Got a CDTV - completely new to this.

[ChefDeadpool]

Hi, everyone.

I got a CDTV today in trade for another piece of hardware.

I’ve had and sold a few Amiga machines over the years, but they had some serious hardware problems and ended up being more effort to keep running than to fix. I’ve decided to take the plunge and see if I can keep this one going.

There’s nothing wrong with the machine, except that it was missing the controller, so as I wait for it, I thought I’d try and learn some more about it, an have a few questions:

1. What are the best recommended hardware products available for this machine? I have found a couple items on eBay like keyboard and mouse adapters, but I’m hoping someone could point me at some of the places I can get whatever currently-available products and kits there are for the CDTV.

2. Does the controller work as a normal Amiga joystick/mouse, or does it only work with the CDTV games?

3. Are there any recommended methods for burning bootable copies of CDTV images I might find available?

I’d appreciate any help you folks could provide.

[supaduper]

Originally Posted by ChefDeadpool

Hi, everyone.

I got a CDTV today in trade for another piece of hardware.

I’ve had and sold a few Amiga machines over the years, but they had some serious hardware problems and ended up being more effort to keep running than to fix. I’ve decided to take the plunge and see if I can keep this one going.

There’s nothing wrong with the machine, except that it was missing the controller, so as I wait for it, I thought I’d try and learn some more about it, an have a few questions:

1. What are the best recommended hardware products available for this machine? I have found a couple items on eBay like keyboard and mouse adapters, but I’m hoping someone could point me at some of the places I can get whatever currently-available products and kits there are for the CDTV.

2. Does the controller work as a normal Amiga joystick/mouse, or does it only work with the CDTV games?

3. Are there any recommended methods for burning bootable copies of CDTV images I might find available?

I’d appreciate any help you folks could provide.

Answers:

1.this guy sells a few nice addons/upgrades for the CDTV, https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Commodore...sAAOSwbsBXp0WI

you can upgrade the CDTV to 3.1 by replacing the extended roms , a guy on Amibay sells them.
Youcan upgrade the memory to 8mb and the chip ram to 2mb like the A500.

2.Yes the controller works just like the normal Amiga Mice and Joysticks but wireless for the CDTV but you can buy adapters to use real Amiga Mice and joysticks, you can get a Keyboard but they are rare and expensive.

3. Just Burn and CD`s at slow speed and I use Nero or Imgburn and I get good results using the .cue file to burn them

[grelbfarlk]

You can also make a simple wire adapter to use Amiga keyboards with the CDTV for the cost of a male and female PS/2 connector, at that point you can use any of the PS/2 to Amiga adapters and a wireless PS/2 keyboard.

[fgh]

Cheapest is to take an external disk drive, and replace the drive with a gotek.
You'd still want some kind of db9 adapter to use regular joysticks or pads.

As others stated going further is possible but expensive.
MKL ram+IDE board is the cheapest way to get fast ram and ide controller.
Scsi and separate fast ram boards are also possible.
As for CPU upgrades, some rare a500 turbo boards fit but most won't let you close the lid and require extra CPU sockets and/or motherboard modifications to fit.
If you want 2mb chip you need an expensive megachip adapter.
All that said, it's a cool little machine, have fun with it!

[ChefDeadpool]

Originally Posted by supaduper

Answers:

1.this guy sells a few nice addons/upgrades for the CDTV, https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Commodore...sAAOSwbsBXp0WI

you can upgrade the CDTV to 3.1 by replacing the extended roms , a guy on Amibay sells them.
Youcan upgrade the memory to 8mb and the chip ram to 2mb like the A500.

2.Yes the controller works just like the normal Amiga Mice and Joysticks but wireless for the CDTV but you can buy adapters to use real Amiga Mice and joysticks, you can get a Keyboard but they are rare and expensive.

3. Just Burn and CD`s at slow speed and I use Nero or Imgburn and I get good results using the .cue file to burn them

Thanks for the suggestions on the KS roms and clarifying that about the controller.

I tried ImgBurn as you suggested. I need to dig around for another DVD drive. The one I have won’t write CD-Rs any slower than 16x, and the discs ended up being unreadable by the CDTV.

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

You can also make a simple wire adapter to use Amiga keyboards with the CDTV for the cost of a male and female PS/2 connector, at that point you can use any of the PS/2 to Amiga adapters and a wireless PS/2 keyboard.

Thanks. I dug around some more, and found the SUM keyboard adapter for CDTV. That should actually work with a USB wireless keyboard, no?

Originally Posted by fgh

Cheapest is to take an external disk drive, and replace the drive with a gotek.
You'd still want some kind of db9 adapter to use regular joysticks or pads.

As others stated going further is possible but expensive.
MKL ram+IDE board is the cheapest way to get fast ram and ide controller.
Scsi and separate fast ram boards are also possible.
As for CPU upgrades, some rare a500 turbo boards fit but most won't let you close the lid and require extra CPU sockets and/or motherboard modifications to fit.
If you want 2mb chip you need an expensive megachip adapter.
All that said, it's a cool little machine, have fun with it!

I think I’m just going to go the floppy emulator route for now, and wait for the Vampire V4, as it supports the CDTV. I couldn’t tell if it has updated KS roms in it though?

[Amiga1992]

The myth about burn speed affecting disc readability must end.
Usually it's more about which media you use, or a failing drive on either end.
16x should be just fine.
There's also images online that just don't work, you have to make sure you have confirmed 100% working images.

[Codetsu]

it's old hardware at the time there was limit amount of CD format out there
and CDTV won't like newer formats iso9600 is what C= use
there is some more what CDTV supports but cant remember what

burn images iso9600 is what sod work

http://amiga.resource.cx/mod/cdtv.html

[ChefDeadpool]

I ordered a spindle of silver lacquer JVC/Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs from Amazon. They're supposed to be here Friday. I guess we'll see what happens.

[ChefDeadpool]

The JVC / Taiyo Yuden discs don't work either. I just ran a Maxell CD Lens cleaner with the brushes in the CDTV just in case. I'm trying TOSEC images of the A500/A600/CDTV Demo Disc 1, and a TOSEC image of Defender of the Crown.

Commercial audio CDs work flawlessly.

[utri007]

Originally Posted by Akira

The myth about burn speed affecting disc readability must end.
Usually it's more about which media you use, or a failing drive on either end.
16x should be just fine.
There's also images online that just don't work, you have to make sure you have confirmed 100% working images.

I have burn quite much CDTV games to CD. I haven't ever got single game work if I burn them faster than 4x. Those CDs open with my other amigas, but CDTV woun't boot from them.

One I burnt punch of games and none of them worked. Started again with write speed 4x and everyone worked.

[ChefDeadpool]

I’ve now tried burning everything at 4x. I’ve tried the Taiyo Yuden discs, burning at 4x, using ImgBurn with .cue and .bin files. Both burned and commercial audio CDs work.

Can someone here link to a known good CDTV image that I can use with ImgBurn? I don’t even care what it is, as long as it will work on an NTSC CDTV.

[MJBRP]

Adding to this thread as I have the same issue. Just acquired an A570 but cannot seem to burn a CDTV image to disk that can be read. The image I have selected works in WinUAE without issue.

I am reading that using good quality brand CD's with a slow burning speed and selecting .cue file is the way forward ?

Is this correct ?

Any particular burning program? Any particular platform - ie Windows/Mac

Look forward to replies

Cheers

Mj