TL;DR= hi. I know nothing about Amiga. I have stuff and a lot of questions.....you should probably read it all to see what I'm asking. Lol
Hello everyone. As stated, this is my first post. I recently acquired a Cd32, and it is my first Amiga EVER. I want to start out by saying I know NOTHING about Amiga. This console became part of my collection, I find it's history fascinating, and I want to know more about it's capabilities. I have a lot of questions please bear with me. I figured this is the best place to find answers.
When I purchased it, it was missing its power supply. I ended up buying one from Keelog as I searched for a long time and this seemed like a good quality one to get. It came from Poland and took over a month to get here. During that time I opened it up and serviced the PCB and CD drive PCB. When the PS came in, I fired it up and it boots nicely. I had burned Castlevania AGA(
https://danteretrodev.itch.io/akumajou-dracula-aga) to a CD and it ran the game CD no problem. So the system works nicely!
So here is where I start to get confused and curious. Before everyone says "Google it", hear me out. Yes I know, there's a ton of info out there, but There's too much. It also is scattered about and I can't seem to get direct answers of what I'm looking for. I searched so much my head is spinning. So here we go:
it came with and a Kipper riser and a TF328. It also came with an IDE to what seems to be an SD card reader. It isn't a CF reader with an adapter for SD. I assume to emulate a HDD. So...what the hell is this thing lol. It has fast RAM on it I read? It can help with performance with some games? I started the system with it installed and I got a desktop appearance. Is this Amiga workbench(I can't recall the name)? So what is this TF328 doing? Is it emulating an Amiga computer? Is the OS stored on this SD card attached to the IDE port? My Cd32 controller doesn't do anything to control the mouse. I got a Dell PS2 mouse and an Acer PS2 keyboard. Using the PS2 mouse in the AUX port of the Cd32 does nothing. Using the mouse in the PS2 port of the TF328 does nothing. I put the PS2 keyboard in the AUX port of the CD32 and...the num/cap lock light flash once on startup but doesn't do anything once booted. Using the keyboard in the PS2 port of the TF328, SOMETIMES I get limited functionality, most of the time the unlock light stays on but no keys work. When it did sometimes work, I had to read what a keyboard right and left mouse click shortcut were, it seemed right click worked but left did not. I never got to open anything on the desktop. Is this broken? Although I did read that only some PS2 keyboards work? Do I need a different kind of mouse? I did find that when playing Castlevania AGA it had some slow down, but with the TF328 installed the game did NOT slow down at all. Is the TF328 just more memory? Does it add a faster processor or is that only with the tf330 and higher?
I read about all the official attachments and things made for the CD32 on a website which name escapes me, I remember it was a comprehensive site with a blue background stating tons of useful info. Anyways, I like using original hardware and disks as much as possible, so when I saw the Paravision SX1 attachment I got excited. I thought, if I can make this CD32 just like an Amiga 1200, I can also play Amiga floppy disk games! I guess there is a better SX32 or something but that's ok. Great! So I found an SX1 for a great price and bought it imported from Australia. It came with just the attachment and a 43MB HDD installed. I opened it up, cleaned the board and serviced it. I plugged it into the Cd32 and it sort of starts up. I get a gray screen with a window that says "insert volume df0". That's all I get. I hear the HDD spin up and I hear it clicking, a normal HDD head seeking click not a head slapping against the side noise. I'm guessing volume df0 might not be the HDD? I noticed that there was a 3.5 floppy that came with the SX1 originally. I don't have that. Do I need it? I also saw all the other ports on this SX1. so I'm learning RGB on this is output through the male DB23 port. The TF328 seems to also use the same port for RGB. I suppose I'll need one of those to a SCART connector. I have the ability to convert SCART to HDMI. I see an RS232 serial port. A female DB23 that says floppy. I do want to get a 3.5 inch drive for this....and I guess you need an Amiga compatible one. Anyone know what to get? Why is the audio port just like a PS2 port? Not sure I've seen that before. AT KBD...I haven't seen a keyboard connection like this In ages. I have a hard drive connection, a DB37. Lastly the parallel port. Alright........where do I put a mouse on this thing lol? The keyboard connection on the SX1. Any recommendations? I caught wind of a Lyra adapter? What is that? On a side note, does the SX1 add a faster processor at all or just more memory and attachments to the cd32? When I disabled the SX1 with the slider switch, I noticed I ran Castlevania AGA from the CD and (just like with the TF328) there was no slowdown. Is the TF328 and the SX1 similar? Is one "faster" than the other?
Phew. These are my questions for now. As you can see, there's a lot and I just can't seem to get direct answers for some of them, hence this ridiculously verbose first post. Thank you in advance to anyone who was patient enough to read and respond!!
