A new machine has joined the collection: a Commodore Amiga CD32. It comes with a power supply, AV leads, the official controller and a Competition Pro Super CD32 pad with its leaflet. There's also a stack of games: Brutal Football, Zool, Bump 'n' Burn, Microcosm, PGA European Tour and Jungle Strike, plus some CDs in cases.
// HISTORY
Commodore launched the CD32 in Europe in September 1993. It was essentially an Amiga 1200 with the keyboard and floppy drive taken out and a double-speed CD-ROM drive added. It went on sale for £299 and was advertised as the first 32-bit CD console in Europe, beating Sony's PlayStation and the Sega Saturn to market.
For a few months it sold well in the UK. But Commodore was already in deep financial trouble and went bankrupt in April 1994. Production stopped, and a planned US launch was cancelled because of a patent dispute. The CD32 turned out to be the last machine Commodore ever released.
// SPECS
CPU ........ Motorola 68EC020 @ 14 MHz
RAM ........ 2MB chip RAM
VIDEO ...... AGA chipset, 256 colours (262,144 in HAM8) from 16.8 million
EXTRA ...... Akiko chip, including chunky-to-planar conversion for 3D games
SOUND ...... Paula, 4-channel 8-bit stereo, plus CD audio
STORAGE .... double-speed CD-ROM, 1K NVRAM for saves
I/O ........ 2x controller ports, AUX (keyboard/serial), expansion slot
// HOW IT WAS USED
The CD32 was a games console. Many of its games were Amiga titles moved to CD, sometimes with CD audio soundtracks or extra intros added. A few took more advantage of the hardware, such as Microcosm with its full-motion video. Add-ons such as the SX-1 and SX32 turned it into a full Amiga computer with a keyboard and floppy drive. It also had an add-on that played Video CDs.
// WHAT'S NEXT
Here's the plan before it gets switched on:
[ ] clean the console and both controllers
[ ] check the power supply output
[ ] power up and test the CD drive
[ ] work through the stack of games
Progress updates will be posted here. For more vintage machines, see the hardware section.