CD1200 Prototype where to buy?

[BozzerBigD]

Oh my god, that's amazing. Will it be for sale on eBay like the Commodore 65 Prototype was? Thanks.

No because it is in a museum!

[fondpondforever]

Fair enough. The Commodore 65 Prototype can't have been as rare as this then to sell on eBay

[Matt_H]

At Amiwest 2013, Beth Richard, the developer of the CD 1200 gave a talk about it. She said that 9 prototypes were built. It had an Akiko, RAM socket and an FPGA that convinced the Akiko that it was connected to a CD32 on the board that connected to the 1200's expansion slot with a cable going out to the CD drive. She said it was 100% compatible with CD32 software.

There was a 2nd version planned as something to entice a possible buyer of Commodore but that fell through so the 2nd version was never built. It was planned to replace the Akiko and FPGA with an ASIC and add a 68030 socket.

You can see her whole talk at  https://youtu.be/eOJ7XVQlnB8

The part about the CD 1200 starts just past 49 minutes.

Richard was involved with the whole line of multimedia products including unreleased ones like the 4000 FMV card which was the basis for the CD32's FMV card. The title of the talk was "The Development of the FMV Card". She covers the whole history of the multimedia products including lots of architecture and theory, why some decisions were made.

It's less than an hour and well worth watching.

Great video - thanks for that link!

[psxphill]

Fair enough. The Commodore 65 Prototype can't have been as rare as this then to sell on eBay

No, there are considerably more commodore 65 prototypes in circulation. In the 1990's you could buy them mail order from the US.

CD-1200 wasn't a great design and it happened at a time when commodore imploded, so it was only to make it look like commodore were worth buying. A PCMCIA card would have been a better option, you could have fitted the FMV and chunky to planar on it but still had the expansion card free.

The 74 minute CD length being to do with Beethoven's 9th symphony may not be accurate http://www.snopes.com/music/media/cdlength.asp.

[James1095]

I found it playable enough on a 33Mhz 68030 with AGA.  If Doom had come out for Amiga in 1993, 68030 accelerator sales would have gone through the roof and Commodore would have probably sold enough A4000's to keep afloat.  This was well before the days inexpensive home build PCs.  Instead many people went to Time UK or wherever and paid over a grand for a PC to play Doom.

I was building PC clones well before Doom. If I recall correctly, I first played Doom on a 386DLC-40 system that I had built. It wasn't until I upgraded to a 486 a couple years later that it really ran well though. Maybe it was different in the UK, it seems the Amiga was much more popular as a home computer there. I only ever knew one person who had an Amiga and that wasn't until the mid 90s so it was an old computer.

[psxphill]

Maybe it was different in the UK,

It was very different in the UK, the PC didn't really take off as a home computer until Windows 95 launched. A lot of people were playing Doom and X-Wing at work during their lunch breaks though.

Around that time the PS1 took the non geek games market, previously the Amiga had catered for both.

[Pentad]

That video was great! I wish there was an organized list of videos by former Commodore people and topics. These videos have such great information and I'm always surprised when I stumbled across one just when I think I have seen them all.

You cannot help but be in awe of the Commodore/Amiga community. You don't see this kind of history being presented on other platforms (I'm looking in your direction Atari Home Computers).

Honestly, I wish other platforms had these kinds of resources because I would like to hear more about Atari, TI, Tandy, and others for the history.

Cheers!
-P

[skolman]

http://www.ppa.pl/graffiti/obrazek/4337/cd1200-recenzja-cz-1-2

http://www.ppa.pl/graffiti/obrazek/4338/cd1200-recenzja-cz-2-2

[BozzerBigD]

@skolman

Nice links ;-) Almost makes me want one reading all that again despite the fact that I know that not using the PCMCIA slot and blocking up the accelerator slot was a big mistake and would have cost C= big time. The Squirrel SCSI adapter was the solution all along.

[fishy_fiz]

I Had 060 in my A1200 yes it could run Doom but only at 320 x 200 where as lets say a P3 could run it at least 640 x 480 maybe even 800 x 600. Even the new vampire is only just managing 640 x 480 on some games. It was the lack of GFX advancement that killed amiga along with %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!y management.

Doom didn't even support higher than 320*200 for a few years. It was only with some later ports that resolution (other than screen size) was changeable.
Also, a Pentium, let alone pentium2 or 3, didn't even exist at the time of its release, so such a comparison is, quite frankly, dumb.
Not to mention the fact a higher resolution does nothing for the game.
Even aga + a fast 68k system can deal with doom as intended, reaching the games original frame rate cap of 35fps.

[Rob]

@skolman

Nice links ;-) Almost makes me want one reading all that again despite the fact that I know that not using the PCMCIA slot and blocking up the accelerator slot was a big mistake and would have cost C= big time.

Commodore never made accelerators for the A1200 and judging by the amount of unexpanded A1200s that come up on Ebay then I doubt it would have been an issue.  Many customers would have felt that ability to add some extra RAM would have been more than enough.  Also I think that there might have been problems with Akiko and the 16-bit PCMCIA interface.  Not that Akiko was particularly useful anyway.

The Squirrel SCSI adapter was the solution all along.

Actually the Archos PCMCIA IDE adapters seemed to be the solution.  Commodore rebranded the hard drive units and later Amiga Technologies rebranded the CD ROM units.

[Rob]

Just realised that Beth Richard should be able to shed some more light on the CD1200.  Her name is on the silkscreen and she was heavily involved in the CD32 and FMV projects at Commodore.

[psxphill]

Just realised that Beth Richard should be able to shed some more light on the CD1200.  Her name is on the silkscreen and she was heavily involved in the CD32 and FMV projects at Commodore.

Did you not read the whole of the thread?

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=816409&postcount=25

Also I think that there might have been problems with Akiko and the 16-bit PCMCIA interface.  Not that Akiko was particularly useful anyway.

It's not essential as the games went through the OS, which used the CPU if there was no akiko. All of the PCMCIA CD solutions that came out relied on that for compatibility. The CPU routines weren't the most optimal, so you really needed an accelerator. There were patches later on that improved them, but I don't think the 020EC in the A1200 could ever truly beat Akiko. Some hardware on the PCMCIA slot should have been able to do it quicker (it's a pity they didn't go ahead with the plan of chunky pixels for AGA).

I think at the point the CD1200 was done then commodore were really scraping hardware together from whatever they could find and they already had akiko from CD32 so they just used some glue logic.

[Rob]

Did you not read the whole of the thread?

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=816409&postcount=25

I hadn't been sleeping well when I typed that.  Worst thing is that last month I'd have read the post you linked but had since forgotten.