What Makes The Amiga CD32 The Best Amiga?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

So what happens when you do a c2p conversion - you are saying the Amiga just freezes? Surely you can still do CPU work? or does it write to CPU registers?

The way it works is the CPU writes 32 longwords worth of chunky pixels into it, then reads 32 longwords of bitplane data out. As far as I know there is no waiting for it do the conversion. The CPU has a bit of work to do copying from the chunky bitmap to Akiko and copying from Akiko to the bitplanes, but this is much less than the work required do the conversion with CPU instructions. IOW, it makes c2p viable on a stock CD32, when otherwise it would be much too slow.

However because Akiko is on the 7MHz chipRAM bus a faster CPU must slow down to access it. Some accelerator cards had unsophisticated ChipRAM bus interfaces that forced them wait for the whole time (or even longer if not synced to it) while others latched the write data so the CPU could continue processing while the ChipRAM bus write was in progress.

An interesting idea I have been thinking about is creating a c2p chip like Akiko but which runs on the CPU bus, perhaps even writing to ChipRAM automatically via DMA so the CPU only has to stuff it with chunky data. Or the ultimate, a full frame chunky bitmap in FastRAM which looks like an actual chunky screen to the CPU, coupled to ChipRAM via DMA for zero c2p overhead!

[Foebane]

Many Amiga demos I've seen, especially for 68020 and above, have the creators make their own c2p routines, and I would bet that ALL of them far outstrip Akiko's abilities by far.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

Yes that's exactly what I think too. A500 was way better than CD32 in terms of impact at the time. But CD32 is a big step ahead in absolute terms

If you allow an upgrade to A500 ram (e.g. half meg upgrade) which was standard back then - then you could also add Fast Ram to CD32 and make it twice as fast

One thing I don't like about the CD32 is the way they ripped off the Megadrive case - down to the volume control and headphone socket - whoever used that on Megadrive anyway? Also the case is a poor design. Like it was not done by a real designer

It was cool it had "32 Bit" emblazoned across it though.

A big step ahead ? The CD32 couldn't have a version of SWOS because there wasn't enough space to save the game.
Save space was a big problem on the CD32, probably the biggest. Even CDTV had a larger save space.

[LeChuck]

Well, as someone who actually bough one back in 1994 despite already owning an Amiga 1200 I must say I did apprecciate it having the best versions of several Amiga games but also as an actual piece of hardware it really isn't the best Amiga.. the build quality is by far the worst of any Amiga branded piece of hardware, from the unit itself to that controller everything just felt flimsy and built on a budget.

Originally Posted by Konrad

@Gilbert: Wonderful marketing blah-blah. Please compare sales figues of CD32 and Mega-CD . And no, it's not just bad marketing.


In the CD32 I had high hopes and was utterly disappointed, as there were just few games which showed what the CD32 could achieve. I didn't need A500 or AGA games conversions, I already had those. Yes, talkie in Beneath A Steel Sky or Simon the Sorcerer is great. Microcosm was shit. What else was there ?
It was a console and had to compare to MegaDrive and SNES. If you wanted to play games, which availalable console had the best games available ? Well, not the CD32, I can tell you that.

Of course you could upgrade it to a full personal computer. But then it got more expensive and would have to compete with other options. Why should I switch from my Amiga 2000HD, or others from their Amiga 1200's, to a CD32 ? There was no reason, definitely not for 5 or 6 interesting games, nothing overwhelming here. I rather thought about adding a SNES or Genesis to my collection.

Well Megadrive/Genesis is one thing but MegaCD is pretty much considered a flop too with only a handful of good software that made it worth buying like maybe Sonic CD, the Lunar games, Snatcher etc and a load of crummy FMV games that look hideous, extremely slow cd drive etc etc..
It had a version of Monkey Island but it was not a good experience to play it with how the save system worked. I would take the Amiga version anyday.

Amiga CD32 had a handfull of good things too but it was too little too late to make any kind of impact on the market and it did really lack a killer app. 256 colour version of Simon the Sorcerer with talkies was nice and all but..

[LeChuck]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

Ruff n tumble is good but...

C'mon man the Amiga it was realised 6 years after Intellvision which had 8 sprites. 8 sprites is not enough! Not to mention it cost a fortune when it was first released.

I love the Amiga but so many of the games are 16 color only, 25fps or don't even fill the screen. What annoys me now is that homebrew coders spend 2 years making a schmup and think that developers in 1989 who had 6 months to make a game and no internet, should have been able to do that too.

Taking only 6 months instead of 2 years is one thing but even so, games that look and play identical to Atari ST with maybe only superior audio is just lazy no matter what, Amiga could have done easily better if just a tiny amount of care and effort was put into the conversion. I dont see any reason to defend devs with these minimum effort conversions even if it was late 80's and the games had quick production schedules.

[Foebane]

Gilbert, sit down, relax, and watch this entertaining documentary on why the CD32 is a shit console, from someone who knows:

[ Show youtube player ]

Believe me, almost everyone here at EAB agrees with him, too.

I was a holdout for a while because I thought the guy was bashing Amiga in general, but I've been assured by many that that's not the case.

[LeChuck]

As far as how the hardware itself feels I always had a softspot for Amiga 1000 and Amiga 3000 despite not getting my hands on either till much after release, classy design, wonderful build quality.. A2000 was super solid too and had wonderful expandabilty but it was a bit uglier. CD32 is just built like a toy in comparison, even compared to A500 or 600.

Anyway, obviously what you can do with the hardware is much more important.. functionality over form so to say, and an expanded Amiga CD32 into a computer gives you a great access to a lot of sotware. But I do like the feeling of actually using something thats built to last.

[Predseda]

What Makes The Amiga CD32 The Best Amiga?

Nothing.

[Cobe]

Today, ease of use and form factor.
Today cause of same reasons A600 would be my second choice. While back in the day I didnt even took it in any consideration.

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Gilbert, sit down, relax, and watch this entertaining documentary on why the CD32 is a shit console, from someone who knows:

Believe me, almost everyone here at EAB agrees with him, too.

I was a holdout for a while because I thought the guy was bashing Amiga in general, but I've been assured by many that that's not the case.

lol, have to disagree. I find people who never owned something always have something to say about it, just because bill down the road said it was crap.


I really can't stand that video, I hope he is just joking around and not being serious in that video.

Originally Posted by sokolovic

A big step ahead ? The CD32 couldn't have a version of SWOS because there wasn't enough space to save the game.
Save space was a big problem on the CD32, probably the biggest. Even CDTV had a larger save space.

Well, others managed to alter their stuff to work with it. I would have thought Sensible, would have been sensible and worked the problem.

[jotd]

What Makes The Amiga CD32 The Best Amiga?

It may not be the best amiga but at least people talk about it

Well, others managed to alter their stuff to work with it. I would have thought Sensible, would have been sensible and worked the problem.

the NV space is very small. For instance Speedball II and possibly others changed the way of saving by providing encoded passwords (like Chaos Engine does), but SWOS can't probably do that because of the amount of data to save (player names, ...). Even with compression you're not sure to have the right amount

Another issue with NV ram is that in a lot of cases, game doesn't use nv library and takes over the NV. So you can play a particular game, save progress, but as soon as you switch games the new game destroys previous savegame data (with system compliant nonvolatile library using games it's possible to back it up... but to floppy? to hard drive? if you have a hard drive why are you saving to NV...). No acceptable solution. Play only arcade games.

[Predseda]

It definitelly was the last Amiga.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Predseda

It definitelly was the last Amiga.

The last Amiga that Commodore produced, yes. But I'm sure Escom made their own variants on the A1200 (including tower systems) back in 1995 and later.

[E-Penguin]

Originally Posted by Cobe

Today, ease of use and form factor.
Today cause of same reasons A600 would be my second choice. While back in the day I didnt even took it in any consideration.

Today, the A600 is the best Amiga for the money. You can get an A600 and a furia for a couple of hundred quid and run rings around big box amigas costing ten times as much.

Good luck finding a cd32 for under £300.

[Cobe]

True, I had luck 5 years ago getting it for 50e.

[DamienD]

Thing I don't like about A600s is the KS 2.x ROMs.

This causes incompatibility with some games that like KS 1.3 ROMs.

[Cobe]

You have to have 2.05 in order to utilize inbuilt ide.

[Konrad]

Damien, you can always use TUDE or Degrader to bypass that problem.
That said, back when I had one I missed the numeric keys and disliked the position of the arrow keys. Still a nice machine. Chibi Amiga .

[FOL]

Originally Posted by jotd

Another issue with NV ram is that in a lot of cases, game doesn't use nv library and takes over the NV. So you can play a particular game, save progress, but as soon as you switch games the new game destroys previous savegame data (with system compliant nonvolatile library using games it's possible to back it up... but to floppy? to hard drive? if you have a hard drive why are you saving to NV...). No acceptable solution. Play only arcade games.

Not entirely true, you can lock the saves, to stop it being overwritten.
Besides, who knows what would have come next, my addon, upgrade on design. Shame they went bust.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by FOL

Well, others managed to alter their stuff to work with it. I would have thought Sensible, would have been sensible and worked the problem.

Maybe because others could make a save state in 1kb NVRAM.
That was impossible for SWOS, and I'm sure this isn't because of Sensible Soft not wanting to do a CD32 version of SWOS. They made a Cannon Fodder version for the console which is the one and only ame to use FMV extension.


The save space provided CD32 to have Civilization, probably Dune. The Theme Park CD32 version is by far the worst of any Amiga version, it saves the stats but not the park design and takes ALL the the 1Kb NVRAM. And I think that Frontier Elite 2 also was needing the full save space to be played.


Considering even the CDTV had at least the double of save space, I'm pretty sure that this was an intentionnal move from Commodore, wantingg devs to make just arcade games on the machine.


Oh, let's have a thouht for interplay who released a Castle 2 exclusive Amiga version for the CD32 without the possibility of saving at all without an extra floppy drive that wasn't ever released by commodore.