drive AmigaDOS 1.3 System disks and documentation Since then, I've borrowed a RocTec external floppy drive with slight personality problems, and that's the complete system under review, apart from the colour portable TV I use as a monitor. Nowadays, the CDTV is best obtained by mail-order, as few computer shops <'Box shifters'> stock the machine due to lack of large-scale demand. And so, it is rare to get 'hands-on' play-testing or demonstrations in shops, resulting in public confusion and scepticism, leaving us right back with lack of large-scale demand. Great. HARDWARE The CDTV main box is of similar dimensions as any standard Hi-Fi 'separate' component: 430mm x 330mm x 95mm . It is completely black, with 15mm high cylindrical silver feet: very gothic and stylish. On the front, you've got : Main power switch with 6.5mm stereo headphone jack, the CD caddy slot with eject button and power indicator and CD active indicators in green and yellow, to the left and right of the CD slot, respectively. Then the indicator panel with the headphone volume level , CD track number, and realtime clock display both in cyan, and a 'CD' video indicator, and finally, the CD audio controls along with a soft-reset switch and a CD/TV video switch. A trapdoor under the indicator panel reveals a credit-card slot to allow the use of RAMcards for saving 'data from applications'. . The options are 64K and 256K. I've yet to see them on sale. A PCMCIA slot would have been far more useful, especially for memory expansion. The entire design is very swish, and would sit nicely at the base of a Technics or Denon Hi-Fi stack. 'Cool' is an understatement. It's gorgeous. Probably the best-looking Amiga machine yet. Along the back, there's the usual Amiga ports: external floppy drive, serial, parallel, RGB out, and audio left/right. Because the machine was designed to sit next to the household VCR, there are appropriate RF connectors below the RGB socket, according to country of retail. In the UK, we get RF in, RF out and Composite Video out. In the States, you get S-Video instead of RF in. The Euromachine gets a SCART socket. The RF modulator is thus inside the machine, as is the power transformer. The socket is a standard 'kettle' connection with a mains plug at the other end of the lead. There's a fan in the back, which sucks air through the machine from the vents on the top and sides. There's a lot of machinery in the box , so it needs whatever cooling it can get. The keyboard socket is a weird miniature DIN configuration, as is the wired mouse socket. No joystick ports -- a major design screwup. However, there's a pair of MIDI connections and a removable plate labelled 'Expansion', which can have a SCSI interface installed for adding extra storage. There's an internal genlock available as well. Good, eh? The remote control acts as mouse and joystick, and has buttons for the digits 0 to 9, ENTER, ESCAPE, GENLOCK, CD/TV, JOY/MOUSE. The additional buttons REW, PLAY/PAUSE, FF, STOP are mainly for audio CDs. Finally, there are headphone volume controls, a power switch, a joypad, and buttons A and B for selection, like most console keypads have. Normally, the remote is in "MOUSE mode," where the joypad controls mouse movement , A and B act as Left and Right mouse buttons respectively, CD/TV switches the video output between the CDTV's own output and what's coming in via the RF input , and GENLOCK overlays the CDTV output onto the RF input if you've got the internal genlock. The CD and volume controls have the same priority as the controls on the main box. If you switch the machine off from the handset, you have to switch it back on from the handset. The main power switch is likewise. Same system as my Technics receiver used to have. Notice that Hi-Fi analogy again. When in Joystick mode, the only active controls on the remote are the joypad and the A and B buttons. Problem is, they're very unresponsive, with no microswitches, and have an extremely unreliable action when playing. Apart from low-movement games like Lotus Turbo 2, where accurate left / right / up / down / fire action isn't needed, they're complete and utter crap. Don't even think about playing Llamatron, Gods, or anything needing fast response. Commodore's answer to this is the 'Brickette', which costs around 45 pounds and plugs into the mouse socket. It gives a trailing lead with 2 standard joystick/mouse sockets at the end, and the intelligence to recognize which method of input is being used. Because it sits on the mouse port, you have to buy a new standard mouse to go with it. There's a third-party solution which relies on internal fitting, designed by Almathera and sold by GoldTech, called CD-Joy, which does the same thing and doesn't take up the mouse port , and sells for about 25 pounds. I've yet to test either of these , but I've got to upgrade soon. As usual with Commodore vs. Third Parties, you must weigh losing your warranty against better hardware performance. C'est la vie. The keyboard? Black, virtually identical to the A2000 keyboard, with a 50" partly coiled cable, and a nice key action. A massive improvement on the somewhat 'dead' feel to the A500 keyboard, with a 3-position angle adjust. Oddly, there are two blank keys that have no function and are documented in an accompanying leaflet as 'not having any function'. Only with Commodore. ;-> The wired mouse is the next generation from the old A500/A2000 mouse, having a curved back and large buttons that are flush with the back of the mouse. The buttons are sized in a 60:40 ratio, very comfortable to use with Intuition, but unfortunately not microswitched. The external drive is larger than the average third-party external drive, has a yellow 'in use' LED to match the CD drive and the 'CD-video out' indicators , but for some insane reason, doesn't have a pass-through port. And there are few drives that match it either in styling or colour. Tsk! As for the operating system, it's based on Kickstart 1.3, with the 1 meg ECS Agnus, the standard Denise, and 1 meg of Chip RAM onboard. The processor is a 7MHz 68000. This version of AmigaDOS has been around long enough that everyone should know what it's about, so I don't need to reiterate previous reviews, which should come as a relief. It has all those classic OS bugs you love to hate. There's a realtime clock, displayed at all times, as witness the display panel description, but it isn't battery-backed. The machine has private RAM for internal Preferences settings. This means that whenever you unplug the main unit, you have to reset the clock. Oh joy. External preferences are no problem, as the machine uses the standard 1.3 DEVS:system-configuration file when booting from floppy or hard disk. DOCUMENTATION The 'Hookup' manual is just that. A page of 'Contents of the box', two pages of 'Plug the leads in here, here and here', and you're left booting the Welcome disk as the manual switches language. The 'Multimedia' pack ships with Workbench 1.3, so I got the Workbench boot disk, the Workbench Extras disk and The Very First, which is the Workbench tutorial disk. There is no copy of the AmigaBasic manual, nor the equivalent of the A500 Manual . Just the Enhancer Software manual. Maybe the others had been forgotten when packing all the bits into the 3x2x2 foot box the machine came in - I wasn't fussed. I've still got all my old A500 manuals which weren't nicked with the machine, and rarely need to refer to them nowadays. Besides, I'd used 1.3 for nearly 2 years; so once I'd run through the Welcome CD a couple of times, I skimmed through the Workbench disks to see if anything had changed. Nothing had, so I reached for my old all-singing-all-dancing system disk and booted up. Lack of documentation is no problem for an old hand like myself, but I don't know how 'Joe Punter' would manage. THE WELCOME DISK Booting the Welcome disk gives a couple of title screens, a extremely average soundtrack module whilst loading, and the main menu, offering a 'How to use CD titles' interactive tutorial, a 'Tech' guide and an 'Available Software' section. The tutorial is essentially an explanation of the remote control functions and how to select options from on-screen menus, which is fairly obvious anyway, but it's there if you really need it. The 'Available Software' section is simply a batch of title screens and voiceovers split into categories like Entertainment, Reference, Education, etc. Note how some titles don't have a screenful of graphics but just the title name in a simple font. It'd be interesting to contrast what's actually been written against the expectations of the disk. Most useful is the 'Tech' section, which explains the expansion options and the CD-audio panel. It also shows use of the internal system preferences adjustment, but doesn't tell you how to get to it. The coding quality on the disk is about the same as that in 'The Very First'. 'Desert Dream' from Kefrens it isn't, but it gets the job done, with an initially-cheery-then-rapidly-becoming-bloody-irritating 'ping' at each selection prompt. Luckily there's a certain amount of logic in the programming - you can skip irrelevant parts of the audio playback and graphics, and on going back up the disk menu structure you don't get information repeated. Just as well, given that the female voice on the disk sounds like she's being indecently tickled, and the male could pass as a member of the National League of Depressives whilst on an acid trip. Who ARE these people? If the truth were known, it's more interesting to hack the disk from AmigaDOS to see how it's all supposed to work. To be honest, it's a bit of a botch job, as witness the first line of the s:startup-sequence: ;THIS STARTUP-SEQUENCE IS TOO GODDAMN CLUTTERED ! RE-WRITE IT ! Temper, temper. So much for the glamorous world of programming CBM introductory software. This isn't all: there's a load of unused demo scripts, graphics, discarded sound samples and credit screens that should have gotten wiped before the disk went to print. See what you can find. The disk uses the preferences as set in the machine's private RAM, which include: language of user, screen position, screensaver timeout , keyclick toggle when using the CD-Audio panel, clock mode <12/24 hour> and setting, and a video sync toggle. This is downloaded as the working system-configuration by the program CDTVPREFS. The audio sections of the disk amount to 49 megs of data split across 444 files. Bear in mind that this is a 58 meg disk, according to c:Info. All are standard IFF samples, so you can play around with them with the music program ProTracker. This is why you really notice the loading time during the longer sentences in the 'Tech' and 'Available' sections - the CD drive speed isn't really fast enough for file-dependent software. Strange that CBM didn't just use the 'direct-from-disk' long sample player available in the public domain. It may be that the data throughput isn't fast enough, but it'd speed the loading up. Separating the disk into AudioCD and Amiga partitions wouldn't be worth it - there are too many separate audio sections. The graphics are all IFF ILBM images - use Mostra or another IFF picture viewer to skim through them. I recommend a viewer that supports command line wildcards. The 'voiceover beings' aren't listed in the 'hidden credits' screens. Probably due to reasons of acute embarrassment and public ridicule, no doubt. CDTV IN ACTION My normal working system is based around the ARP shell and commands, with CygnusEd , DiskMaster 1.4 , MessyDos and PowerPlayer. All run perfectly, apart from ARP's 'assign' now refusing to accept multiple assignments in a single command line. Weird. Programming with SAS/C is just about possible with a meg of RAM and a single drive, but it would be better if the compiler and header files were distributed on CD. The boot disk would contain just the shell of preference, the editor and the user's source code. The header and library assignments would be linked across onto the CD. To get at the compiler itself, just add the CD directories to the executable path. Not as fast as a hard drive, but better than floppy, and easier and more reliable to distribute. The first main thing you notice is that the CD filing system and handling routines grab 150K of Chip RAM workspace as AmigaDOS boots up. There isn't an option to switch the device drivers off, either. The RAMdisk is thus fairly limited. Anything over 400K is pushing it, or there isn't enough workspace for DMS or LhA to work. Don't bother loading Workbench if you need RAM workspace. That, or get hold of an external drive with a pass-through port. It's just as well the machine isn't based around Kickstart 2.04, since the memory shortage would be chronic. Multitasking with more that 2 big utilities or hitting the RAMdisk fragments the memory very quickly - this machine desperately needs a Fast RAM expansion. There is a hardware dongle that disables the CD drivers but still allows audio CD playback, but - you've guessed it - it's an internal fitting. Goodbye warranty.... Some software doesn't like the CD device when running or uncrunching. Large executables, such as ProTracker and DPaint, can be extremely awkward when PowerPacked. Assorted demos and games fall over as well, due to either memory requirements or hardware differences. Sometimes both. Marble Madness won't run despite the machine's being based around Kickstart 1.3 , and StarGlider won't format its gamesave disks. More modern games released since Kickstart 2 are better, due to the new machines' forcing software compatibility. No problems with ThunderHawk, Lotus 2 or Pinball Fantasies. The same goes for demos - anything that is 2.xx compatible should be OK co-existing with the CD drivers. 1.3 stuff varies from piece to piece, but the CD switch should fix this. When things crash the system, you'll get the usual 'Software Failure: Retry / Cancel' alerts, but rarely a Guru meditation. What would normally give a Guru just throws up a soft reset, accompanied by a whirr as the CD drive resets its head and the screen kicks back to the bootup animation. Odd. Talking of resets - the RESET switch on the front of the main box is vary badly positioned. I often run a BBC Micro into the back of the CDTV via the serial port for file transfers to the Amiga BBC Emulator . When checking things at the BBC end with the CD/TV switch, I've got to be fairly accurate with the thumb to avoid hitting RESET and killing the machine. Why the hell wasn't this switch put under the main power switch, and the headphone jack moved to here? Gawd knows what it's like when you start genlocking... The CD caddy mechanism gives a resounding 'Clungg!' on insertion, and the manual eject has an action similar to an external drive. You've got to have a reasonably positive action, or the caddy can jam. Pity it's not a motorized drawer, given the CD-Audio marketing side, but there's precious little free space in the main box, and all of that is needed for ventilation. The fan in the back is quieter than the A2000 fan, and is pretty ignorable. I'm not sure how expandable the system is re power requirements, but 2 external drives are no problem. This may be the reason the CDTV drive has no pass-through port - CBM was unsure about PCB burnout due to overload from external power requirements, so they didn't want to risk multiple drives? Surely not. As to the CDTV and Audio CDs - according to the CDTV information flyers, the sound quality is supposed to be 16bit x 8 oversampling. It's as good as my Technics stack was, when you run it through the phono jacks into a stack system, as every Amiga should be used. Through the RF modulator output to the TV, the audio level is rather low. The CD Audio panel frontend is extremely easy to use, and has all the functions of a full CD player, including Time to Disk End, Time to Track End, Disk Time, Track Time, 10 second Introscan, Randomize and full random programming up to 16 tracks. It's a pity all these features can't be accessed from the main box displaypanel, only via the video output, because it means I've got to lug the TV along with the CDTV to where the good hi-fi tapedeck is. In another room. After going down a flight of stairs. And unplugging means losing the clock and internal preference settings. Life is fun. And that internal screensaver? We can just assume it only applies when the CDTV internal preferences are being used, as I've yet to see it in action when booting from floppy. One thing that the manual doesn't tell you, and this is a biggie, is that you can start up an Audio CD during ANY POINT of system operation. What you've got is the CD hardware being under control of software when required, but with full manual override from the controls on the main box. An example of this is the Audiopanel mode of the CDTV. Press PLAY on the front of the CDTV, and the disk will start, but the software doesn't register this, and movement of the selection cursor will still result in a keyclick. When PLAY or STOP is selected by software, it doesn't affect the hardware override. Sometimes the software link to the CD hardware can crash for no reason, but it's rare. The Amiga audio is directly laid on top of the CD Audio. The Amiga output has always been at a higher level than most Hi-Fi component output levels - as anyone who runs an Amiga into a stack system will tell you. Same with the CDTV. Problem is, the CD output is at normal Hi-Fi levels, and thus when you run both at once, the Amiga tends to drown out the CD if there's a constant noise level or tune happening on the Amiga side of the system. Volume levels aside, we're talking hitting PLAY from ANYWHERE. Workbench, bootup, or system-trashing games. Seemingly Contradictory Fact #1: disk-based games are superb on a CDTV! Having your own choice of CD soundtrack whilst playing games is a positive boon, and adds a whole new atmosphere. Games that have their own in-game music don't work well with this technique, as the music is usually out of tune/tempo with your CD, and combining the two sounds dire. Games with only spot-effects or a constant throb work best. The only thing is the Amiga tends to drown the CD out when producing throbs. The best results are obtained with CDs that are mastered with a loud signal. THP Recommends: If you thought Lotus 2 was good, try it with 'Angel Dust' from Faith No More blasting out in the background. Or StarGlider 2 with Jean-Michel Jarre? Thunderhawk with Metallica? BLAZEMONGER with Cher? [MODERATOR'S NOTE: BLAZEMONGER INCORPORATED recommends that you play Bing Crosby and "Great Head-On Train Collisions Of The 1980's" simultaneously. - Dan] As to CD-based games - most use the CD only as a way of avoiding disk swaps. Few have separate data/audio partitions - the only one of note is Sim City, where a full studio-mastered audio soundtrack plays during the game. Obviously, there's only spot-effects from the Amiga side, with the CD audio being under software control. The Lemmings soundtracks won't improve , but at least you can play the game via ParNet. It'd be interesting to see if the 'Scene picks up on this, and release any productions that use a certain audio track as the basis for the design, graphics and coding, with special effects overlaid by the Amiga audio hardware. The mind boggles. Back with AmigaDOS, if you start an audio CD before the Amiga goes over to the Workbench screen, the digital output will hang. AmigaDOS checking to see which drives are attached and what's in everything, obviously not expecting to find 'Happiness' from the Beloved in a drive... The boot preference sequence appears to be the following: [Floppy?] -> [CD-ROM/CDAudio?] -> [Hard drive?] -> [Bootup Animation] as the CDTV will recognize Audio and CDTV disks but still check the external drive first. One big advantage of having all floppy drives fitted externally is that if the boot drive dies, replacement is very easy, and a wide choice of replacement mechanisms are available. Speed of directory access on the CD drive is slow via the shell, but with the Req or ReqTools requesters, is very fast. 300 files in 2 seconds isn't bad. Not quite so impressive is the data transfer rate - a quick shell utility for timing file access that I hacked together in C reckons a 220K file takes around 5.15 seconds to suck off disk. The still-to-spin disk start adds another 1.7 seconds onto that. The disk spin timeout cuts in when no files are accessed, or, when using Audio CD, if the system is paused or not playing for around 8 minutes. OK, these benchmarks aren't breaking any records when compared to the double-speed drives now available; but if you're not using the system for file-based games which load massive files all the time, I can't see the problem. I've yet to test out the genlocking capabilities of the machine, and the MIDI interfaces and ParNet, due to lack of cash. EXPANSION At the time of writing, there's no standard way to expand the memory with Fast RAM, although the 'Blizzard' board is currently being thrashed out and will be with us soon. The CD-Switch may suffice for those just requiring the full 1 meg. The SCSI adapter is an excellent move, making the CDTV useful as a cheap mass-storage device. Gamers have got to get some form of standard joystick interface: either the Brickette or CD-Joy. CPU acceleration is only possible through systems relying on the 68000 CPU socket. The machine can be expanded to the SuperAgnus with 2 megs of Chip RAM via the MegaChip board - some CDTV suppliers will fit this as an optional extra before shipping the machine. It is possible to upgrade the operating system to Kickstart 2.04, but the CD driver chips also need replacing, and they currently aren't widely available. Without memory expansion, a Kickstart upgrade is ill advised. BEST USES The EuroScene ------------- Because it's still based around Kickstart 1.3, the CDTV is the last machine to feature the 'classic' chipset. With the CD-Switch, all the big 1 meg demos and productions that conflict with the CD.device will work, although some older works may still require that half meg of trapdoor SlowFastRAM that used to sit in the A500. A standard joystick interface is a must, obviously. And at 'scene gatherings, play your own CDs whilst coding/copying/gfxing, all from one power socket. ;-> 'Scene musicians also get a look in, with the MIDI sockets as standard , and the CD output plugged straight back into a sampler on the parallel port. Never again experience that 'Oh f*ck! 5 minutes to the deadline and I need a sample from that CD back at home!' feeling. Assuming you've got the CD to hand. ;-> It's also possible to jam over Audio CDs via MIDI , or even playing lead guitar through a sampler and blasting the output over a CD track. And if we don't say anything about Karaoke-thru-sampler-over-CD, hopefully everyone will have the good taste not to try it. Games ----- Likewise, Kickstart 1.3 means all the classic games will run, although the CD-Switch and a 'stick interface are vital. The predicted 'trend' towards releasing games on CD means future compatibility as well, albeit without the AGA chipset. Versions of Kickstart don't usually make much difference to game quality. The possibility of selecting your own audio soundtrack for games is an added bonus. And massive games for the future? Eye of the Beholder on CD? The original came on 3 disks, and, being AmigaDOS-based, was hard drive installable. Consider 660 megs of dungeons, missions and chaos, with no disk grind or swap. Failing that, how about a CD-quality in-game soundtrack? Elite 2? Frontier? Whatever it's going to be called, the scale of this one when released on CD is just IMMENSE. The original BBC version had 2000 planets spread through 8 galaxies, with loads of extra information, realtime fly-by-wire docking computers, combat, trading and exploration. In 100k. We know Dave Braben's using an A2000 with an 030 as his working machine, but what about CD? If not 660 megs of planets and missions - how about an exclusive music score by Jarre or Huelsbeck? Okay then, a selection of modules from Nuke, Greg, LizardKing and Jester? Either would be great. Lotus 2, Thunderhawk, F15 and their ilk have been discussed already with regard to in-game music. CD also stops the drives grinding under trackdisk, though. Pinball Dreams/Fantasies could be expanded with extra tables and music. The trick with the audio is to get the relative Amiga/CD overlay volume levels correct. Software houses - are you reading this? Communications / Networking --------------------------- Many people on UseNet are using a CDTV as a CD Fileserver via ParNet with great success. Add this idea to a BBS machine , and you've immediately got 660 megs of online downloadable software, which can be swapped for another batch in a few seconds. Add a SCSI tower case plugged into the SCSI expansion, and that's one HELL of a fileserver. The speed of CD access isn't so important in this situation, as no modem yet can download at over 50k/second, so the relatively low CDTV data transfer rate isn't important. If AmigaNetworking ever takes off , the possibilities are even greater. The obvious archive disks such as the Fish collections and the AB20 and AmiNet snapshots would be interest enough; but on a mixed machine-type system, clip art, samples and typefaces would be a major bonus. Finally, the CDTV offers an alternative to a normal CD-ROM drive, when used with ParNet. Printers can still be used by squirting data onto the serial port of the CDTV through the NET: handler. Given that it's also a separate computer, it can act as a leisure/hackabout machine, leaving the 'serious' power-machine to run Real 3D, Imagine, Morph, TVPaint, etc., with no risk of virus-trashing, Lemmings-at-3am urges, and abuse-from-children. You can even run all those CDTV titles without any compatibility problems > and not have to bother installing the CDFilesystem. Best of all, you can do all this with just the basic machine and a spare external drive. Set up a systemdisk with the startup-sequence running ParNet and NetMount, and possibly even Workbench and PowerPlayer so you can play modules whilst you're at it ;->, plug in the ParNet cable, and boot up! FOR THE FUTURE If the new CD console is going to be based around AGA and an '020, I'd like to see: STANDARD JOYSTICK PORTS! Kickstart 3.xx More MIDI support DSP for direct off-CD sampling Keep the design and styling RF pass-through port USABLE JOYPAD Pass-through port on external Internal Genlocking SCSI RAM Expansion RESET switch Real-Time Clock, Internal Prefs Welcome Disk Further WishList ---------------- Volume controls for Amiga & CD? All Audio functions on Display Networking interface? CONCLUSIONS In case it's not blatantly obvious, I'm extremely pleased with the CDTV and its capabilities. Mind you, it's not that I've got a choice of another machine. My first upgrade will probably be a CD-Joy and a CD-Switch, then a long hard look at the Blizzard board when it finally turns up. And finally, if I ever get some serious cash together, I'd like one of the SCSI interfaces. Either way, if I ever get a top-end machine, I'm keeping this one as well. ;-> DISCLAIMER THP is not associated with Technics, Commodore Business Machines, Hobbyte, GoldTech, Almathera, Faith No More, J.M. Jarre, the Beloved, nor Metallica, in ANY way, apart from being: An infrequent customer / failing to get a job with them / aware of their products / fan of their music. COPYRIGHT NOTICE This review is copyright 1993 by THP, Citrus Inc. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to copy and distribute this review free of charge, but it may not appear in any commercial publication, in whole or in part, without the author's written permission. CONTACT... ...this lunatic for CDTV musings, Psion advocacy, insults at 3am when you really don't need them, moronic anecdotes, Amiga advocacy, drinking, job offers on the lines of reviewing, beta-testing, documentation, lugging, obscure jokes, and references to Absolutely sketches, at the following address: . . . ........................................................ \\|%//\ :::::::::::::::::+-------+-------+:::::::::::::::::::::: '\\%/%\\ ::|^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^| . |. @ .+--[ thp@sx.ac.uk ]--+:: .::;,\ ::| ><> : ( |---+ . :.|telnet 138.40.17.1 |:: _::::;_ ::|( : , \ ) ( |. | . __|Login:mono |:: / ::::: \ ::| ) % <>< (,:%)|---+---+--|Password:mono |:: / ':::' \ ::|(,%(,. ,..,.:;::;%|::::::::::|Mono UP:Logging In..|:: / \ :@========================@:::::+------[22:27:13]----+:: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ::::::::::::: --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Article 321 of comp.sys.amiga.reviews: Path: news.csos.orst.edu!flop.ENGR.ORST.EDU!rutgers!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!menudo.uh.edu!usenet From: st2cf@jetson.uh.edu (Nhan Trong Nguyen) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Amiga CDTV and 2 discs Keywords: hardware, system, CDTV, CD-ROM, CD, commercial Message-ID: <211ghk$8uc@menudo.uh.edu> Date: 2 Jul 93 14:25:56 GMT Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Reply-To: st2cf@jetson.uh.edu (Nhan Trong Nguyen) Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 385 Approved: barrett@math.uh.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu PRODUCT NAME Commodore Dynamic Total Vision (CDTV) Grolier's Electronic Encyclopedia CD-ROM Lemmings CD-ROM BRIEF DESCRIPTION This is a followup to the review of CDTV posted by T H Pineapple ("THP") on June 28, 1993, in comp.sys.amiga.reviews. Please refer to it for more details on CDTV, as this post will deal mostly with the differences between THP's machine (a UK CDTV) and my own (US CDTV), though I will interject opinions as well. Please note that my CDTV unit was purchased in June 1992, and there may have been some minor changes to the hardware sold since then (keyboard and mouse). In short, the CDTV has a motherboard different than the other Amigas, and depending on whom you ask, is similar to either the A500 or A2000 mother- boards. It has all the standard Amiga ports, as well as MIDI in/out, S-Video out, RF out, composite out, and mini-DIN mouse and keyboard connectors. CDTV also has a CD drive and proprietary RAM card slot. COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Commodore Business Machines, Inc. Address: 1200 Wilson Drive West Chester, PA 19380 USA [Commodore has other offices in other countries as well.] LIST PRICE The CDTV has two basic US configurations: the stock CDTV, and the CDTV Professional (CDTV/P). The list price for the CDTV is $599 (US), while the CDTV/P will cost about $200 more. A the current mailorder price of the CDTV/P is under $600. The CDTV can be upgraded to a CDTV/P with the addition of the CD-1500 Professional Pack. This pack consists of a jet-black A3000-style 94-key keyboard (96-key A2000-style in UK), black corded mouse (some units come with infrared mice), black A1011-type external floppy drive (renamed CD-1411), Workbench disks, one black CD caddy, and two CDs. OBTAINING THE MACHINE I mail-ordered my CDTV/P from BriWall for a total of US $921.00 (this was before AGA machines were released, in June 1992). The package consisted of the following: Stock CDTV Package o CDTV unit (CD-1000) o Remote Control plus Panasonic general purpose batteries o CD Caddy with Commodore Tutorial CD inside o Cables o Hookup booklet CD-1500 Pro Pack o Wired Mouse, CD-1253 o Keyboard, KKQ-E94YC o External Drive, CD-1411 o AmigaDOS 1.3 System disks and documentation o Catalog of CDTV titles o Lemmings CD o Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia CD o CD Caddy The system I'll review contains the following: CDTV/P, Sharp VHS VCR, Commodore 1084 monitor, and Emerson 2400 baud modem, but will mention cases when I've tested other hardware with it. HARDWARE The CDTV unit, built to be put into a hi-fi component rack, has the following dimensions: 430mm W x 330mm D x 95mm H. It is black with 15mm high cylindrical feet, for shock reduction, stability, traction, and ventilation. Very slick. The base CDTV unit is identical to that in UK, except for the Video Slot card, as noted in THP's review. Some comments on my CDTV/P: using the remote control as a mouse or joystick is quite a pain. Since the remote control acts as a joystick, using it as a mouse means that the pointer will only move at one speed, which is adjustable only through Preferences. I highly recommend the Pro Pack's mouse. I don't know about most people, but Nintendo and Sega-type joypads have always served to make my thumbs throb in pain, so the CDTV's remote didn't help much. The directional buttons are in the style of the Nintendo's controls, but instead of making an integrated "plus" design (where one cross-shaped button (like this: +) is rocked up, down, left, or right), Commodore chose to split the four controls into four separate buttons. This would be fine, except that Commodore put plastic dividers between the buttons! To make the controller slightly more functional, I filed off these dividers. The remote control's range is good (I've used it up to 20 feet away), but trying to send commands to CDTV at angles of more than 45 degrees makes for spotty response. When you're playing a game, and the pad moves while you're hitting buttons or directional controls, this isn't very helpful. There is a corded version pictured in the Tutorial CD, but I've never heard about nor seen one. Again, for games, buy a regular joystick. There are two devices I know of that allow the CDTV to use regular mice and joysticks: Top Secret's Brickette and Commodore's own CDTV Trackball. The CDTV Trackball has a trackball (obviously), genlock control, and joystick ports, and can operate either via infrared or corded control. It uses the CDTV mouse port, so say goodbye to the slick mouse! I know of no adapter to let you use the mouse with a normal Amiga mouse port. I'm not an Amiga musician, so my CDTV's MIDI slots just gather dust. I've had some friends (who are Amiga musicians) look at the CDTV, and they are glad it has these ports as standard. But, they ask, why doesn't it have a MIDI THRU port? For the Expansion Port, the only device I know of that goes in there is AmiTrix Development's SCSI-TV, which provides a SCSI port which allows you to add up to seven SCSI devices. (CDTV should have had this in the first place, as does the A3000.) SCSI-TV also has a mounting bracket for $10 extra which lets you mount a 2.5" Quantum Go drive inside CDTV. Nice, but I've been hunting for weeks in search of a 2.5" SCSI drive, and no one's ever heard of it. I sent e-mail to AmiTrix about this, but have yet to receive a reply; I'm still trying to reach Quantum. AmiTrix also has in the works a fast RAM expansion device -- it's about time somebody did! Currently, the only way to add RAM is via DKB's MegAChip. The Video Slot is a nice feature; but because of CDTV's design, it could not be the same type as the ones in other Amigas. CDTV's Video Slot comes filled with a video output card, and I can think of two other devices available for it: Commodore's CD-1300 genlock, and the AVM card (manufactured by America Multimedia, Inc., according to the "Commodore Multimedia" literature). The genlock is discussed briefly in the Tutorial CD, and the standard control of it is a nice touch (buttons for genlock control are standard on the remote control and trackball). I called Safe Harbor's technical support about it, and they say it has S-Video input and Composite output. What? No RF or S-Video out? As for the AVM card, American Multimedia said that it uses DCTV display technology, and does nothing else the full DCTV unit can (digitize, etc.). They also said that the AVM card is available only to CDTV developers, and has a composite output only (so you lose all the outputs of your original Video Slot card). I hope this isn't NDA material, but a CDTV developer I talked to (well, e-mailed, anyway) tells me that CATS has released CDTV 2.0 ROMs, which will allow CDTV's 1.3-based OS to finally move to 2.x without losing CD0: (the CD drive's ID under AmigaDOS). The ROMs are for developers only, and I can only hope that they will be released to the public. Since my warranty expired a few days ago, I decided to open up my CDTV and have a look. It appears that CDTV uses two ROM chips (like the A3000, I believe) -- low and high ROMs. The same developer who told me about the new ROMs also said that he's managed to squeeze in ICD's AdSpeed, but cannot boot in the 14 MHz mode (it works fine if you boot in 7 MHz mode, then software-switch it to double-speed once within Workbench). Of all the developers I've called, none has a CDTV accelerator. At one time, Progressive Peripherals Incorporated told me that one might be made if their 040/500 line fared well, but then they had a fire, and now I doubt that they will be releasing one. Advanced Systems & Software's Blizzard Board will work with CDTV, I'm told, but will not fit under the casing. The same goes for CSA's and MicroBotics' accelerators, which is a pity. The main reason I want acceleration for CDTV is because most accelerators come with RAM expansion, but so far none will work without my removing the CDTV casing. There's a lot more to CDTV than this, so please refer to THP's review. DOCUMENTATION Everything is the same as in THP's review, except that I did receive an A500 manual, an AmigaBASIC manual, and a catalog of CDTV titles. GROLIER'S ELECTRONIC ENCYCLOPEDIA ("GEE") FOR CDTV The CD takes about 45 seconds to load, and right before it's ready, a voice welcomes you to "Grolier's Electronic Encyclopedia on CD-ROM, a treasury of sights and sounds for the entire family." Credits are simultaneously shown, and then you are brought to the main screen. GEE is made by Xiphias, who has released other reference CD-ROMs for CDTV. Like other Xiphias titles, the main screen consists of a large panel of buttons, one for each letter, and function buttons at the bottom (Word Search, Title Search, See Pictures, etc.). There is also an asterisk button (*) for wildcard searches, backspace button (<==) to delete the last letter typed, and an "Enter" button. The palette chosen looks fine in composite or RGB, but the interlaced screen makes GEE painful to use for more than an hour at a time (unless your CDTV is hooked up to a big-screen TV, and you're some distance away, or if you have a flicker fixer). You can use the remote control, mouse, or keyboard to enter search strings, and there's a little bar directly beneath the alphabet buttons to show what you've chosen. When working from the keyboard, hitting "Enter" or the Return key merely repeats the last character typed, instead of sending a Return, for some odd reason. Furthermore, if you're using the remote control or mouse, the alphabetic key layout is not "QWERTY," as are computer keyboards, so it takes more time to search for the right letter to press! It must be extremely annoying to CDTV owners without the Pro Pack. And, you cannot enter a "space" character or anything besides letters. Amazing. Anyway, once you've entered what you want, GEE will search the disc, with more time spent when more relevant articles are found. GEE will also make a spoken announcement whenever it can't find what you asked for. Within an article, the pointer can be used on the text in a Hypertext-type fashion, where you can highlight a word and then cross-reference it. There are also two sets of arrows: two at the upper left and right hand corners of the screen, and two within a button panel below any text you're reading. These can move back and forth between related articles in parent or current directories. With certain items chosen you'll find accompanying sound and picture files, and these can also be referenced by themselves from the main menu, if you don't need to research anything. Most of the pictures appear to be in 16 colors to get the highest resolution possible (CDTV is not AGA), or in 352x480 in HAM. Whether it's to save memory or get higher resolution, most pictures on the CD are not digitized photos, but digitized drawings and paintings, maybe even taken directly from the hardbound version of Grolier's Encyclopedia. Some of the audio samples are not too pleasing to the ear, I'm afraid, while others sound fine. One thing GEE has that most Amiga applications don't is... online help! Though actually not very helpful, it was a good idea, and should be implemented on other applications. GEE loads large audio samples to show you around, and switches screens to illustrate points. Here's something GEE was missing that I'd expect from a computer encyclopedia -- printer support! I couldn't believe this, and called Xiphias about it. They only said that if enough demand were for it, they'd release it in the next version. Again, amazing. I also viewed many of the images from AmigaDOS and found that I couldn't access them via GEE, such as maps(!), and Xiphias said they were from the PC version. Yet I viewed the pictures with an IFF viewer.... LEMMINGS FOR CDTV I've played Lemmings in disk form, so all I can say about Lemmings for CDTV is that you don't swap disks. I don't think anything was upgraded for the CDTV version. There is an added bonus on the CD, however: a demo animation of PlanetFall, a game that was once slated for release by Psygnosis. Planetfall was to take advantage of CDTV's CD capacity (and maybe CDXL?), but has so far not been released. CDTV IN ACTION I've had no problems with CDTV under AmigaDOS, and the addition of CD0: is only a boon. As THP stated in his review, you can play music CDs while running AmigaDOS (and even when not, like under certain games). I would like to make a plug here for a program available on Fred Fish Disk 868, CDTV-Player, which gives you extended audio control under AmigaDOS, since the only controls you'd normally have are the basic ones on the unit and the remote control. CDTV-Player even displays lyrics for a song and recognizes CDs automatically. There are other features in the works. CDTV-Player is available from AmiNet sites around the world. As for the CD drive, I've had no major problems. On occasion, however, you have to reinsert a caddy, since the drive did not register your putting it in. I've said this earlier in the article, but I really would like more RAM in my Amiga. The MegAChip is nice, but how about some fast RAM? Like THP noted, the CD filing system eats up around 150K of RAM under AmigaDOS, so from there you've got to get creative and economical when choosing programs. I've created custom disks and chosen tiny programs to deal with the limited RAM and single disk drive. But then I thought, "Wait! What about the credit card RAM slot in front! I'll bet I can use those new PCMCIA cards in it!" No luck, since CDTV's card slot is not the same as the ones found in the A600 and A1200. The specs also note that it can only handle 256K maximum. I think the 256K card costs around $349.99, and cannot be used as regular RAM, just a storage disk for high scores for titles that support it. Why so expensive? For more information on what CDTV is capable of under AmigaDOS, please refer to THP's review. EXPANSION In addition to the various ones I've listed above, I've had no problems using the CDTV with an external genlock (namely, Digital Creations' SuperGen), DCTV, or MicroSearch's ChromaKey. What's nice about CDTV having so many outputs is that you can genlock the outgoing RGB signal and still have a composite, RF, AND S-Video out for reference! I think the A600 and A1200 can also do this, though only in RF. Printers and modems work fine; I've tried some Okidata printers and US Robotics Courier HST and Emerson 2400 modems. I've also tried using an NEC MultiSync 3D monitor with a Commodore RGB port adapter, and that worked fine as well. I have yet to try a hardware deinterlacer, for lack of cash, but it appears that CDTV's Amiga ports are no different than those on other Amigas, so there should be no problem. If you want a cheap way out, get the Super Denise chip for 4-color (yet flicker-free) Productivity mode on VGA or multiscanning monitors. Like other CDTV/P owners, I'm awaiting an accelerator board, and when I heard about Supra's SupraTurbo 28 accelerators, I quickly wrote to Supra and asked if they planned to release a version for CDTV. Supra says if their A500 and A2000 SupraTurbos do well, they might just make one for CDTV. I hope so. BEST USES Using the CD drive under AmigaDOS is very nice, especially when downloading files or copying files. I've heard about karaoke for CDTV, and know of at least one such disc -- a Beatles disc, but have yet to try it out (I feel no need to embarrass myself at the moment, I guess!). And yes, like the magazines say, CDTV would make a nice presentation system, although the A1200 is now better. Still, the CDTV will still help me do things like word processing and modeming when and if I do get enough money for an AGA machine (A4000T! A4000T!), since old Amigas are not useless Amigas. And if I buy hard drives or SyQuests and hook them up to CDTV, then ParNet it to an AGA machine, then I'd have something like a data server! I'd store all data there, and use the AGA machine's hard drive to keep programs. FOR THE FUTURE If some new incarnation of CDTV will be released by Commodore, I sincerely wish for the following additions/modifications: o More complex CD controls on unit, remote control, and from AmigaDOS o SCSI port o Multifunctional display, and maybe add seconds to clock display, too o Adjustable left and right audio control o Regular 12-hour clock mode that doesn't screw up every 12 hours (a small bug at the moment) o Regular Amiga expansion slots, perhaps in an external mini-tower which would also hold drives, so that CDTV can keep its figure o AmigaDOS 3.x and AGA graphics (or at least standard AVM card) o 32-bit motherboard bus o 68020 or better CPU o Standard Amiga joystick/mouse ports o MIDI-through port o Double-speed CD-ROM drive with more format compatibility o Standard PCMCIA slot (2.0+), and keep the card eject! o More controls on remote control CONCLUSIONS Like THP, I am pleased with my CDTV/P. Like anything else, there's room for improvement (that's what technology is for, right?), but CDTV will always be useful to me. Once accelerators and Fast RAM devices are created, CDTV will be quite nice. DISCLAIMER I am associated with none of the above listed companies, corporations, or people. I'm just another Amiga owner with something to say. Direct all flames to e-mail, and all lawsuits to my invisible friend Ernie (just kidding!).... COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1993 Nhan Nguyen. All rights reserved. If you'd like to repost this, publish it, or modify it in any way, just tell me first. There shouldn't be any problem. CONTACT Contact me QUICK if you have money to throw around and want to get rid of some! Or if you'd just like to ask some questions about what CDTV can or can't do, its quirks, or need to find a person to beta-test a CDTV product...etc. Sure, flame me, too, if you like. I'll be at the following address till September 15, 1993. ____________________________________________________________________________ | __ | | __///Only A1200--A1200HD Nhan Trong Nguyen Sophomore, UH | | \XX/Amiga A4000---A4000T st2cf@jetson.uh.edu Desktop Video | |____________________________________________________________________________| --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Article 367 of comp.sys.amiga.reviews: Path: news.csos.orst.edu!flop.ENGR.ORST.EDU!rutgers!concert!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!menudo.uh.edu!usenet From: ganoe@sde.mdso.vf.ge.com (Ganoe Craig) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: Re: REVIEW: Amiga CDTV and 2 discs Keywords: hardware, system, CDTV, CD-ROM, CD, commercial, followup Message-ID: <27ks1r$sed@menudo.uh.edu> Date: 20 Sep 93 18:16:27 GMT Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Reply-To: ganoe@sde.mdso.vf.ge.com (Ganoe Craig) Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 37 Approved: barrett@math.uh.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu I wanted to make a few comments on the more recent CDTV review for incorporation into c.s.a.reviews. First, Philip McDunnough e-mailed me with information about a fast RAM expander he purchased for his CDTV called BigRAM CD8. It plugs into the CDTV motherboard and comes with 2 megabytes of RAM (allows for expansion with zips for 8 meg). The price is 399DM from: W.A.W Elektronik Commodore Computer Service Tegeler Stra{e 2 1000 Berlin 28 Tel. +49 / 30 / 404 33 31 fax= 011 49 30 4047039 Second, the credit card RAM cards for CDTV (64k and 256k) can be used as fast RAM. They don't AutoConfig though, the memory must be added to the CDTV's memory pool using a command such as AddMem, which I believe is available on the Fish disks. At this time, these cards are still way too expensive to just to use as RAM. Finally, the A600 and A1200 have a composite video output as well as RF. [MODERATOR'S NOTE: This information will be added to the archived copy of the original review, available on our ftp site math.uh.edu. - Dan] --- Dan Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews