CDTV CD drive replacement ?

[willbloke]

Somewhere in the loft I should have a CDTV with a duff CD drive. ( hope I didn't throw it when I moved!)
Info seems sketchy , but most sites say it is a proprietary item .
However I found the CDTV service manual and it says .

CD-ROM DRIVE SPECS
Sony/Philips type CD-ROM standard Mode1 , Mode2.

Is it possible to fit a standard CD drive ?

I vaguely remember I hacked it to use an A500 mouse !
But I see Amigakit do the remote , so I could reverse the mod .

Or the other option (incurring the wrath of the purists ), is to mod a mini-ITX into the case and run UAE , would be cool if you could use the original CDTV controller to run it !

Anybody done this ?

[Paul_s]

I doubt a standard CD drive would work. I'm pretty sure the mechanism/laser inside is a standard type of affair but the electronics were done specifically for the CDTV. Pretty much like the CD32.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by willbloke

Is it possible to fit a standard CD drive ?

Nope, it's a non standard part made specifically for CDTV. Only another CDTV drive (maybe A570) will work.

Or the other option (incurring the wrath of the purists ), is to mod a mini-ITX into the case and run UAE , would be cool if you could use the original CDTV controller to run it !

You can use the original CDTV controller with a PC. It is a regular Infra Red remote. All you'll need is a USB IR sensor.

[Toni Wilen]

Sony/Philips type CD-ROM standard Mode1 , Mode2.

This only means drive supports normal CD standards. Drive is using very old version of Matsushita protocol (similar but not same as first PC CDROMs that connected to custom controller cards)

A570 uses different controller chip (standard Sony CD controller chip + Xilinx FPGA chip that apparently handles convertsion between protocol formats!)

[willbloke]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

This only means drive supports normal CD standards. Drive is using very old version of Matsushita protocol (similar but not same as first PC CDROMs that connected to custom controller cards)

A570 uses different controller chip (standard Sony CD controller chip + Xilinx FPGA chip that apparently handles convertsion between protocol formats!)

Right , I remember now that the very first PC CD Roms connected to a port on the Soundblaster card , they weren't standard PATA .

Hmm , oh well ...

[MoRetro]

If we think out of the box, what would it take to use a standard CD or DVD drive in the CDTV or CD32?

All the best

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by MoRetro

If we think out of the box, what would it take to use a standard CD or DVD drive in the CDTV or CD32?

A hardware CD emulator. There are some existing for other platforms, but none that work on CD32 or CDTV.

I for one would think it would be great to have such a thing, but there's no demand and as such no interest from almost anyone to work on CDTV or CD32 expansions or upgrades of any kind.

HOwever how is the drive broken? The CD32 CD lens are easily replaceable with standard parts, maybe if it is the lens that are screwed, you can change that too.

[Pat the Cat]

Originally Posted by MoRetro

If we think out of the box, what would it take to use a standard CD or DVD drive in the CDTV or CD32?

All the best

In theory on CDTV you could use a SCSI cartridge to give you connection to an external SCSI CD or other drive. But, applications which expect the drive to be of a certain type and accessed a certain way, for things like Karaoke or playing Audio CDs might not work anymore.

Doubt you could boot off it though, and finding such cards available isn't easy. Although maybe I haven't really looked.

I guess SX32 also technically permits connecting IDE CD-ROM to a CD32 but same problems (availability, compatibility and probably non-booting).

Neither the CDTV (Matsushita) nor the CD32 (Sony) CD drives are either IDE or SCSI, IIRC. I'm not even sure they are compatible with each other.

Mind you, if you can select a boot source on CD32 by holding down both mouse buttons, might be possible to select an IDE drive to boot.

On the CDTV, the cartridge just provide a SCSI controller chip, the software driver is included in the onboard ROM I think. At least, it is in an A570, and you CAN boot from a SCSI drivee on an A500 with an A570 with Kickstart 2 upwards. Perhaps on 1.3 too, never tried, no 2 button mouse trick to select boot device. The SCSI cartridges are technically compatible between A570 and CDTV, but while a CDTV cartridge will hang out of the back of an A570, an A570 SCSI cart is too short to reach inside a CDTV.

[grelbfarlk]

There's a couple minor problems stopping someone from replacing the CDTV CDROM with a SCSI or IDE one, you just need a controller to support it. The CDTV SCSI module is not hard to find as people still make batches of these which don't cost very much.

However that means it doesn't boot CDTV disks any more. But you could still use it to play CDs in Workbench, it just becomes more like an Amiga 500 with a CDROM attached. There is a CDTV emulator in one of the CD driver packages, AsimCDFS I think?

The other problem is that the CDTV drive bay opening is not a standard size, so you can't just remove the drive and slide another one into the 5 1/4" bay. Eventually I plan to put a slot load IDE CDROM drive in the CDTV as WHDLoad has enough game support for me. The opening is definitely big enough for a slot load CDROM but not big enough for a slim optical tray load CDROM drive.

[patrik]

What is the common weak point of the CDTV drives and are they repairable to any extent?

[Pat the Cat]

They take a LOT of effort just to remove, clean and inspect, let alone fix.

CBM didn't pay and got cheap, incompatible and nasty, in line with their policy on drive products.

Add in "no spares" and you understand why owners usually find it cheaper to buy an unsold CDTV than they would to get a drive fixed - spares usually have to be remanufactured from scratch.

[grelbfarlk]

If you recall when the CDTV was introduced CD Drives were very rare on computers. It wasn't until a year or two later that IDE and SCSI CD-ROM drives were available for a fortune. Look at the memory card slot on the CDTV, not even PCMCIA was a standard yet. As someone said above even Soundblaster had their own weirdo CD Interface, or was it the same off-brand standard?

[bubbob42]

Some drives won't spin up anymore, but this can be fixed by exchanging capacitors on the drive itself.

[bugsymalone666]

Well the CDTV is an Amiga 500 in essence, so I wonder if it might be possible with the help of some gurus on here to come up with a 21st century solution.

I am not sure how the Kickstart is written on them, but using an IDE68k type adaptor you could add an IDE interface, then your over one hurdle.

After that the hard part is the Kickstart of the CDTV. I understand that the Amiga A570 could also do CDTV if you put a CDTV disc in it, but I dont know if there was a boot disc.

You can update the roms in the CDTV to later ones, therein may lie the key to using a more modern approach to solving the problem.

I think it might be the route that I looked at, I guess I dont fully know how the CDTV works, but my theory is that with some rom hacking might be the answer to using an IDE68K adaptor and being able to just use an IDE drive. The next hurdle is then fitting the drive. It looks close to a standard 5.25" but a little taller.

Just some ideas I guess, but maybe a feasible option?

[Pat the Cat]

Originally Posted by bugsymalone666

I understand that the Amiga A570 could also do CDTV if you put a CDTV disc in it, but I dont know if there was a boot disc.

No boot disk required. An A500 (1.3) with an A570 equipped starts up with the CDTV boot screen showing a rotating CD. It has an extra ROM in it.

Now, it has recently become possible to fit an upgraded ROM to a CDTV, I understand. I don't know details, but if you want to go the IDE route and make it bootable from IDE, you will need an upgraded ROM containing a SCSI.device that works with IDE. You will likely lose a lot of functionality doing that. (Drivers and handlers for the infra red remote, at least). To get them back, you would need to cook up a custom ROM with both sets of resources.

I do not know if the CD drives can be swapped between A570 and CDTV - I can check dimensions of A570, the Matsushita-Kotobuki numbers are sequential (511 in a CDTV, 512 in an A570) but they are not identical.

[grelbfarlk]

There are no drivers for the infra red remote and front panel buttons on a CDTV. They work with the CDTV ROM disabled. However the disc-playing buttons will not work without the CDTV ROM as those require the cdtv.device and associated libraries to be active.

I look at it this way, if you have an IDE or SCSI controller in your CDTV, and replace the built-in CD-ROM with an IDE or SCSI CD-ROM, why not add a Hard drive as well and put on a lot of WHDLoad games, which supports many but not all CDTV titles.

Then you can still use your new CD-drive with CD Playing apps but booting from a disc is a problem of which there are some workarounds, burning a custom rom, booting from HDD to run CD-ROM bootstrap, boot from floppy to do the same.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

However the disc-playing buttons will not work without the CDTV ROM as those require the cdtv.device and associated libraries to be active.

Actually front panel buttons will work without software but drive needs to be told that first. Send single command to drive, then the drive becomes more or less a stand-alone CD player.

Many features in CDTV are implemented in hardware. (vs CD32)

[Pat the Cat]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Actually front panel buttons will work without software but drive needs to be told that first. Send single command to drive, then the drive becomes more or less a stand-alone CD player.

Many features in CDTV are implemented in hardware. (vs CD32)

That will work with an IDE drive?

[utri007]

Amiga would really need a way to boot from CD.

One problem has been a lack of rommable cd filesystem, but Amiga OS4 classic boot disk has a rommable cd filesystem.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Pat the Cat

That will work with an IDE drive?

No. Button handling is done by the drive itself. It is sort of stand alone CD audio player mechanism with computer interface.