Commodore CDTV

[Tiago]

I will also get a CDTV today, so, some questions:

- to play a game (OCS), i will have 2 floopy drives, does it work as a A500? Put he disk and ready to roll?

- i can't find many games for it on CD, most are appications, but i saw 4 or 5 games in ebay...
i guess they are like the CD32 where you have a normal AGA game with some extras, basicly it was a game fr AGA with some intros, and a lot of space free on the CD. same system in CDTV?

- the HD, how do i put an HD? does it have IDE? or a side port like A500?

- can i use a db9 joystick? And the controller, can i play with it?

[Demon Cleaner]

It behaves almost like an A500 when you plug a floppy to it, you can boot games from there.
You can plug a normal joystick to it, the controller is really not good to play with.

[Tiago]

great.
Does the controller control the mouse?

[Harrison]

The CDTV came in couple of different revisions over the years, with various motherboard updates and chipset changes. The original standard CDTV is basically a 1MB A500 with a modified (to support CD) 1.3 kickstart rom. Some later CDTV's had some of the ECS chipset, so could support more chip ram.

There were quite a few CDs released for the CDTV. I lot of them were not games though, but instead things like encylopedias, or games like trivial pursuit. You can burn ISOs of them to CD-R and the CDTV will run them fine. The Amiga CD TOSEC collection contains mostly discs that are CDTV compatible, so take a look on Pleasuredome.

[Tiago]

well, i don't know yet what CDTV is, just know it has 1,5 ram, 1 controller and 2 floppys.

[Harrison]

It doesn't have any side expansion slots like the A500 or internal HDD support. But there was an official (and I expect some third party) SCSI modules you could buy that plug into an internal expansion slot and add both internal and external SCSI for HDD and other devices. I also think someone made an internal IDE expansion more recently buy can't remember who.

There was also an official IR mouse released if you can't find one. Years ahead of wireless PC mice!

And, yes, you can control both the joystick and mouse from the IR controller, but it isn't great. best to just use that for audio CD control.

There was also a trackerball controller for mouse control. I see these and the official IR controller appear quite often for sale so buying a backup IR controller is easy if needed.

You are really lucky because the CDTV is the only Amiga I have still wanted and haven't ever owned. Just don't ever see them up up for sale over here.

[Tiago]

and CDTVs are not very common here in Portugal, A500/A600/A1200 where everywhere, but A2000/A3000/A4000/CDTV/CD32 were not very easy to see.

[Harrison]

A4000 and CD32 seem fairly common to find here in the UK, but definitely not the CDTV,A2000 or A3000... and I've never seen an A1000 other than in a museum in London!

[Demon Cleaner]

You are really lucky because the CDTV is the only Amiga I have still wanted and haven't ever owned. Just don't ever see them up up for sale over here.

You can get mine if you want

[Phantom]

I will also get a CDTV today, so, some questions:

- to play a game (OCS), i will have 2 floopy drives, does it work as a A500? Put he disk and ready to roll?

If it's disk and you have the external floppy disk drive, sure.

- i can't find many games for it on CD, most are appications, but i saw 4 or 5 games in ebay...
i guess they are like the CD32 where you have a normal AGA game with some extras, basicly it was a game fr AGA with some intros, and a lot of space free on the CD. same system in CDTV?

Actually only a few games were CDTV-only, and some also were ports from A500 games. Sure rarely to find and very much overpriced because of their rarity. Mostly are multimedia applications as you can see. But... you can possibly run CD32 games in your CDTV, as you may know not all CD32 games were AGA specific. Apart from that, a finest example of this is Defender of the Crown 2.

- the HD, how do i put an HD? does it have IDE? or a side port like A500?

No IDE, no side port. You will need the SCSI controller (especially designed for the CDTV) to connect a SCSI-I hard disk drive.

- can i use a db9 joystick? And the controller, can i play with it?

The remote controller is good for applications such as multimedia ones, but not for games. You cannot use standard 9pin joysticks and mice straight from your Amiga before buying an adapter for those (ex. Brickette adapter). CDTV has two types of mice though. One is wired and the other one is infra-red.