Beth Richard and the Amiga CD1200 tear down.......it's only been 28 years since she last saw one!

[@bethteresarichard3910]

That was quite an experience! I'm so glad we got to do that. People look back at my work and assume that as the lead engineer, I was somehow a Commodore "Legend". I'll leave that to those to whom it really applies. I was a junior engineer at the time, near the beginning of my career. I think the best way I can describe how I ended up being the lead engineer on this project is a quote taken from Any Weir's "The Martian": "Ares 3. Well, that was my mission. Okay, not mine per se. Commander Lewi was in charge. I was the lowest ranked member of the crew. I would only be 'in command' of the mission if I were the only remaining person. What do you know? I'm in command." It was very clear by the time I started this project that the end was near. I worked on this at a time where we thought it may be possible that someone would buy the company and take it seriously. Having demonstrated that there were ideas and projects with a roadmap into the future would be what someone would want to buy. Several of us were working right to the end to keep a portfolio of projects that could be turned on immediately, should a new owner wish it. (Like the work Dave Haynie was doing at the high end, and some stuff Greg Berlin had been doing too.). It was not to be. I'm so embarrassed about misspeaking that the date of Pearl Harbor was 7-Dec-1943... ***1941***!!!! I know that! How could my mind have been so bounced and distracted that I would have gotten that wrong? I might have had an excess of adrenaline at the time. Although I designed that in 1993-1994, I was particularly nervous about opening it because it isn't mine... it's the RCM's. And it's got to be the only example left in the world by this point. I offered to coach Andy through opening it as it's his museum's property, but he wouldn't have it. Sadly, in order to make it work, it needs the controller board to go into the A1200 and cable that came through the port on the rear of the A1200 to connect it to the drive. None of those seem to have survived. I know it was edited for privacy reasons, but when I was going through the names I saw on the PCB, I started with the first one on the list... mine. The names were actually the userIDs for our email addresses, each of which ended with @ "cbmvax.commodore.com". And the word preceding that cut was my userID: brichard. Since that email has been invalid since April 1994, I'm not terribly worried about people knowing it. And credit where credit is due: My spouse, Teresa, who has her degree in Engineering Management that included nearly the complete curriculum of Mechanical Engineering took a look at the lid spring and noticed the extra bend that was causing it to pop out of position. When she showed it to me, I recognized that the spring was not actually the original factory spring. It must have been broken at some point and someone replaced it by bending a bit of spring-steel wire to (nearly) match. In fact, that mechanism was not custom to the CD1200 - it was re-used from the CD32. So by comparing with a CD32 lid spring mechanism, we confirmed it was wrong and replaced the spring with one from a CD32. The lid works correctly again! Such a great day! Thank to Andy for inviting me to the RCM and being so gracious about the experience.

[@MargaretLeber]

fbowen now works in the office next to mine at Rajant. And afinkel is down the hall. We seem to be a Commodore Engineering club as much as Scala Inc. was.

[@bethteresarichard3910]

@@MargaretLeber Now those guys ARE Commodore Legends!!!

[@MargaretLeber]

@@bethteresarichard3910 and Dave Haney is at Rajant too, of course. Probably other folks you worked with as well.

[@CommonSense-hy2sn]

@@bethteresarichard3910 Nah Beth, anyone from C= is a legend in my book! ok maybe not the marketing division.. they're legendary in another way. How would the controller card have been installed? Would it have required the end user to screw open the A1200 and in the progress destroy the warranty sticker on one of the screws? and would it have come with the same C65 PSU as with the CD32? There seems to be a header on the CD1200 pcb, was that meant for a MPEG decoder? And perhaps not the right person to ask but there was also plans for a CD4000, was this meant to be a zorro card with a CD32 compatible drive controller?

[@10MARC]

Brilliant, Beth! Thanks so much for sharing your experiences!

[@romaneberle]

history in the making! awesome :)

[@craftsman123456]

Thanks for sharing this

[@bigd5090]

Thank you so much Pixel Fix and Beth Richard! I bought a CD32 in the aftermath of the C= bankruptcy and love that machine with its upgrades. I really wanted an A1200 with the CD1200 though to replace my aging ST! We must comb the globe for the controller board and cable! Could these be reverse engineered? There are lots of clever people in the Amiga community!

[@BrekMartin]

I’m special because I have scans of those notes :D the same yellow paper.

[@amigang]

Verse 1: Beth Richard, she's the queen Of disassembling machines With her steady hands and focused mind She takes apart the CD1200, one piece at a time Chorus: Disassembling, disassembling Watch her work, it's quite astounding Disassembling, disassembling Beth Richard, she's the one Verse 2: She starts with the outer casing And carefully removes each piece She knows just where to find the screws And gently sets them all at ease Chorus: Disassembling, disassembling Watch her work, it's quite astounding Disassembling, disassembling Beth Richard, she's the one Bridge: With a gentle touch and a keen eye She takes apart the CD1200 Piece by piece, she lays them out So we can all see how it's done Chorus: Disassembling, disassembling Watch her work, it's quite astounding Disassembling, disassembling Beth Richard, she's the one Thanks Ai app :)

[@bethteresarichard3910]

"Steady hands"? You must have had the video turned off and only listened to the audio when I got started in on it. :)

[@CD32Freak]

How about making detailed close-up pictures/scans of the board and send it to the Amiga Hardware Database? The CD mechanism doesn't look like the same as the one used in the CD32. It would be interesting to see pictures of that too. Thanks for sharing!

[@pixelfix]

Cool idea Kerim and thank you for the suggestion! We have some activities going on at the museum in the short term, but something we will look to do in the future.

[@CD32Freak]

@@pixelfix It's been almost a year. Have you had the chance to take some close-up pictures of the board? I'm really curious to know if they used the same Panasonic microcontroller as on the CD32 CD-ROM controller board. Thanks!

[@pixelfix]

So sorry! Thank you for the reminder - the detailed close up pictures have now been completed and I will get them over to the Amiga Hardware database within the next couple of days 😉

[@pixelfix]

OK - I have now contacted the Amiga Hardware Database and requested details of how best to share the pictures with them for publishing. Hopefully, not too long now ;)

[@CD32Freak]

@@pixelfix Thanks a lot! 🙂

[@OptimusMonk01]

I want someone to make a case that can hold both a Vampire V4SA and a CD drive, styled after the CD1200.

[@pixelfix]

Would something like this work? www.checkmate1500plus.com/IntroductionAmiga.aspx

[@Lucretia9000]

Did you get any pinout info on that connector on the back? And the ones inside?

[@pixelfix]

We did get some hand written additional info from Beth - I will take a look and see if it covered the connectors…..

[@pixelfix]

We did get some hand written additional info from Beth - I will take a look and see if it covered the connectors…..

[@bethteresarichard3910]

@@pixelfix Only thing I had in those notes was the block diagram showing the signaling going through the cable... not the pinout. :( SO MUCH was lost in April 1994 that (at the time) no one thought anyone would care anymore. Everything we need to know all about this project was shoveled into the tip... schematics, mechanical drawings, user guide (which I wrote for it and was going to be translated by others), software was wiped to resell the drives (that is, if the drives weren't simply thrown away). It's a shame that there wasn't better management at C= in the mid 80s with a vision to fight the PC wars with the Amiga when the PC wars had not yet been settled.

[@pixelfix]

@@bethteresarichard3910 Thank you so much for responding Beth - very much appreciated 😃❤️

[@diannekarp4530]

I am friends with a famous person!