@ hazydave. Please tell me about these.

[Kesa]

Please tell me what ever happened to these. Did they actually work or are they just a mock up? Do they still exist? The information on amigahistory.co.uk is somewhat vague. Any technical insights would be really cool  :cool:

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/cd1200.html

I have been drooling over these for over 15 years. Please put it to rest for me

[gertsy]

Wow.  Never even knew these existed.  They certainly shows a downside to the A1200 design.  No external expansion port means you loose the internal expansion bay to the device.  Accelerator or CDROM would have been the choice to make.  
Imagine if you could have had both. And the A1200 CD Rom drive came out at the same time as the CD32!  Akiko Chip, CD32 software compatibility, at the right price surely they would have sold like hotcakes.  
If only the A1200 had a 32bit side expansion port! Things might have been different.

[Duce]

Really need to have a regular column/thread here called "Ask the Elders" where guys like Dave can share their wisdom about the old days.  Dabe is a real helpful dude and seems to love telling old "war stories" about the C= days.

[psxphill]

Please tell me what ever happened to these. Did they actually work or are they just a mock up? Do they still exist? The information on amigahistory.co.uk is somewhat vague. Any technical insights would be really cool :cool:

I saw these at the last shows that commodore uk had a stand. I didn't pay much attention to it as I didn't have an A1200 at the time & it had also been widely publicised that you couldn't have an accelerator as well.
 
I think it was working and the ones that existed were sold. However my memory is probably a bit vague.

[Kesa]

I think these are one of the 2 coolest things ever developed for the Amiga (the other is GVPs harddrive for the A500 which is shaped to fit in with the wedge design).

OK, so why didn't they work well and what could we have done to make it work better? What games didn't work on them? How many times (2x, 4x?) were the drives? How well would they have handled multimedia items like videos and stuff? Did they have any mpeg (hardware?) included to enhance the A1200? :confused:

I'm perfectly happy if this thread goes on for a week with a 100 posts or so. These fascinate me. I love prototypes

[tone007]

They certainly shows a downside to the A1200 design.  No external expansion port means you loose the internal expansion bay to the device.  Accelerator or CDROM would have been the choice to make.

I think it more shows a downside to the CD expansion's design.  Archos' PCMCIA CD drive and SquirrelSCSI addons used the PCMCIA slot (sounds like an external expansion port to me,) though of course they did come a bit later.

[nicholas]

I had a CDROM fitted to the PCMCIA port of my A1200 in 94. Can't remember who made it though.

[gertsy]

I think it more shows a downside to the CD expansion's design.  Archos' PCMCIA CD drive and SquirrelSCSI addons used the PCMCIA slot (sounds like an external expansion port to me,) though of course they did come a bit later.

I have a squirrel myself which I don't use.  The PCMCIA is too valuable with plug in media; CF Card reader.  But it is only 16bit and a 32bit expansion bus is much faster.  I'm sure they used the internal interface for that very reason.
I think if the A1200 had a side expansion slot which this unit plugged into, it would have sold like hot cakes.

[tone007]

Now, yes, the PCMCIA slot is useful for CF and network cards.  Back then, it mostly sat idle if it wasn't being used for SRAM.  As for speed, the 16 bit interface is plenty fast for the CDROMs of that era, 300KB per second or so was about as fast as a 2X drive ran.  Using the CPU slot for a CDROM was complete overkill.

[save2600]

I had a CDROM fitted to the PCMCIA port of my A1200 in 94. Can't remember who made it though.

Probably a Zappo. Seems to be the earliest I remember coming out anyway.

I remember a lot of talk about these official C= CD add-ons. They *should* have been released *and* at or near the A1200's launch. Super logical step to do so as it would have put the A1200 and Commodore in a much better light. I'm sure Dave will expound, but seems to me, these were promised to be released and then all of a sudden, just disappeared one day. Why C= would let 3rd party manufacturers completely handle such an important peripheral astounds me. IMO, this was one of their largest blunders ever. Probably has to do with some politics and/or expense associated with securing laser assemblies on the cheap and in bulk from Sanyo, Philips, Sony or whomever. Now that wouldn't surprise me one bit. I don't buy the argument that such a product would have competed from a marketing standpoint with their dead in the water CDTV unit either.

[Digiman]

I remember the explanation for using the trapdoor was specifically for full CD32 compatibility ie Akiko. There was no other way to do it. Cost would have been very high for this reason.

This, and CD32, should have had a SIMM socket to add 32bit Fastram 2mb-4mb. Both were going to effectively be stuck at 7mhz 68020 speed which was a massive mistake for the sake of adding the SIMM socket for next to nothing.

[psxphill]

I remember the explanation for using the trapdoor was specifically for full CD32 compatibility ie Akiko. There was no other way to do it.

But you don't need akiko to run 99% of the games and an 030 would be fast enough to do the same job anyway. Akiko was pretty much a failure.

[LordSpunky]

It is a shame! I always thought a CD32 could be linked to the A1200 to use as a CD drive, but I think I dreamed it!
I would love a CD drive for my A1200 and PCMCIA seems the only way.......if I could find one!

[nicholas]

It is a shame! I always thought a CD32 could be linked to the A1200 to use as a CD drive, but I think I dreamed it!
I would love a CD drive for my A1200 and PCMCIA seems the only way.......if I could find one!

Finding an external SCSI DVD drive on ebay is the best way, unless your trapdoor expansion doesn't have SCSI capability.

[LordSpunky]

Finding an external SCSI DVD drive on ebay is the best way, unless your trapdoor expansion doesn't have SCSI capability.

Nope just got some random 8MB expansion card........no SCSI hence PCMCIA