Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet From: st2cf@jetson.uh.edu (Nhan Trong Nguyen) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Amiga CDTV and 2 discs Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Date: 2 Jul 1993 14:25:56 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 385 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <211ghk$8uc@menudo.uh.edu> Reply-To: st2cf@jetson.uh.edu (Nhan Trong Nguyen) NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Keywords: hardware, system, CDTV, CD-ROM, CD, commercial PRODUCT NAME Commodore Dynamic Total Vision (CDTV) Grolier's Electronic Encyclopedia CD-ROM Lemmings CD-ROM [MODERATOR'S NOTE: This review was updated on September 20, 1993. Search for the text "[UPDATE:" to find updated information. -Dan] 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. [UPDATE: A Fast RAM expander exists 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 Germany Tel. +49 / 30 / 404 33 31 fax= 011 49 30 4047039 Thanks to Philip McDunnough and Craig Ganoe for this information.] 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? [UPDATE: 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. Thanks to Craig Ganoe for this information.] 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. [UPDATE: The A600 and A1200 have a composite video output as well as RF. Thanks to Craig Ganoe for this information.] 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