The Evolution of the Commodore Amiga CDTV - Trash to Treasure (pt3)

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks for watching everyone! You can find relevant links in the video description and if you'd like to support The Cave and watch next weeks video 1 week early then head over to patreon.com/rmcretro Thank you for your support! Neil - RMC

[@geekwithsocialskills]

What's the make and model number of the monitor you are using with your CDTV?

[@havardd32665]

Missing links for the other episodes in the series ;)

[@TerribleFire]

Very nice CDTV. I agree keep things authentic on those rare machines.

[@scottwilliamclarke6442]

Great video, I have the 8MB fast and also the new ACE2B 2MB Chip Ram, 68010 and also a switchable dual kickstart as well, just make sure you use the V2.7 Extended ROMs and not the V2.30 (Even the modded ones) as you will lose 2MB of RAM as it's for the A570. You should try making your own CD's, I have a workbench 3.1 cd with whdload and game launcher which is cool and checkout the amigajay cd's and also English Amiga board if you haven't already :)

[@russelledwards001]

Thanks for helping me get through this godforsaken lockdown

[@ashens]

It took 30 years, but someone has finally said "I'm really happy with my CDTV" and meant it

[@crowsinthenose]

@ashens, did you ever play "psycho killer" on the CDTV? I 'upgraded' from an A500 to the CDTV back when and yeah, after those first thrilling 30 minutes, it was very hard to not feel ripped off. It was (and still is) a very attractive looking unit though.

[@AmigaWolf]

Great to see you here also ashens, my father never had a Amiga CDTV, he bought the Amiga 2000, with SCSI harddrive and 4 extra MB RAM, and capture card, he still have him, and i never seen it (Amiga CDTV) in the stores, i did see the other flop Philips CD-i in the store's, by 1996, the CD-i was discontinued altogether, sadly, only 1 million units were sold in 7 years losing Philips $1 billion.

[@magicmavis]

I loved my CDTV. I wanted an Amiga but I also wanted a CD player. Both in one box? Excellent.

[@anthonyciantar6015]

I wonder how much all the addons would have cost 30 years ago?

[@magicmavis]

@@anthonyciantar6015 mine came in one enormous box with the keyboard/mouse/FDD. It might have been £300 for it by then in 1994 as a clearance?

[@matthewdevalle404]

Someone once said that Commodore's marketing was so bad they'd advertise Kentucky Fried Chicken as Warm Dead Bird.

[@KenKeenan1973]

I heard that too except it was AT&T, and originally it was "Hot Dead Chicken". An actual AT&T marketing guy is supposed to have heard this and said, "no, it's even worse than that; we'd call it 'Warm Dead Chicken'"

[@TheKayliedGamerChannel-YouTube]

They did so well selling Turkeys for years..... ;-)

[@digiowl9599]

Best i recall, Commodore back in USA didn't have to market anything until the C64 no longer sold. Thus they had no clue what they were doing. Commodore UK, who i think handled the (Western) European market, did well with their marketing however. Just a shame they never got a chance at picking up the pieces when the company imploded back in USA.

[@valenrn8657]

@@digiowl9599 Escom was trash and liars.

[@ms-dosman7722]

'Eat my Reebok' brings a whole new meaning to Product Placement.

[@Choralone422]

As an engineer working for Commodore in the late 80's and early 90's it must have been incredibly frustrating to pour your heart & soul into those machines only to see marketing and management fumble the rest. Great video series! I really enjoyed it!

[@londongaz2]

Look at that hifi stack! So much 90s, so much awesome 👌

[@meecob]

Starting to look like a Sharp X68000, especially when Silkworm was playing. Looks brill!

[@random007nadir]

In the late 90s, I met Jon Potter, the author of Directory Opus, at the local Amiga club. He lived here in Adelaide. Andrew Wilson too. He designed the Amiga 1000 Pheonix motherboard replacement that was popular at the time.

[@random007nadir]

​@@At0mic890 The ADAM (Adelaide Amiga) user group was pretty big back then. Weirdly. Eventually they became a BBS you could log into over a modem, then they became an email host and ISP. I think ADAM were eventually bought by iiNet, who was bought by TPG a few years back. I feel very old!

[@ozthekeymaster]

I've used Directory Opus on the PC as my Explorer replacement for years! It's the first thing I install on any new system. Honestly cringe when I have to use explorer. Directory Opus has so many features it's worth every penny.

[@drrev40]

What a pleasure to see such a classic piece of vintage kit. Of course I am talking about the Cambridge Audio A1 designed by the great Mike Creek of Creek Audio. Oh and the ultra rare Amiga as well with the ultra ultra rare peripherals. 😁👍 Great great stuff

[@PaulBednall]

Hi Neil, many thanks for this "trash to treasure" series on the CDTV, it's inspired me to dig out all my old Amiga stuff I've got in the loft, A500+, A1200, & a CDTV. My dad has got a Philips CD-i somewhere stashed away.

[@darren25061965]

My Loft is also full of treasure, mainly AMIGA`s, A500, A500+, A1200, A1200T, A2000 missing a few bits. Never managed to aquire the A4000 I always desired. Add to those an Atari 800XL + Tape drive and Cartridges, X-Box, X-Box 360, X-Box 1, Original Playstation and NES. My wife keeps asking "why don`t you throw all that old junk out", I have to remind her I don`t own any junk.

[@MrDuncl]

@@darren25061965 Yesterday's junk (like the working Spectrum I bought for £1) seems to be turning into today's antiques. Check the prices on eBay. They seen to have gone up a lot since I sold a complete A1200 setup with SCSI CD ROM and an accelerator for about £120. I still have four Amigas in the loft despite being an Atari ST fan back in the day. Lets just hope we don't flood the market by all trying to sell at once :-)

[@fiddley]

Wow, did not realise those keyboards & disk drives were so sought after. I think I'll be having a rummage later!

[@scottwilliamclarke6442]

You can get an adapter and use a PS/2 type pc keyboard - works near perfect

[@davidandrew5465]

@@scottwilliamclarke6442 Or you can make an adaptor and use an A3000 keyboard, does work perfectly.. ;)

[@krankymann]

they are, i have the keyboard and use it on my CDTV and CD32 with an adapter. I still need a floppy drive and monitor and i think my set would be complete, i've all but given up on the monitor though at this stage i feel like it's a unicorn.

[@roscoe500]

Unfortunately, I suspect a lot of CDTV keyboards have been stripped of their black key caps by people customising 500s and 1200s. Any Amiga keyboard that isn't broken or severely yellowed is worth a fair bit now.

[@philipcorner574]

Ahem, sorry about sending the Super Games Pak! I think we only played it once, and it was bundled with the A570. We definitely didn't pay £40 for it!

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks Philip, it was good to enjoy the authentic CDTV experience of it!

[@charlesjmouse]

Very nice - jealous now! PS Velcro is the friend of all who don't want to drill holes. PPS As a simple retro upgrade swapping out the 68000 for a 68010 can make a very small difference.

[@smokey91820]

I listened to this through my cambridge audio a5, 21 year old and still works great

[@hiroprotagonist1587]

I've got an A5 running a pair of B&W DM602s, bombproof rich and deep.

[@smokey91820]

@@hiroprotagonist1587 I use Tannoy q6 bookshelf speakers, I tried to change but it is really nice lol

[@SomePotato]

"What if Commodore didn't screw this up?" is pretty much the standard questions for most of their systems after the Amiga 500.

[@ojkolsrud1]

Wasn't most the major release machines quite successful, though? But yes, Commodore made so many errors... It's a crying shame, really. I would've loved it if they were still around. PC, Amiga and Mac could've been the big three.

[@SomePotato]

@@ojkolsrud1 The 1200 was initially successful, but that didn't last very long. Some of the high end machines might have made a good profit in their niche, it's hard to get numbers. But they releases so many weird machines without direction. As you said, so many errors... It's a shame considering how far ahead of its time the Amiga was when it was released.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@SomePotato they were successful in Europe, what you say is true about the USA though

[@SomePotato]

@@kaitlyn__L Yes, in Europe with the 500 and to a lesser extent the 1200. Not much else.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@SomePotato the 600 was also very successful in Germany and the UK, and Commodore also sold a fairly successful line of PC compatibles in these territories that it never bothered to in North America. The European arm was pretty financially healthy when American Commodore tanked, but they got sold off as part of the parent company’s bankruptcy and were essentially shut down against their wishes.

[@HoffmanYouTube]

One of the best looking amiga setup i have ever seen.

[@RMCRetro]

We're going to need two CDTVs and a copy of PT1210

[@kattan2006]

I really love the way you covered this. Professional yet entertaining. Good job :)

[@TheBasementChannel]

Those black peripherals 😍

[@lmfsilva3000]

"Eat my Reeboks, freak face" is a solid contender for "most early 90s line ever said"

[@iXien]

Well done with this great vidéo series on the so smart CDTV. I really love this system. I grew up with an A600 (yes, I know it isn't your prefered Amiga, but nobody's perfect) but at the beginning of the 2k years, I was searching for a smarter solution to keep an Amiga in my living room and the CDTV was of course the answer. I made a lot of modifications all over the years. I begun buying all the official accessories : wired and RF mouse, second generation remote controller (the one with a mouse/joypad physical switch), trackball, joy/mouse adapter, floppy drive, keyboard, 64Kb memory card. The prices weren't the same than nowadays of course. And then begun the time of upgrades : ECS Denise chip, Kickstart 2.04 with KS-switcher to keep the good old 1.3, CDTV ROM 2.7, internal joystick/mouse adapter, 8Mb Fast-RAM, 2Mb Chip RAM, SCSI card with IDE adapter to connect an internal CF card as primary HDD with Workbench 2.10 (the better for me on an ECS system) and a second CF drive replacing the old and useless memory card reader. In this one, I managed to configure a 32Gb CF card formatted in PFS3 containing lot of games, demos, GFX, music, etc. As comfort, I then bought PC mouse and keyboard adapters and a CD32 to Megadrive 6 button controller adapter. On these I connected a wireless combo keyboard/mouse and an 8bitDo M30 joypad initially designed for Megadrive. But like you I love that a system remain as clean as possible. That's why all my modificiations are internal only and when the front panel hood is in place, you can't imagine my CDTV is modded. I keep another CDTV untouched destined to host all my official accessories I don't use anymore on my upgraded system. Like you my CD drive doesn't work anymore since only some weeks sadly. Your video was really interesting about that. I suppose I will have to replace all the capacitors to resurrect it too. I really love your Gotek solution, really well made and always respecting perfectly the CDTV. The interview of Gail Wellington is so interesting. This woman made so much for the Amiga standard, particularly in the US. Many thanks for all this work on your videos, always made with a very professional touch. Just keep the good work !

[@cfriedel123]

Thanks for taking me down memory lane! I remember when I got my A570, the Fred Fish CD, as well as the 17-bit CD. I thought I'd never get through all those games and information! I remember not liking the CD caddy though because I only had a few of them and had to keep switching my discs in and out of them. =)

[@nellyfish9692]

It makes me happy that (before spraying) the external drive enclosure looks like it was styled on the Sam Coupe!

[@synaesthesia2010]

i remember that amplifier from when Richer Sounds were selling them more than 20 years ago. they're still the only retailer that sells that brand from what i understand as they have an ongoing partnership. i remember wanting one of those amps but was always put off by the lack of a headphone socket.

[@MattyStoked]

What a great video, Neil. A really interesting machine with no real place to call its own! What I love about the CD-ROM era though was the idea that this technology was exploding and the big manufacturers were throwing it all against the wall to see what stuck. It's a genuinely exciting technology boom, which gave us gems like this ❤️

[@UK_Cobra]

26:47 Almost brought a tear to my eye that. The Amiga had so much going for it, but the US management killed it off.

[@Jimbaloidatron]

Having worked with CD-ROM in those very early days, it's easy to forget just how difficult it was to prepare, burn and test those large data sets and that was a major hinderance to getting stuff out. First you needed a hard disk big enough to hold the source data; 1GB hard drives only launched the same year the CDTV did , enough for just one full CD's worth! Add to that, CD-R also only launched around the same time, wrote at single speed, were SCSI only and cost as much as a family car. I don't think the price of CD-R drives fell below a £1000 for another 4 years. Blank CD-R media wasn't exactly cheap, about £6 to £10 and as it is write once, if the write failed or you messed up, straight in the bin. Then you had to get your data 'taped out' for the CD pressing plant in the correct format, have a glass master made, and pay to have a run of CDs pressed. And none of that touches on the difficulty and cost of capturing images and video, which is why I think many titles were enhanced only by the addition of a CD Audio sound track!

[@MrDuncl]

Somewhere I have a copy of PCW that reviews the A1200 and also has an advert for a Philips CD writer at the prices you note. £3000 for the drive and £20 for a blank disc. Not surprisingly the advert was aimed at businesses. At around the same time a friend was proud of the fact that he could grab a single frame of video using his Sinclair QL and print the picture on his dot matrix printer - cutting edge stuff back in 1991.

[@valenrn8657]

In 1992, my Dad traded our A500 Rev 6A and bought a secondhand Amiga 3000/030 @25Mhz with 4MB fast ram + 2MB chip ram, and added an external SCSI CD-ROM drive.

[@nekononiaow]

Thank you for the video Neil. I do agree that it would have been more semsible to extend the Amiga with the A570 and thus offer more possibilities for developers without requiring them to take risks on a new unproven market. Moreover, for a time, the use of CDs would have offered excellent piracy protection, which we know the Amiga games market needed badly. The interviews with Gail Wellington on part 1 and this one are very enlightening and very emotionally touching. If you ever get a chance to talk to her again, please wish her well.

[@Greg2600]

Always love your ingenuity in improving these old beasts.

[@undergroundbass946fm]

Ahhhhhh the lovely assistant, the Cambridge Audio A1 😍

[@knobbymcfeck]

Around 10:04, does that say, "Cain't build that here." ? Aye, cain't be bothered, pal.

[@sazianasazi1182]

The music on the CDTV version of Xenon 2 was amazing!

[@AcornElectron]

Man, Amiga, just seeing workbench transports me to my teenage years. Keep up the good work fella and stay safe.

[@SchwachsinnProduzent]

Seems like an adapter for an IBM keyboard would be a great project idea. How different is the pinout?

[@nickryan3417]

Fascinating, thanks. I had it in my mind that the CDTV had a pixel graphics accelerator, but that's because I had entirely forgotten about the later CD32 device... which from memory did even worse.

[@RMCRetro]

You're perhaps thinking of the CD32's Akiko chip?

[@nickryan3417]

@@RMCRetro Yes, I was! Just watched your CD32 videos now... thanks

[@CastleFamilyThe]

Not quite as bad, the CD32 sold 100,000 (70k from sep-dec 1993, 30k q1 1994) with a couple thousand in inventory for another year due to Commodore going bankrupt, whilst the CDTV sold between 60-80k between Mar 1991-Mar 1993 (2 years of sales the CD32 matched in 4 months), also some of those CDTV sales numbers being the for the A570 drive for the A500 that Commodore tried to cannily increase the numbers with!

[@GerardKean]

2:40 oh my god the relief when you started cleaning that keyboard

[@pelgervampireduck]

future wars is one of my favorites, I played it a lot on PC, and just this year I found out there's a CD VERSION FOR PC TOO!!. I played the floppy version, I guess the difference must be cd audio or fmvs, I'll have to try it.

[@GregDaniel78]

Nice job! It always looked like an essential purchase back in the day, but I didn't get on board with CD software until I could get hold of a Power Computing (Squirrel) PCMCIA cd adaptor for my A1200. I still have it and it works just fine. Less than 6 months later, I'd bought my first PC, so it didn't get much use. I would have loved to have an a1200-spec amiga in a CDTV case though. I always loved their 'hifi' aesthetic.

[@RichRap3D]

All of those CDTV titles really are stretching the definition of 'games', they really made a misstep with the focus on education and interactive living room titles at launch. I do quite like the idea of an A600 based CDTV, but you can see how quickly they moved towards integration in the CD32 as the A1200 gained support.

[@MrDuncl]

I wonder if any market research that was done was in Europe or the USA ? In the UK I don't recall games machines (like Nintendo) being popular with parents until the Playstation, while throughout the 1980s you only had to mention "Educational" and parents would be queuing up with their chequebooks.

[@MrRobarino]

The Commodore CDTV, as well as the Philips CD-I and the 3D0 Interactive Multiplayer, were all trying to compete for the same educational and interactive home living room market. (a market that wasn't really there) All three companies released systems with expensive introductory prices for equipment that looked more like Stereo AV components then a video game console. By the time all three of these companies realized their missteps, the Sony Playstation had already been released.

[@MrDuncl]

@@MrRobarinoThe educational market certainly was there but for around the same money you could buy a better specified real computer. Amstrad (which in the 1980s was a huge success) made a big point of including monitors with their computers so Mum could still watch TV while the kids got on with coding (or more likely playing games) in their bedrooms.

[@MrRobarino]

@@MrDuncl Yes there was an educational market but it was not centered around the living room where these devices were being marketed for. That's the point.

[@edvinhelland6529]

I was using my CDTV as an Amiga from the getgo... loved the CDPD disks and my First cd was The Case Of The Catious Condor. Had an external disk drive, keyboard and of course IR mouse. Loved to play Pinball Dreams with the keyboard with a cord that reached all the way to the sofa 😀

[@tekk9995]

Seeing the adverts I wonder why they marketed it as 'with better graphics' being a regular A500. Was it a reference to the ECS chipset?

[@ArthLud]

Hi, Neil. Great video, man! That Cambridge Audio amp suits the CDTV beautifully! I never owned a CDTV and from what I see now - with all incompatibility and inconvenience, the cables, adapters, and all that sort of hassle - it's not worth the money even today. But it's great machine and it was a pleasure to watch. P.S. It is Police Quest not Please Quest. :P

[@Gadgetman1989]

Awesome 👍 loved this series, perfect blend of teaching and repairing

[@krankymann]

the black mouse in that promo image is the IR wireless mouse.

[@troelshansen6650]

The game I remember the most from the CDTV is Prey. An alien encounter

[@Supersimagicguy]

Great video, can't wait until you get your hands on an Open Flop and having a play ;)

[@pufaxx]

5:42 - Nice. I didn't know the CDTV had MIDI jacks.

[@RebornGalaxy]

13:52 lol, I will play that on work every Monday.

[@paulisthebest3uk]

Ive got a philips CDi-210 which is great in its own right, especially after installing the video cartridge, but i dont know why i seem to want a CDTV more - maybe because i know its based on the amiga and love amiga systems

[@MrDuncl]

I have had a couple of CDi s. Were there ever any decent games for it ? Having said that the first made a nice CD player and the FMV was impressive. Basically the forerunner to DVD.

[@JohnnyWednesday]

Behold the mighty beard!

[@RMCRetro]

Behold!

[@bookofdaveandsteve]

It's so lush

[@TheSugarDaddy1]

I never used one but some lad in our school said there was a football game with John Motson was the commentator he said it was brilliant I hope you can look that up

[@kaitlyn__L]

Ooh, nice looking bookshelf speakers. It’s rarer to see the tweeter on the bottom.

[@MarcusTheDorkus]

It's wild that Directory Opus still exists. I use it as my standard file manager. It's well worth paying for!

[@carltechnocop]

at 11:29.......that's a sample stolen from the film "Dark Star"

[@GraphicalRanger]

Sounds a bit like Battlestar Galactica

[@robsims6352]

My first Amiga was a multimedia pack CDTV (i.e. with the keyboard, fdd, mouse etc) - I ended up parnetting it to my A1200 when I got one of those. The CDTV is the only Amiga I regret selling. It just felt so special.

[@marcin.ronndahl]

I'm lucky enough to own a CDTV with all the black peripherals, although my keyboard has the standard beige keytops. I always thought it was because they'd been robbed somewhere in time to make a keyboard for some rattle-can painted "dark" A500, but in your last episode (pt2, @ 11:32), I noticed such a light-keyed keyboard in the original Commodore commercial! Does anyone know if that (light keys with black bezel) combination was common or not? Ie. maybe I have a genuine, as-intended keyboard then?

[@FatNorthernBigot]

Nice one, Pillock.

[@thepillock]

I aim to please :D

[@kjaergaard12345]

This is great, I would like to see more content like this 👍

[@roscoe500]

Interesting video, didn't realise the CDTV was so cheap later on. When you mentioned the £200 A500 trade in my first thought was "yeah off £999", but off £399! Seems like those who bought the later CDTVs got a good deal with keyboard, mouse and floppy drive thrown in. Love that you're sticking to 'period authentic upgrades', not every Amiga needs to be sporting an 060, Hyperion's latest OS and 1000s of WHDLoad games, 1.3 rocks :-). Looks great with the amp and Benq monitor (have one of these LCDs so am bias), a nice setup to play some MODs on.

[@MrDuncl]

I wonder if they were making them to sell at that price or just trying to sell off old stock? In the mid 1990s I got a new Philips CDi complete with FMV cartridge for £60 when they just wanted to clear them from warehouses.

[@ewhac]

12:06: Perhaps you covered it in another episode: Did you play any music CDs in the machine? If so, what did you think (he said, fishing for feedback)? 15:02: You _had_ to make me remember this, did you? Seriously, though, they deserve some credit for trying to make an FMV "Quicktime Event" game using just a 1X CD-ROM drive. 24:46: Have you tried Brad Schenck's _Labyrinth of Time,_ (released one year before Myst), which was designed to make use of all that space on a CD-ROM?

[@catgirl_eva]

I'm a little curious about that Cambridge Audio amplifier. It looks like an older version of my Cambridge Audio Topaz AM5.

[@Teppic11]

Around that time the Amiga was doing exceptionally well in anything video and rendering related, you'd have thought Commodore would have done everything they could to support that and make it as dominant as the Mac was in DTP. So instead people were stuck with outdated CPUs and 16 colours at high res when they should have been concentrating on 68020+ and 24 bit graphics as maximum priority. If they'd done this and then come out with a higher spec CDTV/Amiga with a CD drive, with decent software, I think they'd have had a success.

[@tomlee80]

I remember a friend who'd never owned an Amiga getting a super discount CDTV with disk drive, mouse and keyboard. I had the Amiga 500+ and spent a good amount of time copying games onto diskettes for him. He was even able to play a few of my games that were incompatible with Kickstart 2.0 on the 500+ and I was a little bit jealous. When the CD32 I was bitterly disappointed with its aesthetics. An Amiga AGA 1200/4000 chipset in a CDTV style case would have been a dream come true for me.

[@Charlie-Cat.]

One of these days Neil, we need to see you in a tuxedo in one of your videos. 8^) Anthony..

[@shameless_2]

I wonder how good it would perform as a Music-CD-Player, or if it actually is capable of running CD-A. Perhaps together with a Stereo connected via cinch...

[@ridiculous_gaming]

I actually have been tempted to pick up a cdtv in the past; however, with the current price for the unit and the fact that I have lots of Amiga's to play with, I abstained. Nevertheless, another fantastic, high quality video. Thank you.

[@MarkTheMorose]

4 dislikes? Eat RMC's Reeboks!

[@RMCRetro]

Eat my Reebok's Freakface!

[@blairwigley]

The SCSI2SD should be able to be powered by the SCSI cable.

[@ScandalUK]

I still have the CDTV t-shirt from the world of commodore freebie bag they gave us all - a huge lightning bolt going through a CD lol

[@onaretrotip]

Really enjoyed that, Neil. Sim City without a mouse? And for that reason, I'm out.

[@fattomandeibu]

I have a load of Amiga Format cover CDs, and those things are an absolute treasure trove of PD. Whether it be the SWOS team editor, New Icons, a port of the Doom engine that could play the full game if you supplied it with the files off the PC CD and ludicrous amounts of other shareware and freeware, they have something for everyone.

[@rafamigayt]

I did buy the bundle with a black 1084S montor and regret selling just before year 2000 to this day. 8^(

[@evening8990]

Great job Neil, many thank

[@fluffycritter]

Psycho Killer is one of those games that's aged so poorly that now it's almost charming.

[@MrDuncl]

The silly thing is, grabbing video into a computer was cutting edge stuff back then (as RMCs Quantel video showed).

[@Nukle0n]

Truely emblematic of the UK's base of bedroom coders making video games for the system their parents got them for school.

[@ZeusBike333]

I actually liked Psycho Killer. It was as MrDuncl says cutting edge stuff back in the day and was a nice respite from all the platformers and side scrolling play that dominated game play back in the early 90's. My favorite for the CDTV was Case of the Cautious Condor. I think Neil makes a good point about the lost opportunity of Lucas Art and publishers not taking advantage of the storage capacity to eliminate floppy swapping.

[@MedievalFolkDance]

I love the "old one-two" from Commadore on that page. "CDTV is now an Amiga product, oh, BTW, we're not interested in fixing your old broken shit. Toodles!"

[@lgf1978]

Nice story about the CDTV. 14years ago i was visiting a friend of mine working at a second hand store. they had recently been donated a lot of electronic equipment. and one of them was a CDTV :) trying to hide my enthusiasm, i carefully asked the pricing of this "cd player". and i got it for somewhere between 10 or 15 USD...... (!) it still lives well in my possession. I have a beige cd caddy, remote and the floppy drive. i also havce the same SCSI controller you have, and i was lucky to find a 4MB memory expansion card, the one for the CDTV internal expansion or diagnostics... i never really understood what that port was there for. but it works. it works really nice. Future plans for my CDTV. install a HDD of some kind. SCSI to SD, most likely. and making a 1.3 kick bootable zip disk. the drive works, fine i guess... have not been able to verify this yet. I do miss the keyboard, so i need a way to connect one of my A2K keyboard to the CDTV. And like you, i am proud of having a CDTV in my Amiga collection. :D

[@philsbbs]

Directory Opus was a wicked program and used daily on my Amiga.

[@thesixth2330]

Why did you keep that goofy yellow sticker on the external SD card reader you made.? Awesome Video!

[@crowbarviking3890]

It looks awesome! Highly decorative imho.

[@Cyberdeamon]

11:06 o god RMC caught one of Civvie 11's creatures.

[@heidirichter]

Regarding your "what if" towards the end... I'm reminded of the MegaCD (Sega CD in North America), where Sega tried to do something along the lines of what you mentioned. It could have worked well for Commodore perhaps, it it could have been yet another chicken and egg situation.

[@StephenBlower]

Elite was available. But what machines wasn't it on?

[@Towersen]

ufff... this is a good video! only imagine if cd tv came to 64 bit era... with 3d management and all that is represent in this moment. Good times for remember. Regards from Spain!

[@TheBasementChannel]

Great series! Thanks for the quality content 😄👍

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks for taking the time to watch it!

[@The16BitterSNES]

I was lucky enough to have a CDTV at launch, and while the initial multimedia titles were ok, I ended up using it as my primary CD player 😄. Then a little later found a wealth of PD compilations that really unlocked the potential of the machine and what it could offer. I also agree, such a shame it didn’t offer something a little more above the normal spec of an A500 both for consumers and developers alike...by the way, love your channel Neil 👍

[@jordanhazen7761]

How was the noise floor when playing audio CDs? Was the output of the Paula chip always passively mixed in, or did it switch between sources for better SNR? I have a CDTV packed away, but may have only used it to play Redbook audio a couple of times just to demonstrate the capability, since messing with the caddy was a bit annoying, and by the time I'd bought it secondhand CD players had become a commodity item. Mine is an NTSC model and came with a video-card slot providing S-video as well as composite, but without an RF modulator.

[@The16BitterSNES]

@@jordanhazen7761 hi, that’s a good point! I have no idea, technically, how the CDTV processed and outputted the red book CD playback. I just know at the time it sounded fine through what I had...and yes the caddy was a pain to deal with, and I’m convinced it contributed to numerous scratches to my discs!!

[@Tweaker420666]

Is there a way to network it? Fire up JR-Comm and 'call' a few BBS'

[@RMCRetro]

The easiest way is probably with a retronet or similar device

[@Ingens_Scherz]

I bet my old mate from uni, Dave Cooney - who was (if memory serves) an Engineer BSc of some kind - will be watching this. He bought one as soon as it came out. I'd had an Amiga 500 for quite a while and was pretty non-plussed by this...object. An Amiga? Ridiculous. Then he showed me what it could do. He also played Use Your Illusion II in the CD ROM drive - something I'd never seen before at the time - and I was gobsmacked. "Yesterday, there were so many things I was never told. Now that I'm startin' to learn..." Er, sorry, I was a bit transported to "yesterday" then by this video ;)

[@davidandrew5465]

Good Morning from Tasmania, I have a CDTV and others and have been googling to see if there is any info on a bundle I purchased many years ago, it was an A500 which came with a Commodore branded Stereo system which featured record player dual cassette and radio as well as Aux in to connect the A500.. I have not been able to find any info so far, just wondering if anyone here had heard of or has info about it.

[@giuseppelavecchia775]

Nel CDTV avevi montato il kickstart 3.1,hai rimontato l'1.3?,sul monitor si vedeva il workbench 1.3.

[@tristanfletcher6621]

When Commodore discontinued the CDTV they sold their remaining UK stock to a clearance warehouse; I purchased a brand new boxed CDTV complete with keyboard, mouse and floppy drive for £100 from the clearance warehouse in 1994 and connected it to my Amiga 4000 as a CD drive through Parnet. I probably should’ve kept hold of it, along with my Sam Coupe and C64GS!!

[@kyrkbymannen]

I remember playing the sim city on the CDTV for hours and hours and loving it 😂 I also played through the psycho killer game, and I bought a cd+graphics cd which I listened to all the time just to see the graphics with Fleetwood Mac.

[@Gooberslot]

I wish someone would make a SCSI adapter for the A500. :(

[@PATTHECATMCD]

Pistorm iooks very promising. Not a scsi adapter, arguably something better.

[@shelby3822]

I swear all those cut scenes are just for retailers to play on loop and capture our $$

[@rlzr.]

Neil, all classic Amigas run much faster with additional Fast Ram. Good video, CDTV is one of my favs!

[@TheTurnipKing]

How does kick 3.1 work with the CDTV? I mean, that has its own CD extensions. And in theory, those *should* be backwards compatible with the CDTV ones. So it seems like you'd get very complete functionality with the upgraded ROMS, you'd just lose that CDTV splash screen. edit: I think openflops is just an open source version of hardware equivalent to the Gotek.

[@garyhart6421]

I gave away (cost of postage) a CDTV mouse to an Amibay chap from Norway. "Late 90s" --- Amiga Format kept going until May 2000 and Amiga Active until Nov 2001.

[@technickuk]

I think the A570 could have really helped the games producers fight their up-hill battle of piracy, which was a real struggle for them back then.

[@RMCRetro]

I agree. Imagine if it came out in the late 80s with those first Japanese CDROM drives.

[@vapourmile]

Well, it wasn't a struggle for me. I simply abandoned Commodore and starting developing for the PC where piracy was and still is far less of a problem.

[@MrDuncl]

I recall thinking that at the time about CD-ROMs in general. I fitted my first CD ROM drive into a 486 PC with a 170Mbyte hard drive. No chance of copying a CD to the hard drive with that.

[@jls9225]

Have cover the Webtv yet?

[@brostenen]

The C64 looks more and more yellow. 🙂

[@digiowl9599]

As expected, FMV adventures. I really should dig through the Filfre archives to find out exactly who at Lucasarts it was that made the observation that any time game devs got some new hardware to play with they opted for looks over depth. Never got to play with an HDD or CDROM on my A500, they were simply far to expensive. Closest i got was to borrow a second floppy drive for a time. Instead i "upgraded" to a 486 PC clone, that got a Creative multimedia kit added down the road.