Amiga CD32
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(pictures copyright by M.A.Grundke)
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serial number (a little worn):
MODEL AMIGA CD ID NO.513515
A100 GR 8513393365158061008757
Seems that another codename for this machine was Amiga 100 (see upside-down barcoded sticker above serial) |
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manufacturing note (also in bad shape):
MANUFACTURED AUGUST 1993 |
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Overview of the CD32's board (ASSY 365101):
Beginning on the left side, there are the two joystick/ paddle-ports and the AUX-port below them. Behind them, at the machine's back are composite out (yellow jack) and stereo cinch outputs (red and white jacks). Right from them, the mini-DIN S-Video out, and again right, the RF-modulator, PSU-input, power switch and expansion port. So much for the interfaces, back to the board: below AUX there's a little plug at the board's front; it's used for connecting the display board
(with reset, volume control & headphones out - see below!). The CD-ROM connector can be found right from the gameports, and looks similar to the A1200's internal keyboard connector. Of course it connects to the CD-ROM controller unit (see below). Moving further right over lots of capacitors, resistors and a 16.9344 MHz crystal, there's the small video DAC (U30, below PSU-jack) and below it, Paula, the machines soundchip (U3). Right from the DAC is LISA (U4), with a 28.37516 MHz crystal to her right, and ALICE (U2) below. Again right, passing the crystal and a board-inscription, there's AKIKO (U5) and the 4 pcs. 256x16 RAMs (U16-U19) below it.
The small chip on the board's upper right, finally, is the 68EC020 CPU (U1) with Kickstart 3.1 ROM (U6A) and some stickers below. Note also that the board is normally completely covered by a PCB shielding |
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board silkscreening, part 1:
Spellbound Rev 3
AMIGA CD/ GAMES SYSTEM
by: Grr/DF/SK/HD/BR/CG/DF/Nines
DF/GF/JD/FH/HM/CW/JH/MH
HWL/MECH/DOC/CATS/IK/FISH/ETC.. |
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board silkscreening, part 2:
C= COMMODORE ELECTRONICS LTD.
(C)COPYRIGHT 1993 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ARTWORK 365104-01/FAB DWG 365103-01
ASSY 365101
There was also an ASSY 365436, labeled 'Spellbound Rev 4.1', and the developers mentioned below were different. Have seen it somewhere in the web... However, I don't know what the differences are |
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The machine's display PCB, which contains the LEDs and buttons for the control panel. From left to right: RESET button (SW1/ SW2), CD-ROM- and power LEDs (D1, D2), volume regulator (VR1) and headphones plug (J1). Note another little diode on the board's left (D3) - what's it for? And lots of silkscreenings on that PCB:
| C= CD/GAME SYSTEM | C= COMMODORE ELECTRONICS LTD. | (C) COPYRIGHT 1993 |
| DISPLAY BOARD REV 3A | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED | | 9326 | | | 910-270-001-3A | AWK 365227 FAB 365228 PCB 365168 |
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| The Motorola 68020-CPU, here in the small 'FG'-version ('flatgrid', I guess), which is also used in the Amiga 1200. To the left and below barcode stickers, the latter one mentioning the machine's internal name, 'CDGS' (CD/GAMES SYSTEM) |
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| ALICE is the main bus-controller in the AA-design, and a direct (and nearly unchanged) descendant of the ECS-chipset's Agnus (MOS 8372B/ MOS 8375), except for it has been adapted to the AA-chipset's 32 bit bus. However, its data-bus remains 16 bit wide and it's still limited to 'only' 2 MBytes ChipRAM |
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| The machine's RAM bank (2 MByte ChipRAM), 4 pcs. Mitsubishi M5M44800AJ (256Kx16). Unlike the A1200, there are no soldering pads for additional RAM here (although it would make sense: could be useful for a cheap games system to be able to take inexpensive 256x8-RAMs instead of 256x16). Below it, you can see part of the second ROM socket (i.e. its footprints) and the 'test sticker' |
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| The CD32's Kickstart-ROM C391640-03 (at U6A), which is v40.60 (=Kickstart 3.1). Interesting is, that although both AA-board designs are similiar (except for the CD32's higher integration), the A1200 uses two 256KB 16-bits ROMs for its Kickstart. Also, the CD32's ROM contains ISO-drivers (for the CD-ROM) and other content, letting it grow to 1 MByte size. Note in that context that both boards
can take 512 KByte, 1 MByte or even 2 MByte Kickstart-ROMs, and that this board has soldering pads for a second ROM (at U6B, below that quality assurance sticker above). Finally, there's a green wire on the IC, connecting pin 22 to pin 33 (what does it do?) |
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| LISA is basically a 32 bit-version of the well-known MOS 8373 (Denise). Due to this gain in bandwith, it can now display 262.144 colors at once (HAM8-mode). The (never released) AAA-prototypes even had HAM10... |
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| Yes, this is old 'Paula', but now in a SMD-version (making it harder to replace...) and adapted to the AA-chipset. But basically it is the same as in the Amiga 1000. Although its abilities are more than enough for gaming (and this is the CD32's purpose), many people were disappointed when the AA-chipset was introduced - they had expected a better Paula or even an integrated DSP (like used in the A3000+ protoype) |
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The CD-ROM control unit, residing in the upper part of the machine's case. It is connected to the mainboard via the flat cable you can see on the left side. The board has no CBM-labels or CBM silk screening, but one CBM-IC, CBM 365301-01 (leftmost PLCC-chip). The two other PLCC-chips are a SONY CXD250080 and a SONY CXA1372Q. The only silkscreenings are below the CBM chip:
6580GJO-EP01B
6580GJOSEP01
B6 |
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| AKIKO (CBM 391563-01, REV A) does all I/O-related things in the CD32. It also has CSG 8520-CIA's and Budgie's functions (Amiga 1200) integrated. Interesting in this context is that AKIKO doesn't contain an IDE-compatible interface (like GAYLE used in A600, A1200 and A4000); the CD-ROM is driven by a custom controller (whose data is processed by AKIKO, nevertheless). Even more interesting (but rarely used to retain A1200/ A4000 compatibility) is AKIKO's ability
to to chunky-planar conversion in hardware. 'Chunky pixels' are used in PC's VGA graphics, and provide a very fast way of storing graphics data (and also of writing it to screen); the reason is that one pixel's state is stored in exactly one byte in RAM. The drawback: you need enough memory for all pixels. The Amiga-architecture, on the other hand, always used the 'planar' method, which doesn't have that 'byte-to-pixel relation'; instead, more bytes are used to store one pixel's state (depending on the graphics mode used). That technique can save memory, but because more bytes have to be accessed, is much slower (a reason why 3D games were often very slow on the Amiga, whereas the PC couldn't really handle smooth scrolling). So why is AKIKO's hardware conversion ability so interesting?
Because of the two different techniques of graphics programming, it was a great effort to develop games for both platforms. And since Amiga-users didn't seem to be willing to spend money on games (instead spreading illegal copies), the industry began concentrating on the PCs. The result: many games never appeared for the Amiga, and lots of them were bad conversions and just 'emulated' chunky pixels, making them almost unplayable (good example: Sierra's Space Quest IV). Now with chunky-planar conversion in all members of the Amiga-family, cheap and easy conversions of PC-games would have been possible, probably saving the Amiga. But of course, the other AA- (and AAA-) machines would've also needed AKIKO... |
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| On the left, the RF-modulator (made by Mitsumi) for the TV-output. On the lower right, the small ADV101KP30 video DAC (converting LISA's digital signals to an analogue one for composite video, S-Video or RF-output). Directly right from the modulator is the PSU-connector, by the way. Of course, the AA-chipset's higher scan rates (such as 31.5 KHz VGA-compatible modes) are not available through RF-modulator, S-Video or composite outputs - they
would require a real RGB port, which the machine lacks (although there are hardware hacks to add one - namely test port TP9, which contains all RGB signals - see picture below). Another interesting detail on this picture is the small IC exactly below the modulator, a SONY CXA1145M. In seems to be part of the CD-controller and its connector to the CD32's board, since it also uses SONY parts (probably responsible for doing the data transfers?) |
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| The CD32's 182 pin expansion slot, which is absolutely incompatible to the A1200's (and has 32 more pins). One of the most-interesting peripherals for this slot (and there aren't many) is CBM's 'Full Motion Video'-expansion (FMV), a MPEG-1-decoder for playing Video-CDs. Right you can see part of the above-mentioned TP9 (a test port), which contains all RGB-signals and can thus be used to add a RGB port to the machine (these signals are also available at the expansion slot). However, TP9's RGB signals are not amplified, so a little hardware hacking is required to add a fully-featured RGB port (or you just buy one of
the 3rd-party expansions containing a RGB port, such as Microbotics' SX-1 or DCE's SX-32)... |
Also see the Amiga 1200's board design!