Commodore A690

[utri007]

Somebody (not me) is selling A690 wich is most likely prottype of A590? Are there any other diffrences than rom is battery backed, ie. reflashable? It woun't work without new battery and rom flashing??? Will CDTV rom do a trick?? Or are all of those A690 CD-drives made so?

Main question is, will it work out of the box OR what are changes to get it work?

http://www.huuto.net/kohteet/commodore-amiga-a690-ulkoinen-cd-asema-prototyyppi/345222736

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Somebody (not me) is selling A690 wich is most likely prottype of A590?

The A590 is a hard drive.  The A690 is a CD-ROM drive.  Totally different.  A690 makes your A500 basically 99% CDTV compatible.  It's a good CD drive solution for A500's if you already have some other form of hard drive expansion (such as AdIDE, etc.).

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

The A690 is a prototype of the A570.  See these links for an explanation of the weird numbering scheme:

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz68.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_A570

IMHO if you want a CD drive for your A500 look for an A570 or external SCSI model.  A690 is more of a collector's item, you'll probably have trouble getting it to work 100%.

[utri007]

A590 was a typo, I did mean A570. Story behind of naming scheme is prety familiar to me.

Just wondering, how trivial task would it be to get it working? I'm not a interested to have one, just for pleasure of owning. But is there a way to actually use it?

Is it rare?

[danwood]

A590 was a typo, I did mean A570. Story behind of naming scheme is prety familiar to me.

Just wondering, how trivial task would it be to get it working? I'm not a interested to have one, just for pleasure of owning. But is there a way to actually use it?

Is it rare?

A690s are kinda rare, as to how easy it will be to get working depends.  Some were later prototypes with less bugs than others, the main issue iirc was that some had some form of flash rom to hold the ROMs which tends to die over time.

[Tenacious]

A570 was my first expansion beyond an extra FDD and trapdoor memory.  They can be kinda flakey.  Strangely, any CPU acceleration will damage the A570.  I have successfully used one with KS2.0x, a SCSItv, the 2MB CHIP modification, and Supra's 500RX FAST memory.  Sometimes, I have to pull the 500RX to get the system to boot.

Also, you have to power one before the other (A570 first?  Its been awhile.)

A570 is one of the very few ways to get an Amiga to boot from a CD.    This is especially cool if you can write your own bootable disks.

[motrucker]

The only difference between a 690 and a 570 is the badge (number) and the ROM. Everything else is the same. Most of the 690s I have seen even have the same ROM (software wise), but it is an EEPROM rather than a ROM as the 570 has. This makes it hard to call the 690 a true prototype. The only reason Commodore changed the name (number) was because of the new computer about to be released, the A600. They thought there would cause confusion with the 690 designation.
At least this is how this one ws filtered down to me, from a usually reliable source at Commodore.

[utri007]

A690s are kinda rare, as to how easy it will be to get working depends.  Some were later prototypes with less bugs than others, the main issue iirc was that some had some form of flash rom to hold the ROMs which tends to die over time.

Excatly, they have a battery backedup rom, wich dies when battery dies. How to get rom working again? Is CDTV rom OK, or does it require it own rom?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Going out on a limb, you'd probably need a rom from an A570.  But who knows?  

[utri007]

Going out on a limb, you'd probably need a rom from an A570.  But who knows?  

I belive that newer roms for CDTV are actually from A570?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I belive that newer roms for CDTV are actually from A570?

I really don't know anything about this, so again, just going out on a limb, this link here:  http://amiga.resource.cx/photos/photo2.pl?id=a570&pg=1&res=hi&lang=en  seems to show a chip marked "Commodore-Amiga 391298-01 c1992 V2.30 9232 D" in the rom position.

I tried to google up a high res picture of a CDTV motherboard to see if I could spot an identical chip on it's motherboard.  I wasn't having much luck, but I came across this thread:  http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=61625  post #6 says a CDTV uses two ROM chips.  Same version number, 2.30 (I thought that number sounded familiar, hence why I looked), but it looks like they're split into a pair in CDTV.

Also looked at the high res pic of the A690 motherboard (here:  http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/media/download_photos/a690_2_big.jpg  ).  A real spaghetti mess of wires on the bottom.  I'd avoid that thing like the plague, again just IMHO.