A570 and CDTV compatibility

[zektor]

I finally found and purchased a nice A570 cd-rom unit for my Amiga 500. What a great piece of hardware. I really like it!

I did have some questions tho, and maybe somebody else here owns one and the few software titles I am having issues with.

I have tested it with a dozen or so music cd's, and that works great. The seller also included some games and edutainment titles in CDTV cd-rom format. They are all originals as well. But, a few just will not work.

Defender of the Crown works, so does The Fred Fish Collection, American Hertiage Dictionary, Advanced Military Systems. But, "Grolier Encyclopedia" and "The New Basics Electronic Cookbook" refuse to work.

What happens is they initially start loading, I see the CDTV logo and then a black screen and they stop loading. I tried cleaning the discs, and even tried copying them to blank cd-rs and trying those. But, no matter what, just these two discs will not function.

Any idea why? I am running on a standard NTSC Amiga 500 w/512 expansion and 1.3 rom. Nothing special, and I would imagine that this would be all you would need. Are there CDTV compatibility issues with the A570? Information on th enet regarding the drive is very sparse.

[zektor]

I initially had the expansion out, but with it removed all of the CD's had issues. Defender of the Crown would play the sound, but the graphics were all scrambled. I popped in the expansion and it was fine. So, I guess the expansion is necessary for the A570 to function correctly.

As for PAL, I was thinking that but I cannot tell. These discs do not specify NTSC or PAL. I'll have to try it on a PAL 500 and see how it goes.

Still, does anybody know of an available A570-CDTV compatibility list anywhere online?

[zektor]

Aha. Thanks for the heads up. Also, does this have a battery inside? Seems to retain my time and date. Reason I ask is because I wonder if it is advisable to remove it if it does have one!

[zektor]

Fixed my problem! Yes, it was chip memory. Luckily I had a rev 6a board and I used the instructions over at Aminet to use the expansion as chip. Works great now. Thanks for the help!

Now to open the A570 and see what the battery situation is. Before I do anything, does anybody now know if the A570 will function ok without a battery at all?

[zektor]

Now everything works great. Even Defender of The Corwn (which worked previously) works better now. The sound would sometimes cut out previously. Not any more. What a great thing that I was able to fix this

I looked into that 2mb expansion. Good call! I emailed the author, so hopefully I can grab one of these as well. Thanks again!

As for battery, I opened the unit and tried to peer underneath the cd-rom mech and see if I can see it. I do not see one at all, but it could be there. Or, maybe not. I have never had any luck with cd-rpom mechanisms (dismantling that is) so I am not going to bother.