23 November 2007, 15:14 | #1 |
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Analogic's CD32 disk drive expander unit mini review.
I found these the other night on fleabay (still some left )
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=180181356684 So, it arrived today.. The unit itself is basically a Sony FDD unit housed in a cream coloured plastic (pretty sturdy). Manufactured by Index Information. Slots straight into the back port on the CD32 and is a good fit - there is also a RTC (real time clock) which is contained on a seperate PCB (see pics). Other ports housed on the unit are a Printer Parallel port, 15-pin port (god knows what for - PC joystick?) and a PSU socket by the looks of it on the side, although non supplied - worked fine without one It also has a hole slot so you can fix the unit in place permanetly to your CD32. Loading times from floppy is as quick as a 1200 - when you insert a disk in the CD32 blanks the screen and then takes around 3 seconds to pick the disk up and start loading whatever's on it. There's no special keys to press to enable the unit, CD's are loaded as before. To sum up: Pros: Excellent if you only play a few AGA-only games which were not ported to the CD32 format. Loads pretty fast. Must be quite rare as I've never seen them before Floppy disk clicking sound You pretty much have a basic no-frills 1200 (adding keyboard of course to the mini-din slot on the side) but without RGB/Serial ports - although you could probably rig something up for the RGB if you were fussy enough Cons: Would be better colour coded to the CD32! No manual supplied although do you really need one for something this simple? Not an SX1 or SX32 by a long shot Pics; Last edited by Paul_s; 31 May 2009 at 10:35. |
23 November 2007, 16:13 | #2 |
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Neat-O
Almost tempted to get one for my CD32, esp as it gets far more use than either of my A1200's. (I just seem to take them to bits, add stuff & put back together again) As you say, shame so little attention was given to the appearance. Would have been a whole lot more tempting in black & shaped like a +3 for the Acorn Electron. (should that ring any bells here) I would be sold if it had an IDE header - CD32 with internal IDE and floppy drive... |
23 November 2007, 16:15 | #3 |
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@Paul s
Awesome review my friend.. looks great (i will be finished with your memory adapter this weekend my solder mop finally arrived!!!) |
23 November 2007, 16:16 | #4 |
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Paul send it to Zetr0 so he can cheaply manufacture some more
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23 November 2007, 16:18 | #5 |
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23 November 2007, 16:51 | #6 |
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Yup and get Binox to have the case made in that transparent blue
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23 November 2007, 19:07 | #7 |
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Thanks for the review Paul_s , I'm tempted to buy one - I'd buy one if it's a bit cheaper.
It would be awesome if the battery clock could be replaced with some home made ram expansion. |
23 November 2007, 19:58 | #8 |
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has anyone got pinout / schematics on the cd32 port?
if so it might be easy to adapt an A500 8mb Fast ram project from Aminet. |
23 November 2007, 21:15 | #9 |
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I suspect the pinout would be similar to the expansion port of the A1200. It might be easier to make an adapter board to allow A1200 accelerators to be attached.
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23 November 2007, 21:33 | #10 |
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here we go
CD32 expansion bus http://www.technick.net/public/code/...cd32_expansion A1200 expansion bus http://pinouts.ru/Slots/A1200CPU_pinout.shtml very close indeed If its possible to handle the bus correctly then i believe it would be simple to build a port interface.... hmmm still need an ide or scsi interface.... Last edited by Zetr0; 23 November 2007 at 21:46. |
24 November 2007, 00:18 | #11 |
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CD32 expansion bus
TBH I've not taken a look but pins 1-7 may be connected Agent 88 & 68030 Agent 88... Would I pull the Blizzard '060 + SCSI out of my A1200 to connect to my CD32 if I could? Hell - Yes! |
24 November 2007, 00:54 | #12 | ||
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Quote:
Quote:
He'll probably turn it into a SX-32++++++++++++++ That would be cool to re-case it... really needs it though for the 32. Oh god, that would be awesome! The official 030 accelerator for the CD32 never did happen... Would be one powerful beasty with a card like that inside... would probably fit pretty well too |
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24 November 2007, 19:13 | #13 |
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@Paul_s: Could I use a FMV-card in the 2nd slot or only the battery-clock-card? Will the disk-drive work when I have plugged a FMV-card to this slot?
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25 November 2007, 10:17 | #14 | |
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Quote:
check sig for how it looks if interested. |
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25 November 2007, 23:05 | #15 |
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It would be very easy to add fastram using one of these, the realtime clock board could easily be replaced with a different card with extra features.
I made an internal fast-ram interface for the CD32 a long time ago. Nice find. £40 is too expensive though. |
27 November 2007, 00:41 | #16 | |
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Quote:
Yea, £40 was a bit OTT and they are not new either. Would be cool with a fastram upgrade - think that's what I might look at using |
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27 November 2007, 02:50 | #17 |
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My wish list for a CD32 upgrade card:
* more RAM somehow * a megabyte or two of flash ram for kickstart modules etc * battery backed clock And then either: * clock port, for subway, poseidon kickstart modules on the flash memory * USB-disk or USB flash memory, USB memory card driver to boot from * USB-ethernet stick that works with Poseidon's sana2 driver :-) or (the harder way, I think) * buildt in memory card reader (CF or SD) to boot from * buildt in ethernet controller (and a sana2 device driver) Ofcourse a CPU upgrade as well would be nice, even only a empty socket for those of us who already have spare 030/882? Maybe it will be possible to do CPU upgrades using FPGA in not a too distant future :-) |
27 November 2007, 04:30 | #18 |
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@kolla
Hello there, Welcome to the EAB, i am sure you will like it here, there is plenty of mischief to get up to . I believe there are some open source plans for clock ports on an A500 68k socket so arguably since the CD32 has a full pin out on its expansion bus, it would be quite simple to convert the existing project. IDE would need some level controll though, but again, there are plans on aminet that adds SCSI to an a500 68000 socket so... easy to re-implement.... imma working on the memory |
30 November 2007, 20:33 | #19 |
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CD32 Floppy drive
Hi there,
having been reading these boards for however many years I thought I would finally join the party. I just had a query about this CD32 floppy drive. Is it only compatible with AGA software or do older games work on it to? Cheers Phil |
30 November 2007, 20:55 | #20 |
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@Philski
Hello there, Weclome to the EAB as you have read .... theres plenty of mischief to get upto the floppy drive, i belive can be booted from too... as the cd32 is an AGA machine it should play AGA games.. depending on the drive mechanism however it may limmit some overly protected games, but it should all be good |
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