Amiga Games and CDDA tracks

[Phantom]

Some AmigaCD games in the past (like WipeOut 2097, Bubble Heroes etc) had CDDA audio tracks apart from data files.

How I can make them work with the game? Do I need just the cd.device in DEVS: directory?

For example Bubble Heroes asked me to select my device for CDDA, but when selecting scsi.device unit 1 nothing happens, it brings up an error requester.

[Graham Humphrey]

I used to have a problem similar to this - never tried those games, but other games wouldn't play audio and music CDs wouldn't work. I think it might have something to do with the filesystem you are using. If you haven't already you may want to try hunting down AmiCDFS, or AsimCDFS, and install one of those, it might make a difference.

[Harrison]

Are you trying to run these from a real Amiga with real discs/CD-R, or via emulation with ISOs?

I've never found a way to get the audio tracks to work using ISOs and Amiga emulation, but have by burning the data and audio tracks to a CD-R and running them that way. It has been a while though so I'm not sure if I did anything special to get them to work.

Some other emulators (not Amiga) have built in support for CD audio tracks. I forget which they are at the moment, but some can recognise MP3s in the same directory as a game ISO and will use them as the games audio tracks. That was quite a cool solution for emulation and would be great to have included in WinUAE for CD32 emulation.

[Phantom]

I'm always speaking about real Amiga, I hate emulators.

I tried Bubble Heroes on my A4000 yesterday. I've seen that there is an internal 3pin audio connector on the motherboard (near the 2 RCA sound outputs), which supposed to be connected with the DVD-ROM to enable playing CDDA playback.

Although someone told me that's very rare to find a 3pin audio connector these days, all of them are 4pins. Any ideas? Can I use a normal PC 4pin audio connector and just change the pins maybe?

Also, is it sufficient to enable CDDA playback via software somehow?

[Harrison]

Ah, then that is your problem. On a real Amiga the CD audio will always be output directly through the CD drive, and not routed through the Amiga's internal audio, so you will always need a way to mix the CD audio output and the Amiga's internal audio.

On the A4000, as you have discovered, it has a 3pin CD audio header on the motherboard. I've got my drive connected to it using a 3pin CD drive audio cable and it mixes the audio and works perfectly. The only difference with a 4 pin cable would be the extra pin connector hanging over the edge of the header, so it should been a problem.

For anyone with an A1200, it is a big more difficult as you need to try and mix an internal laptop CD audio output with the Amiga's own output yourself. There have been various solutions, from more complex internal solutions where a small custom PCB is made that mixes the 2 and outputs them through the standard Amiga phono sockets. That is the nicest solution. The easier, but not as elegant solution is to route the audio out from the CD drive to an extra set of phono connectors on the back of the A1200, and then mix the 2 audio sources externally. I do it this was and normally just connect a splitter cable to both sets of output that combine it into one. Not ideal as it does reduce the audio volume, but it does work. A better solution would be a small external mixer to mix the 2 audio sources to balance their different volumes.

[Phantom]

Dave, do you have a spare 3pin audio connector? Do you know where to find one then?

[Harrison]

I just used one from an older PC.

If you only have 4 pin cables then you can modify them yourself to work.

The 4 pin connector pinout will be:
pin 1 - Left signal output
pin 2 - Ground
pin 3 - Ground
pin 4 - Right signal output

The 3 pin connector pinout will be:

pin 1 - Left signal output
pin 2 - Ground
pin 3 - Right signal output

So you just need to pull the pin 3 ground wire out, and move the pin 4 signal wire into the pin 3 connector.

I just did a quick search online for "3 pin cd audio cable" and it came up with many UK stores selling universal cables with both 3 and 4 pin connectors, so they can be found.

[Phantom]

Ok Dave, thanks for the heads up.

---------- Post added at 17:08 ---------- Previous post was at 16:03 ----------

I found this one in our local e-shop.



It's 4 pins, but as far I can see only 3 are occupied, so which one I have to put next to the other two pins?

From the cable colors, I can see a red and white, and according to the colors those must be the left and right signal output and the black color is the ground?

[Harrison]

Yes, that is correct. Just put them next to each other with:

1, White (left)
2, Black (ground)
3, Red (right)

That should work.

[Phantom]

Okay. One more final question. The cable length is 50cm. Is it sufficient from the DVD-ROM to reach the internal connectors on the far west side of the A4000 motherboard?