Oh, so that means A1000/A500 don't use a standard parallel port? That's a shame since I was thinking of getting a parallel port CD-ROM.
I thought that if it was connector compatible all that would be needed would be a device driver.
None of the classic Amigas use what would be considered a standard parallel port, at least by late 90s standards and beyond. PCs got newer protocols (ECP? EPP?) that the Amiga parallel port does not support. I think some of the extra I/O cards made for the Amiga do support these newer signals, but I don't think any of them work on the A500 without considerable other expansion.
Regardless, I don't think anyone ever wrote a parallel port CD driver.
Meanwhile, I think the OP's options for an A500 CD drive are:
-An A570
-SCSI via GVP sidecar or similar
-IDE via some sort of add-on IDE port (this would be messy, since there's no such thing as an external IDE enclosure - you'd need to modify a SCSI enclosure and run your own cables)
-USB via Subway and Clockports expansion (requires an 030 and will be very slow due to clockport bottleneck)
-Use another Amiga's CD drive via serial or parallel network
The A570 can boot CDTV stuff. None of the other solutions are bootable. There is a software package called CDBoot that can fake a bootable environment, though. Once installed to your hard drive, it mounts the CD drive very early in the startup-sequence and if it detects a CDTV- or CD32-bootable CD it offers you the option of transferring the system to CD and continuing to boot from that, or finishing your normal hard drive boot.
