What Makes The Amiga CD32 The Best Amiga?

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Puuh, such a thread in 2020? It was dicussed a million times before. The CD32 was a rushed release to make at least a extra few bucks out of the A1200 technology. The flaws are massive:


1. Horribly cheap built quality.

2. No RGB out in 1993!!!

3. a nearly pointless controller. The multi-button design was a good idea. The standard pad though is pretty much useless. Only 3rd party controller works as you would expect.

4. A very picky CD drive. One you the worst in all CD consoles.

5. Mostly lame 1:1 disk ports. Some with CD audio, only a few CD32 exclusive games.

6. Way too tiny flashram

So NO, clearly not the best Amiga at all. But today you can fix some of the flaws with additional hardware to make it a bearable Amiga.

This is off-topic. This thread is clearly title "What makes the CD32 the BEST Amiga?"


As for saying "a picky CD Drive". That may be true but it still has a CD Drive in the first place when no other Amiga does

So while your points are mostly right - other Amigas have one button controllers and suck in comparison. And they lack Akiko and streaming off the CD.

The CD32 was the best Amiga experience you could get back then

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

My posts about CD32 owners being abused were in response to me being abused for doing nothing more than state how great the CD32 was. So make of that what you will. I haven't mentioned people hating CD32 owners apart from that one time. You are the one who keeps going on about it. I would say other Amiga model owners are very insecure about the CD32. So I happy to make allowances for them getting upset about CD32 owners getting the enhanced versions of all their games

I haven't attacked A1200 owners. It's a good choice of machine. A lot of them do seem very keen to turn it into a CD32 though. Again I understand this. I would probably be doing the same thing!

Agreed Akiko wasn't a big advantage BUT the 68000 is free while it's doing it's thing. Akiko put it's results into memory - to be retrieved when they are needed. Also even the CD32 games that use Akiko (like Gloom Deluxe) probably did a quick fix to include it without working it into optimal routines.

Also dont forget the CD32's streaming ability - imagine how much graphical data and lookup tables you could stream in to speed up games on the fly.

Exile is a whole consistent open world so it's quite a lot I'd imagine. Also I said many posts ago that 1k wasn't ideal but it's fine for most games. If you need to save 10,000 football player stats and names then maybe that's hard to get into 1k. But then you always have the SX-1 to increase storage. No one ever criticsed the Playstation for needing additional memory cards to save games.

I think it's the point, CD32 had flash ram built in. Which was to small. I remember buying a datel multi card for my ps1. U would use controller to switch between cards.
Commodore should have either increased flash or had expansion plans for it.

Sent from my I3113 using Tapatalk

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

This is off-topic. This thread is clearly title "What makes the CD32 the BEST Amiga?"





As for saying "a picky CD Drive". That may be true but it still has a CD Drive in the first place when no other Amiga does



So while your points are mostly right - other Amigas have one button controllers and suck in comparison. And they lack Akiko and streaming off the CD.



The CD32 was the best Amiga experience you could get back then

CDTV AND A570 had CD drives.

Sent from my I3113 using Tapatalk

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

This is off-topic. This thread is clearly title "What makes the CD32 the BEST Amiga?"

That's good point.

Please, open a new thread with name: "What makes the CD32 the WORST Amiga?", so we can discuss it further.

[DamienD]

The thread should really be renamed to "Is the Amiga CD32 the best Amiga?", and then discussion from both side are suitable

[Retro-Nerd]

Or: What was the best about the CD32 console? The multi-button controller. Cased closed.

[skan]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

This is off-topic. This thread is clearly title "What makes the CD32 the BEST Amiga?"

Oh, so you just wanted an answer to that? OK, easy!

"Nothing."

Thread closed.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by DamienD

The thread should really be renamed to "Is the Amiga CD32 the best Amiga?", and then discussion from both side are suitable

Yeah, but we want to force Gilbert to write that CD32 is the worst.

[Retro1234]

like I say when it was released it was not my favourite I think it could of been so much more.
What could make it a favourite now is it a all in one unit with a high storage capacity media i.e CD that can hold many classic games on a compilation disc, it is AGA 68020 with 2mb that is good for things like WHDload, it also brought 6 button joypad to Amiga - I don't like joysticks/1 button
it is capable of streaming video, people like earok have used this.

[Konrad]

A1200 is also AGA 68020, has 2MB of Chipram, has also full joypad button support and you can install all the games on harddisk instead of a CD, even more. Plus you can play all the games which require a keyboard.
What streaming video do you mean ? You don't mean the old VCD movies, do you ?

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Konrad

A1200 is also AGA 68020, has 2MB of Chipram, has also full joypad button support and you can install all the games on harddisk instead of a CD, even more. Plus you can play all the games which require a keyboard.
What streaming video do you mean ? You don't mean the old VCD movies, do you ?

Full button support is not supported out of the box. You need low level library.

So you can install cd32 games with cdda audio.
Hmmm, how is this done? What program are you using?

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[jotd]

you need games that support the controller through lowlevel library or natively (for instance whdload slaves)

But before the CD32 noone had the idea to create a controller like that. So CD32 brought some standardization on that point at least.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by jotd

I didn't know that. Yes, that was really stupid to omit that part. CD32 was certainly rushed. I don't even understand why they bothered to create akiko c2p capability when it was only used by the graphics library, meaning that games not using the OS couldn't benefit of it (and I never saw any game using akiko for that directly)

Fitting a proper sized flash memory and serial port to be able to back it up would have been a better move.

They were actually very proud of Akiko. Someone should do an interview with the engineers about the CD32 and ask about these things

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by skan

I think the whole c2p stuff (as well as the 1K outrageous flashram) is just a kinda "side effect" of having some spare space left on the chip design (and let's not forget Akiko is just an attempt to cost reduce the chipset design by eliminating CIAs+Gayle+Budgie and throwing a CDROM controller in the mix).

A bit of explanation can be found here: https://bigbookofamigahardware.com/b...t.aspx?id=1604

Oh cool that's interesting - not sure that's in context what you quoted there - from the article that sounds like it's about the A1200 Card Akiko add on - not the Akiko chip on CD32

This sounds right about the c2p

The “chunky to planar” logic was thought out in a lunchtime conversation between Beth Richard (system chip design), Chris Coley (board design), and Ken Dyke (software) over Subway sandwiches on a picnic table in a nearby park one day, because Ken was telling us how much of a pain it was to shuffle bits in software to port games from other platforms to the Amiga planar system. We took the idea to Hedley Davis, who was the system chip team manager and lead engineer on Akiko and he said we could go ahead with it. I showed him the “napkin sketch” of how I thought the logic would work and was planning on getting to it the next day as it was already late afternoon by that point. I came in the next morning and Hedley had completed it already, just from the sketch!

[Konrad]

@Fol:
Never had a problem with the gamepad when using the cd32 emulator.
And there are also whdload slaves supporting this.

Where did I say that you can cd32 games with cdda audio ? Nowhere.
That said there were A1200 Tower and A4000 Desktop+Tower available. Easily added with cdrom. All in one unit. And then you could of course play cd32 games directly with cd audio. Although I still would prefer the A4000 desktop which I owned back then. Much neater than a tower.
For the "classic" A1200 you would have required an external cdrom. Not so neat and tidy, but still works.

On a base cd32 you can't attach a keyboard. If I would have to choose I would decide for the MUCH bigger additional library of games which require a keyboard instead of the few interesting titles of cd32 which deliver cd audio.

I know you can expand the CD32, f.ex. with the SX32. You can also take the ugly SX-1, which doesn't really look beatiful or integrated. Look up the prices for both. If you don't already own one this is money wasted.
And then check the prices for A1200 expansion. Much more bang for the buck.

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by Konrad

A1200 is also AGA 68020, has 2MB of Chipram, has also full joypad button support and you can install all the games on harddisk instead of a CD, even more. Plus you can play all the games which require a keyboard.
What streaming video do you mean ? You don't mean the old VCD movies, do you ?

Streaming from the CD. It's like you have a massive storage space (albeit with slow access but over time you can stream in look up tables, new level and character graphics, music, Whatever you want)

[Konrad]

OK, understood. But unfortunately not used by any game, AFAIK.

[skan]

Originally Posted by Konrad

On a base cd32 you can't attach a keyboard. If I would have to choose I would decide for the MUCH bigger additional library of games which require a keyboard instead of the few interesting titles of cd32 which deliver cd audio.

You can attach an A4000 keyboard to the aux port on the CD32 IIRC, not to mention the uber rare cd32 branded keyboard.

[Retro1234]

I mean CDXL and earok's work Blue thunder and Time Gal.

there interesting they never made proper use of it back in the day<

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

The CD32's save system was fine for early adopters of the system.

Define "Early adopter"? Because games like Frontier were pretty early releases in the CD32's life.

Commodore no doubt had plans for an add-on to give more space.

Citation needed. Where, exactly, would such an add-on go? I've already explained the technical reasons that such add-ons don't exist.

Like you say in your post - it is possible.

Anything's possible if you throw enough money at it. You could probably put Zorro slots on the CD32 and run a Bridgeboard from it if you were really crazy enough and had enough cash and time to throw at it. But I also pointed out that it obviously wasn't a design feature of the CD32, a point which you've totally ignored (as usual).

Also you can fit whole games in 1K of memory.

Yep. You can fit games in less than 1K of memory. What's your point? That no console or computer system or game should ever need more than 1K of storage?

So people who can't fit their save data in it - suck. It's not just about raw data - it's about being clever about what data to save.

You've entirely ignored my points about Theme Park and the other games. There's simply too much data to save, so game saving capability has to be sacrificed. What's so clever about having to leave out the *actual* park in Theme Park?

That's how some games use passwords to represent game status.

Games that use passwords have a very finite number of possible states, so it's easy to store things as a hash. Not all games are like this, with lots having many billions of permutations of game state, making password saves (or the equivalent CD32 data save) impossible. Theme Park doesn't just have to save what level you're no, what score you have and how many lives remain. It has to store the location, the cost, the condition, the history, the capacity, the settings, the layout of every single ride, the mood, position, status and destination of every single person in the park, mathematical models of every single competitor, every single tile, every financial point, the progress of every step on the research tree... By all means, show us some working code (I'll accept pseudocode) that allows that to be saved in 1K.

I never said the Akiko was a 3D processing chip.

Indeed... So why be offended when someone speaks ill of its 3D processing chip then?

"Again with that presumptive arrogance." See what i mean. This is very rude. But we CD32 owners are used to worse...

Just proving my point regarding the persecution complex. There's no us versus them going on with anyone else but you. This supposed poor treatment you're talking about isn't actually to do with you being a CD32 owner. But I've already explained that and again you've ignored it.

You can't emulate a CD32 on a standard Amiga, that's like saying you can emulate an Amiga on a PC. It's not the same unless you have the real hardware. Even the sticker that says "32 bit" also adds a lot to the experience.

You've got to be joking, right?

I think that given the Akikio has DMA in it we can say it has a blast processor.

And once again you're ignoring what I and others are saying, thus giving your opinion more merit than facts. Which is absurd.

Again you said it's possible to upgrade the CD32 memory.

And again, you're ignoring the technical aspects of why upgrading the memory wasn't a design priority for the CD32.

So we agree that's an option for the future.

Nope, we don't.

I bet when the CD32 came out people didn't even think it could be turned into an enhanced A1200. But turns out it could.

For more money than an A1200 could be turned into an enhanced CD32...

Originally Posted by Gilbert

I was the one who got told off by the moderator.... not the people using the F-word or the ones using lame insults. Please explain this then. I have only been discussing people's points here.

It's already been explained to you. It's your arrogance and refusal to accept any facts that contradict your delusions that make you a target for people.

See again you are trying to bend everything to your weird narrative without looking at facts.

It's utterly baffling that you're trying to say this to me, when it's clearly a projection of your own behaviour.

I clearly don't have a persecution complex because the only people I was hard on were the ones who were the ones who came in hard on me first.

You clearly have a poor grasp of the concept of persecution complex.

And why would they do that? because...... they are insecure about not owning the best Amiga

Now I really think you are either trolling or have serious issues.

I get you are supporting your non-CD32 owning friends tho. Everything is tribal these days.

Very much no, you don't get me at all. But convincing yourself that you do is the only way to marry the dissonance of reality with your imagination.

Originally Posted by Gilbert

Now you see how big CD32 save slots really are.

And if you have a SX-1 you can use the HD as NVRAM. Would have been simple to provide extra storage in future

Yep, provided the games followed the rules. But if Commodore had wanted a simple way to expand the flash, they would have provided a slot like the A600, A1200 or CDTV for expanding the NVRAM. But they didn't - and didn't even provide support for such a slot in the chipset.

Originally Posted by FOL

3. Completely dis-agree. Still have my original controller in mint condition and working fine. People only moanded, cause like everything else they are heavy handed and break them.

People don't just moan about the controller because it broke on them, though they do seem pretty fragile. My original CD32 controller is undamaged, but it's still an awful controller with that D-pad. The stuck-on cross thing they added later on is an improvement but still not very nice at all.

Originally Posted by Gilbert

I would say other Amiga model owners are very insecure about the CD32. So I happy to make allowances for them getting upset about CD32 owners getting the enhanced versions of all their games

Nope. That really is just you imagining it.

If you need to save 10,000 football player stats and names then maybe that's hard to get into 1k.

Wow, is reality finally dawning?

But then you always have the SX-1 to increase storage. No one ever criticsed the Playstation for needing additional memory cards to save games.

Equating a PlayStation memory card with an SX-1 is absurdity in the extreme. If you had to pay the price of the PlayStation again for a memory card, it would very much have been criticised, and rightly so. If the CD32 had been designed with memory cards in mind, it would have avoided that criticism in the same way the PlayStation did.

Originally Posted by FOL

Full button support is not supported out of the box. You need low level library.

Indeed, many games just banged the hardware for CD32 pad support, just like most games banged the hardware for their graphics instead of using graphics.library. It's pretty trivial, and means that even ECS games with CD32 pad support can be played on an Amiga with any Kickstart / Workbench version.