CD32 opinions wanted

[Crom00]

The controller.. I like the design but the directional pad has an internal ABS plastic frame that will eventually break. Get a competition Pro CD32 controller as that is patterened of a more robust SegaGensis controller with a better designed DPAD.
The ABS plastic part that breaks can be repaired but it's a pain.

[Crom00]

I've had the CD32 with SX-1 and FMV. The sx-1 is quirky as it never really aligned well with the expansion connector too well. The SX32 would be ideal. Unfortunately these are insanely expensive. I snatched up the last CD32 from the Chinese Ebay outfit that was selling them. New in box with original Plastic film on all the parts. I sold it as I just could not justify it. My 9 year old xbox runs the PAL and CD32 games without issue and I don't need an indivison. My throw away pcs (PEntium HT systems) run this great with Amigakit really well so I get flicker free displays, I use my XBOX 360 controllers and it's great.

So true UAE if you want to save cash. Amiga hardware hobby is expensive and it could put a strain on relations with family members becuase they will think you're crazy hoarding 25 year old hardware.

An emulator running on a netbook is less offensive.

[Crom00]

@Pyro

My brother used it at his weekend DJ business a couple of times. In the late 90's to early 2000's in mainland China we could walkin to shops where you could get VCD movies of HK action movies for 20 cents a piece.

To be honest it wasn't worth it, I got it for $125 off of usenet. I sold it for $200 or something like that. I also had a peggy card at one point as part of a scala A4000T.

The most impressive demo I saw was WOCA New York show in 93 where they had a special plexi case A4000 with MPEG running a Bon Jovi video. I thought it was the DSP that they had planned but it made you wonder what was possible. At the time this was impressive.

You could also playback VCD's you make yourself provided you follow the standards and burn the CD at a low speed otherwise it would skip. Played Philips CDI Digital Video CD's too!

[Crom00]

The Amiga was always kind of crippled in that, the machines shipped with low amounts of chip ram for too long as standard. So you were limited in what you can do. At least with the CD32 you had a standard set of resources to work with, every machine had a CD drive, every machine had the 2 megs ram. This gave the cd32 the most arcade like experience.

The CD adaptations of Amiga games were great becuase the sound tracks were upgraded to CD Digtial Audio wheras the CDTV spooled audio files off of CD, it did not support the extra audio tracks in game if I remeber correctly. They generally fixed any problems or added a little something not around in the floppy version.

It would have been great to have fast ram and at LEAST a 16mhz 030 or better... come on it was 1994 when they made the last batch.