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CD-ROM FAQ 2.0 (23.01.95) ------------------------- Table of Contents: ------------------ 0. Preface 1. Technical info > 2. The Interface 2.1 SCSI 2.2 AT-Bus 2.3 (E)IDE 2.4 PCMCIA adaptors > 3. single, double, triple, quad-speed 4. Caddy or drawer > 5. Problems > 5.1.1 Western Digital 00-04 PROTO chip > 5.1.2 V36 Bootroms > 5.1.3 External SCSI > 5.2 A4000 internal drive bay 6. Drivers > 7. Combinations of computer/controller/CD-ROM-drive 8. Audio > 8.1 Amiga-audio and CD-AUDIO > 8.2 Digital audio > 8.3 internal audio connectors 9. PhotoCD > 10. Installation hints > 10.1 SCSI > 10.2 AT-Bus/IDE > 10.3 Utilities > 11. CDs published by magazines and other electronic media 12. MPEG, FULL Motion Video > 13. CD32-games > 14. Amiga-CDs > A. Glossar > B. Legal Stuff > C. Extensions and corrections > D. How to get it ----- > := new since last release 0. Preface ---------- This FAQ differs a little from the normal FAQs with questions and answers. But before you read on, please consider answering the following questions: · What amiga and what equipment do you own? · How much money can you spend for a CD-ROM drive? · What is it you expect from the drive? · What future equipment will you buy? If you answer those questions you will see which chapter to read. If you compare prices, please note that you'll need a seperate housing for an external drive, that you'll need a driver and sometimes you don't have the right controller. Check the advertisements for the best >complete< offer, not for the cheapest drive. And be carefull: if you buy a drive at your local pc-dealer and the drive doesn't work with your amiga but does with a pc, no one will take it back and reward you the money. Buy at a specialist, an amiga dealer. 1. Technical info ----------------- This 1.2mm thick polycarbon-disk is produced using a spray-print- technique and a negative matrix. A CVD process is used to apply the reflecting 100Å (0.1µm) aluminum layer. To protect this layer from scrating and altering by mistake 5-10µm of protective coat is applied. On top of this the disk description and labeling is done with conventional printing technique. ###### #### ## ## ### #### Description, Label -------------------------------- protective coat ================================ reflecting aluminium layer ································ information dots |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| polycarbon-carrier |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| What does this mean: · The CD is scanned from the down-side not from the top like a conventional musix album (LP). Scratches, holes or other damage on the polycarbon-carrier will probably prevent the laser from reading the information. Some scratches can be eliminated using a special polish-kit for CDs. · The information layer is only protected by the thin reflecting aluminium and the protective coat. Deep scatches will destroy the information dots immediatly. · Do not use any kinds of pens that are labeled "permanent" or "waterproof" for custom labeling the disk. These pens may damage the coat layer and then the reflecting layer. 2. The interface ---------------- 2.1 SCSI -------- For anyone who already owns a SCSI-controller(A3000(T), A4000T) there is one choice: buy a SCSI CD-ROM drive. Connecting it is as simply as connecting a harddisk. And you will get a marvelous piece of hardware that can be conneted to any other known computersystem even if it's not labelled "Int*l *ns*d*". If tranfer for digital audio data over the interface is a must for you, there is no other choice. Only two brand new IDE-drives offer this feature, but there are no drivers available for the Amiga and those drives. 2.2 AT-Bus ---------- Well, IDE-style CD-ROM drives, often called "AT-Bus"-drives seem to be much cheaper, but you have to pay extra for a special controller or interface/software for the build in controller (for the A600, A1200, A4000 internal IDE-controller). Why a special controller, they are IDE, aren't they? IDE or AT-Bus-style drive are not fully IDE as hard disks. There are three differnt connection standards for such drives named after the companies that invented them: · Mitsumi · Sony · Panasonic For a PC every drive comes with a tiny special custom controler or it uses the connector on a soundcard (that's why the card come with four (4!) different CD-ROM drive connectors in these days!) None of these drives are able to directly run on an existing Amiga IDE-controller. Since the Mitsumi is the closed fit to real IDE-interface, there are two known adapters: the bsc tandem (for Mitsumi interface and IDE/ATAPI drives, but it also hosts up to 2 real IDE hard disks) and the CD-ROM-Kit, with adapts the internal Amiga IDE-interface (or the Access!-IDE-adaptor for A2000 by the same manufacturer) to Mitsumi-style connectors. I do not know any kind of hardware to use Sony- or Panasonic- style drives! But remember that you have to pay extra for the special controller, so a real SCSI or IDE/ATAPI may come cheaper than a combination of AT-Bus drive and controller. 2.3 (E)IDE ---------- In the last month all mayor manufactures have shown new drives labeled EIDE (e.g. the new Mitsumi FX300/FX400). But... these drives finally are true IDE-Drives, and though they run best with EIDE-controllers they will submit to normal IDE-controllers. So you noticed it, their is a little shift in terms: IDE for CD-ROM drives is not IDE for hard disks but some proprietery standrad. EIDE for hard disks is not the same for CD-ROM drives, it's IDE with the new ATAPI definition (which of course is part of EIDE!) for other than hard disk media. You may smile and try to connect a EIDE-style CD-ROM drive to an existing IDE-controller... it will fail. Any controller for the Amiga is just for hard disks, not for CD-ROMs. This is mainly a software problem, since all interfaces and their drives are not awre of devices other than harddisks on the IDE bus. So you can connect a IDE/ATAPI drive directly to the A4000, but you'll need a patch of the internal "scsi.device" for that. VOBs SPEEDUP-system will du that for you. So you may not need a hardware-interface but a special kind of driver! Ask the manufacturer of your IDe adaptor for a new software that allows a IDE/ATAPI drive on the bus. If you have an A600/A1200/A4000 your choice should be the CD-ROM-Kit, so you don't have to sacrifice another valuable Zorro-slot for the controller. For owners of a A2000 with no SCSI-Controller the tandem seems the best choice... if you can't find a working IDE-solution for your controller. 2.4 PCMCIA adaptors ------------------- For the A600/A1200 with PCMCIA-slots there are several offers for external drives with adaptors that uses this slot. If it's cheap enough for you, go get it. PCMCIA is one of the least used slots anyway, so a good choice for the CD-ROM drive. If you choose a triple or quad-speed drive it will be a real IDE/ATAPI drive on a real IDE controller. This often will allow the connection of some harddrives, too. All these controllers come with special software/drivers so you do not need to fear any incompatability. Computer Adaptor CD-ROM-adaptor -------------------------------------------------------- A1000/A500 SCSI SCSI AT ??? A2000 SCSI SCSI AT SCSI incl. SCSI controller Tandem CD-ROM-Kit for Access!-controller A3000(T) SCSI SCSI A600/A1200 AT CD-ROM-Kit PCMCIA (Overdrive-CD) Tandem 1200 A4000 AT CD-ROM-Kit Tandem A4000T SCSI SCSI Controller CD-ROM drives -------------------------------------------------------------------- SCSI with SCSI Tandem Mitsumi LU005S, FX001S/D, FX300(FX400 CD-ROM-Kit Mitsumi FX-, FQ-Series Overdrive-CD Mitsumi(?) 3. single, double, triple, quad-speed ------------------------------------- Compact disk digital audio (CDDA) is transmitted with 44100Hz on 2 channels using 16Bits each. So this comes down to 44100Hz * 2channels * 2Bytes and gives us a 172KB/sec transfer rate. On audio there can be some drop outs, but for digital information on CDs, a flipped bit is deadly. So some error correction codes (ECC) drop the rate for CDROM to 150KB/sec. That's what they call "single". "Double" than is 300KB/sec, "Triple" is 450KB/sec and "Quad" or "Quadro" is 600KB/sec. There are also drives that transmit a little bit more: 2.4times (Sony), 3.5times (Toshiba). Double is a must. You won't get decent rates on playing animations or videos from a single speed drive. And there are no single speed drive anymore. So Double is it in 1994, but they say triple and quad will do in 1995. So look what you have to spend on the drive and get the best you can afford. More than quad-speed probaply wont happen, since technology moves on and should offers us CDs with more than a gigabyte in 1996. These disks will use a differnt style of laser and electronic and you won't be able to read those on todays drives anyway. And consider another fact: For the Amiga the CD is merely a software archive. No company has released software that needs the CD-ROM drive for a large database or such. (not talking about games, remember!) So double or triple will do the job for you. Manufacturer Drive Type Speed¹ Mechanism ----------------------------------------------------------- Mitsumi FX001S² Mitsumi 1 drawer FX001D² Mitsumi 2 drawer FX300 Mitsumi 3 drawer FX400 Mitsumi 4 drawer Toshiba XM4101B² SCSI-2 2 drawer XM3401B² SCSI-2 2.2 Caddy XM5201B SCSI-2 3.4 drawer XM3501B SCSI-2 2/4 Caddy NEC 2x SCSI 2 drawer 3x SCSI-2 3 Caddy 3xp SCSI-2 3.3 Top-Loader 4x SCSI-2 2/4 Caddy Apple CD-150² SCSI-1 1 Caddy(?) PowerCD² SCSI-1 1 Top-Loader CD-300² SCSI-2 2 Caddy CD-300e PLUS SCSI-2 2 Caddy Sony CDU 561² SCSI-2 2 Caddy CDU-8002 SCSI CDU-8003A CDU55S SCSI-2 2/2.4 drawer IBM CDRM00101² SCSI-1 1 Caddy Panasonic CR-503-B SCSI-2 2 drawer Hitachi CDR-6550 SCSI-2 2 drawer CDR-6750 SCSI-2 2 Caddy CDR-1950 SCSI Pioneer DR-U104x SCSI-2 4 Caddy DRM602x SCSI-2 2 6 CD mag DRM604x SCSI-2 4 6 CD mag Texel 3024/5024 SCSI Nakamishi MBR-7 SCSI-2 2 7 CD mag Chinon CDS-525S SCSI-2 2 drawer CDS-535 SCSI-2 2 Caddy ----- ¹Single-Speed is supported for CDDA CDs by all drives ²out of production 4. Caddy or drawer ------------------ Caddies and drawers come from two different points of the market: A disk is very well protected in a caddy. and the mechanics of the drive is more complicated. Theses drives are mainly for the professional market; they have more expensive disks (US-$1000 or more) with valuable contents (adresses, books etc.) and they don't change these disk not very often. Sometimes only once a year or so. On the other hand, disks for the mass market come very cheap (US-$10 or less) and with constantly changing contents, you probably have more than one disk that contains interesing data. At home you may flip through these disks very often in a short time. So the drawer gives you faster access to the disks but is less protective. So what to buy? If you have a expensive valuable disk the costs for the caddy (~US-$5) wont matter, neither will the higher price for the drive. But if you are a normal home user, you probably have those magazine disks and you're not willing to spend more than 30 bucks for a CD. If you have a caddy for each of them this could get expensive for you. "Hey, I can change the disk in the caddy, so I do need only 2 or 3 caddies!" you might say. But you're going to sacrifice the higher protection (and cheaper caddies sacrifice the mechnics of your drive. It's just not built to insert, eject, insert, eject, insert, eject... in a high frequency!) Caddy: good protection for valuable disks, every disk should have a caddy, mechanism is not build for high changing frequency, can operate in vertical position Drawer: medium protection for the mass market, easy access to the disk, mechanism can withstand high changing frequency, can not operate in a vertical position (except for the XM4101 or equal drives!) 5. Problems ----------- 5.1.1 A3000 Western Digital Proto Chip 00-04 -------------------------------------------- All Toshiba drives (3x01, 4101, 5201) work with the PROTO SCSI controler chip in the A3000 or on the A2091 controller card. If you exspect problems you can exchange it with a 00-08 for about US-$40 or less. Look in the filesystem compatibility table for drives that work with Proto-controllers! NOTE: The Toshiba 3401 needs the Sync-Bit in the BattMem cleared if operated under AmigaOS3.1 or higher. The build-in scsi.device pays for the first time attention to this flag and the drive does not like it if synchronous transfer modes are initiated by the controller. The amiga simply locks up during boot. The Toshiba 4101 (and probably all following drives) do not have this kind of problem. 5.1.2 A3000 V36 Bootroms ------------------------ You should further note that the V36 scsi.device has severe problems with no bootable devices such as empty SyQuest drives and empty CD-ROM drives. With CD drives it depends on the kind of CD inserted during boot how long the timeout will be. Once you have booted with V37 and higher you do not have these long time-outs since the new scsi.device recognises the wrong disk type and moves on. CD timeout time ---------------------------------------------------- no CD inserted very long >30sec CD-DA disk long ~20sec XA+RRIP medium ~10sec plain ISO9660 short ~2-5sec After the controler has 'touched' the drive for the first time you can hit the eject-button, this will speed up things a little. But its annoying. But if you leave the drive empty at power-up the Amiga will take even longer to boot. The V36 scsi.device has a really long time-out, no disk or unbootable/unreadable disks are not detected very well. V37, V40 ROMs boot rather fast and once you have passed the cold boot, next time you reset it comes up very fast. There is a solution for this: mount all harddrives before the cd-rom drive (i.e. give the cd-rom the highest ID) and use the tool RDBFlags to tell the controller what harddrive is the last one. Beyond this ID the scsi.device will not search. But beware, the tool could do severe damage! Read the manual very carefully! 5.1.3 A3000 External SCSI ------------------------- If you exsperience problems on external SCSI-devices on you A3000 check if the term-power diode is inserted correctly. Several revisions had wrongly placed diodes and so have problems with external devices. 5.2 A4000 internal drive bay ---------------------------- On early A4000 Commodore used "thick" Power-Supplies. As a result the 5.25" drive bay is a little to small for standard equipment such as CD-ROMs, 5.25" floppies and SyQuests. Most of the time the drive itselves fits but there is no space left for the power- and bus- connectors. Double-check you drive bay before you buy a device for the internal space in your A4000! 6. Driver --------- To access cd-roms you'll need a special drive that adapts the different layout of the cd-rom filesystem to the amiga filesystem conventions. (Just like CrossDOS does this for PC-disks) Name ISO XA/RRIP Mac CD³² CDTV ------------------------------------------------------------- CD³² x x x x AsimWare 2.x x x x Xetec CDx 2.x x x x x AmiCDROM 1.15 (PD) x x x AmigaCD (WB3.1) x x x BabelCDROM x x CacheCDFS x x x x Overdrive-CD x x x VOB x x ----- ISO := reads ISO 9660 compliant disks with FAT 8+3 naming scheme XA/RRIP := reads the extended architecture disks with long names and unlimited directory structure and file attributes. (most Amiga CDs come this way) Mac := reads Apple Macintosh HPFS CDs CD³² := comes with a CD³²-Emulator, s.b. Except for AmiCDROM with is PD and AmigaCD (which comes with the V40 packages) all drivers are commercial pay-ware and come packed with differnt up-to-date CDs. They have several utilities like Audio-CD- player, SCSI-Inquiry tools, PhotoCD reader etc. Beware the AmigaCD driver. it's rather old and buggy. The better choice is at all times AmiCDROM. The special adaptors for A1200 and A4000 IDE-drives come with a special driver that interfaces the matching device directly. You don't have to buy them seperately. 7. Combinationes of Computer/Controller/CD-ROM-Drives ----------------------------------------------------- This list is derived from the List "AmiCDROM works" by Frank Munkert and his AmiCDROM distribution found on Aminet. Amiga Controller CD-ROM drive Driver Comment ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 500 GVP A500-HD+ NEC3Xp(CDR-400) ACD1.11 500 Trumpcard NEC CDR-25 ACD1.7 500 Blizzard Supra 500XP Apple CD300 ACD1.6 500 GVP Series II Toshiba 4101 ACD1.8 500 cdtv.device A570 ACD1.7 *500 A2630 A2091 Toshiba 4101 AW2 *500 A2603 A2091 Toshiba 5201 AW2 1200 1230-II SCSI-Kit Toshiba 4101B ACD1.15 1200 SCSI+ Apple CD300 ACD 1.? 2000 GForce040 Texel DM3024K ACD 1.15 not w/ Texel<1.11 2000 GForce030 Apple PowerCD ACD1.8/9 2000 GForce030 MV CDR-H93MV ACD 1.15 2000 GVP S II V4.13 NEC CDR-55JD ACD1.4 2000 GVP Series II Apple CD-300 ACD1.4 2000 GVP Series I Toshiba 3401 ACD1.8 2000 GVP 030 Sony CDU-561 ACD1.7 2000 GForce040 Toshiba 3401 ACD1.15 2000 Masoboshi MC Toshiba 3401 ACD1.6 2000 ICD Advant 2000 Apple CD150 ACD1.4 2000 A2091 NEC CDR-37 ACD1.12 2000 A2091 NEC CDR-55JD-1 ACD1.4 2000 GVP S II v4.13 NEC CDR-55JD-1 ACD1.7 2000 GVP Series II Apple CD300 ACD1.9 2000 A2091 Toshiba 3301 ACD1.6 2000 A2091 Sony CDU-561 ACD1.7 2000 Evolution 3.x Toshiba 3401 ACD1.4 *2000 DataFlyer Toshiba 4101 AW2 2000 GForce030 Toshiba 4101 ACD1.13 2000 GForce040 Oktagon 2008 Toshiba 4101 ACD1.15 2000 A2630 A2091 Apple CD300 ACD1.4 3000 internal Toshiba 3301 ACD1.7 3000 internal Toshiba 3401 ACD1.9 3000 internal Chinon 435 ACD1.4 3000 internal NEC CDR 84-1 ACD1.4 3000 internal (08) NEC CDR-25 ACD1.15 3000 internal (08) Apple CD150 ACD1.7 3000 internal Apple CD300 ACD1.7 3000 Merc'040 internal (08) Apple CD300 ACD1.7 3000 internal Texel DM5028 ACD1.7 3000 internal NEC 3Xp ACD1.7 3000 internal Pioneer DRM604X ACD1.9 nur teilweise *3000 internal Toshiba 4101 AW2 *3000 internal Toshiba 5201 AW2 *3000 internal (08) NEC 3xi AW2 3000 A2091 Toshiba 21/32 ACD1.7 3000 Emplant w SCSI Apple CD 300 ACD1.7 4000 GVP Series I Toshiba 3401 ACD1.8 4000 A2091 Toshiba 3401 ACD1.7 4000 A2091 Toshiba 4101 ACD1.13 4000 Fastlane Z3 Toshiba 3401 ACD1.2 4000 Fastlane Z3 Apple CD300 ACD1.4/7 4000 A4091 Apple CD300 ACD1.7 4000 WE040/28 Toshiba 3401 ?.? 4000 Golem SCSI Toshiba 3401 ACD1.7 4000 A2091 NEC3Xp ACD1.7 4000 A4091 NEC3Xi ACD1.14 4000 VOB CD-ROM-Kit Mitsumi FX001D ACD1.14 4000 Oktagon 2008 Sanyo CRD-4001 ACD1.14 *4000/030 Oktagon 2008 Apple PowerCD AW2 4000/030 DataFlyer Apple SC ACD1.7 *4000/040 A4091 Toshiba 4101 AW2 *4000/040 A4091 Toshiba 5201 AW2 4000/040 Oktagon 2008 Toshiba 3401 ACD1.9 *4000/040 Oktagon 2008 Toshiba 4101 AW2 ???? Oktagon 2008 Teac CD-50 Pioneer DRM600 DRM602 ACD1.10 The following hardware setup is known not to work or to have severe problems: Amiga Controller CD-ROM-Drive Driver Comment ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2000 GVP Series I Toshiba 3401 ACD1.6 2000 GVP S II v4.13 NEC CDR-55JD-1 ACD1.8/9 2000 GVP combo 68030 Toshiba 3401 ACD1.6 2000 GForce030 Toshiba 3401 ACD1.6 2000 ICD Advant 2000 Apple CD150 ACD1.6 2000 Vector Acc Nec 3Xp ACD1.7 3000 EMPLANT Texel DM5024 ACD1.6 3000/040 internal Texel CDROM ACD1.4 3000 internal Apple CD300 ACD1.6 nur teilweise 3000 internal (08) Apple CD150 ACD1.8 *4000 Masoboshi Toshiba 4101 AW2 altes ROM The follwowing harware setup works for some users, for other not. Amiga Controller CD-ROM-Drive Driver Comment ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2000 Evolution3.x Toshiba 3401 ACD1.6/7 maybe only in trackdisk-mode ----- ACD := AmiCDROM AW2 := AsimWare V2 CDX := Xetec CCD := CacheCDFS BCD := BabelCDFS COM := AmigaCDFS (OS3.1) * := I've used this setup myself or saw it working. 8. Audio -------- All mentioned CD-ROM drives support some kind of Audio-CD-Player operation(3.5mm outlet on the front). Some even can be set to work only in this mode and they do not require a host computer for this. You just have to connect the audio outlets on the rear with your Stereo Set or extra Speakers. There is lots of software that emulates a CD-Player on your Amiga. Most commercial drivers have one, but the best are found in the PD area (YACDP 1.2, Jukebox 2.x; both are shareware). Some drives do not support curtain features. So first check the users guide and see what features are supported by your drive and by the software player. (e.g. NEC drives do not support all audio mixer features!) 8.1 Amiga-Audio and CD-AUDIO ---------------------------- Only A4000(T) and the A3000T have internal pin connectors for the audio of the CD-ROM drive. Amiga-sounds and CD-ROM audio are mixed internally. The proportion of amiga/cd-rom tends to the amiga side, so sound f/x can be heard even if cd-sound is playing (for games, multimedia etc.) All other amiga models have to mix the audio externally. Please do not just combine both left and right channels. This is not a very clever move. Both the amiga and the drive circuits can be damaged (and PAULAs are very hard to get in these times :-) On the serial port (on the A2000 on the internal port also) there is a pin called AUDIO-IN. Please do not use this pin! It's initially built for the sound of a modem(!) and just mono mixed to the left channel. Just like the AUDIO-OUT pin which is builr for the output of sound through a modem and comes only from the right channel. So if you want to mix amiga-sound f/x with CD-ROM audio from your drive, use the following schematic to build a little mixer. It works for several people right now, but nether me or the author take any responsibility for damage to your hardware. R1,2 = Stereopoti 50kOhm linear _____ left O------[_____]------O left ^ Amiga +------+ CD-ROM | _____ right O--|---[_____]------O right | ^ | | X¹ X² R3,4 Stereopoti 50kOhm log. | | _____ | +----[_____]--+--O GND | ^ | | +-------+ | | | _____ | +------|----[_____]--+ | ^ | | | | right O¹ O² left to amplifier R1,2 := Balance amiga-sound and CD-ROM-Audio R3,4 := Volume (not really nescessary! The signals O¹, O² for the amplifier can come from X¹, X² also!) GND is just connected between the devices. This may also solve some peoples (including myself) grounding and resonance problems. If the volume drops to much you can reduce the 50kOhm a little (stay above 30kOhm). 8.2 Digital Audio? ------------------ The following SCSI (and only SCSI makes it possible :-) drives feature Digital Audio via SCSI (CDDAviaSCSI) · Toshiba 3x01, 4101, 5201 · IBM CDRM00101 (aka Toshiba XM3301B) · Sony CDU-561 (Apple CD-300), CDU-8002, CDU-8003A, CDU55S · Matshushita CR-8004 (Apple CD300e) · Matsushita/Panasonic CR-503-B · Hitachi CDR-6750 bzw. 1950 · Pioneer DR-U104x · NEC 2x, 3x, 4x · Texel 3024/5024 · Nakamishi MBR-7 You can read this digital data with this programms: · JukeBox 2.x (all drives) · YACDP 1.2 (Toshiba, Sony/APPLE) · SCSIUtil (Toshiba, Sony/APPLE) · CDDA (Toshiba, Sony/APPLE) 8.3 internal audio-connectors ----------------------------- Device pinout type size(mm) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Amiga A4000 LGR Jumper 2.54 XM-4101TA LGGR "Floppy"¹ 2.54 XM-5201TA GRL 2 XM-3401B RGL 2.54 XM-3501B RGL 2.54 Teac CD50 LGGR "Floppy" 2.54 Sony CDU55S RGGL "Floppy" 2.54 NEC 4xi RGGL MPC 2.54 NEC 3xi LGR 2.54 NEC 2xi LGR 2.54 Panasonic CR-503-B GLGR "Floppy" 2.54 Hitachi CDR-6550 GRL 2.54 Hitachi CDR-6750 GRL 2.54 Chinon CDS-535 RGL 2.54 Chinon CDS-525S RGGL MPC 2.54 Matsushita CR-8004 RGGL 2.54 Plextor PX-43CH RGGL MPC 2.45 ----- ¹normal floppy power connectors fit with a little help of a cutting knife 9. PhotoCD ---------- PhotoCDs are just normal multisession/XA CD-ROMs. The pictures are stored in an special format that includes several resolutions. Real, processed PhotoCDs are golden and have more than one session. At your dealer you can get lots of pre-processed PhotoCDs, these are single-session normal CDs and often include a viewer for DOS/Windows sometimes for Mac and/or CD-I players. To view those pictures on your Amiga you'll need a special program and if you want a little comfort you will have to pay for it. Also since the pictures are TrueColor 24Bit pictures you should have a graphics board or at least an AGA-Amiga and in every case lot of ram. Program ca. price max. resolution ----------------------------------------------------------- PhotoworX ca. 198DM Base*16 PhotoworX pro ca. 299DM Base*64 FolioworX ca. 128DM for PortfolioCD(TIFF) ADpro loader ca. 198DM Base*16 Photogenics ca. 55£ Base ImageFX ca. ? Base*16 ADpro/Asimware PD Base ppm2... PD Base*16 10. Installation hints ---------------------- 10.1 SCSI --------- Most of the people have difficulties connecting a simple SCSI drive to their amigas. Often because it's so simple and nearly all CD-ROM drive manufacturers do not supply a manual, but rather limited description of jumpers and ports on the housing. But there is nothing mysterious: simply connect the power and the scsi-cable to the device. Prior to that you should find a free ID on you scsi bus (CD-ROMs normally take ID 2 or 3). If your drive is the last one on the bus, do not remove the terminator resistor packs, but remove them from the former last drive. if you mount it somewehre in- between remove them. Only one device may be terminated on the bus at a time. All these guidelines should be found also in your SCSI- controllers manual. To physicaly mount your device you need a 5.25" drive bay in your Amiga. Currently only the A2000, the A3000T and the A4000(T) do have such bays. All other models need a external housing for the drive. Please note that all CD drives with drawers can only be mounted in a horizontal position else the disk will fall out of the carrier. Drives with a caddy may be operated horizontally and vertically. The drive is not visible in hard disk tools like the HDToolbox. It's "not a disk type 5" which means a fixed medium type device. To check if your drive is there use some kind of scsi inquiry tool, scsi mounter or similar. (Note: The Toshiba 3401 does not like synchronous transfers initiated by the host. Clear the appropriate flags!) To access it, install the device driver kit you have chosen. This will mount the CD-ROM drive for you and AmigaOS will recognise it as a read-only-device. After the physical mounting the driver will do the logical mount to the operating system. All you do is start the installing routine and enter scsi-device ("scsi.device", "gvpscsi.device" etc.) and the CD-ROM drive's ID (default 2) on the bus. Leave the rest to the defaults of your software. All known filing systems install a handler in L: and a CD0: icon in DEVS:DOSDrivers. It's common sense to name the CD-ROMs CD0:, CD1: etc. so stick to it. After you reboot you should see a CD0: icon on your workbench screen - of course you must insert some CD first. 10.2 AT-Bus/IDE --------------- Because you can not connect a standard IDE CD-ROM drive directly to the Amiga you'll need some kind of interface (VOB CD-ROM Kit e.a.). These kits come with detailed installation guidelines so all I can say is: be careful, read it twice and then try it. All additional tips and tricks are of course welcome, send them to me. For the software it is common to emulate a fake scsi.device with limited ID support. So your CD-ROM drive may have unit 2 fixed. But all Kits come with their own filing system... 10.3 Utilities -------------- All Utilities that are not related to the filing system itself or that are not installed during the setup of the filing system, again need the scsi-device ("scsi.device", "gvpscsi.device" etc.) and the ID of your drive. Only the new YACDP 1.2 features some kind of automatic search for the first CD-ROM on the first found scsi-compliant device (compared to an internal list). So look in the documentation where to setup device and unit settings. The audio-players support many features but not all drives do. So first check in the players documentation if your special drive as able to do all the things the player offers. (e.g. NEC drives do not offer all kinds of the audio mixer modes available in the "jukebox") CDDAviaSCSI is supported only for few drives, even if your drive can transfer CDDA, the player may not be able to read it since your drive uses a different access method. NEC is one of that drive type. 11. CDs published by magazines and other electronic media --------------------------------------------------------- Be carefull! Most of the CDs are published by DOS, Windows, OS\2 or Macintosh magazines. They use propriatary formats for their data and the retrieval programs only run on a special OS. If you're looking for pictures, anims, clips you may get lucky, but all of the new multimedia cds are not for you. Go, buy a PC :-( You may connect a CD-ROM to a bridgeboard in your amiga, but there is no software to access this drive from the amiga side, so the drive sticks to the bridgebaord only. (The same is it with a drive on the amiga!) There is a new alternative for you: PC-Task 3. The program emulates a 80286 processor and so you can run at least Windows 3.11. But beware the "gigantic" requirements of PC-Task (lots of ram, GfxBoard for VGA, fast 68k processor etc.) It offers a special driver to access a CD-ROM connected to the amiga. Be aware that large anaimations, videos etc. will not work, they expect more from a PC than PC-Task can offer. But, you can access several databanks, multimedia applications and such things. Format Amiga-program --------------------------------------------------------- BMP, GIF, JPG, PCX, TIFF Datatypes, PPShow, ADpro, ImageFX etc. FLI/FLC AmiFlick, MainActor AVI MainActor DL MainActor GL ImagFX PhotoCD PhotoworX (pro), Asimware, ImageFX WAV PlayWAV 12. MPEG, FULL Motion Video --------------------------- Theses VideoCDs can only be played by special cards like the FMV-module for the CD³² or a MPEG video card like PEGGY. On several PD-places you find software MPEG-players, but be warned, even 040 CPUs have difficulties showing them. 13. CD32-Games -------------- ·Only with AGA amigas A1200/A4000 ·Better chance if the games is also available for normal Amigas. They use less special features of the CD³² ·Some Games depend on the multi-button joypad. Honeybee and Competition pro sell them seperatly. The original CD³² pad sometimes has difficulties on the A1200 ·CD³² has build in chunky-to-planar conversion. There is a software to do this, but this is only fast enough on 68040 machines. ·Some early games don't like keyboards or more than 2MB of RAM. The different CD³² emulators do more or less a degration of your system and an emulation of C2P and the missing joypad. But the most advanced feature, the mixing of CD-audio and amiga-audio is only possible if your drive is some kind of SCSI-2 compatible (if ist the drive itself or the controlling device is does not matter). Drives missing this features (like NEC e.a.) do have difficulties producing the right sound F/X. Game Run? Emulator Pad¹ Comment ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Microcosm S/A,OV CCD,OV,TA j Pirates Gold S/A CCD j D-Generation S/A CCD Sleepwalker S/A CCD j Der Clou S/A CCD j Frontier - Elite II S/A CCD - Pinball Fantasies S/A CCD,TA - [1] James Pond II - Robocod S/A CCD - Diggers S/A CCD - Oscar S/A CCD j Gunship 2000 S/A CCD,TA j [2] Heimdahl 2 S/A,OV CCD,OV j Impossible Mission S/A CCD j Pinball Dreams S/A CCD j Project-X/F17 Challenge S/A CCD j Rise of the Robots S/A,OV CCD,OV,TA j Simon the Sorcerer S/A CCD j Striker S/A CCD j Whales Voyage S/A CCD,TA j [1] Zool S/A CCD j Subwar2050 S/A CCD - Alfred Chicken S/A - - Castles II S/A - - Emerald Mines S/A - - Labyrinth of Time S/A - - Liberation S/A,OV OV,TA - Dangerous Street OV³ OV - Guardian OV OV - Prey OV OV - Litil Devil S/A TA - Dennis n - - Disposable Hero n - - Chaos Engine n - - James Pond 2 n - - NASA... The 25th year n - - Overkill & LunarC n - - Seek and destroy n - - Trivial pursuit n - - Trolls n - - Wing Commander n - - Zool 2 n - - Fire & Ice n - - Lotus Triology n - - Wembley International Soccer n - - Universe n - - Gamers Delight CD Demos: Legacy of sorasil S/A² - - Litil Divil S/A - - Superfrog S/A - - Tower Assault S/A - - Jetstrike S/A - - Zool S/A - - Disposible Hero n - - Lotus Esprit n - - Nigel Mansells n - - ----- ¹Pad could be emulated. ²S/A := normal SCSI and/or AT-Bus CD-ROM drive OV := Overdrive-CD CCD := CacheCDFS TA := bsc Tandem [1] = problems with CD-sound [2] = runs without emulator, but this excludes CD-sound The CD³² has a build in CDTV-emulation that executes most of the CDs mastered for this device. All known CD³² emulators for AGA Amigas do not have this feature and therefore are not able to execute CDTV-stuff. You probably have no chance on getting such old titles on the market. 14. Amiga-CDs ------------- This chapter lists CDs specially mastered for the amiga. Not included are CD³²-Games and PhotoCDs. Category Name Price Contents ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PD GoldFish [2] FishDisks 1-1000 GoldFish 2 FreshFish 1994 FreshFish bimonthly PD-Series GNU-Utilities Meeting Pearls Vol.1 NetBSD, PasTex, Amok Aminet Feb'94 Aminet 2 Aminet Jul'94 Aminet 3 Aminet Nov'94 Aminet 4 Aminet Set 1 [4] Aminet complete to 12/94 Best of Amiga-Plus FF600-1000, Demos, FLIs AmigaCDROM Magazin 1 identical with Best of ... Amiga-Magazin Cd Vol.1 Pics, Anims MegaHits 1 MegaHits 2 Time-200, Taifun-270, PDK-40 MegaHits 4 MegaHits 5 [2] CDPD 1 FF1-660 CDPD 2 600MB PD-Soft CDPD 3 CDPD 4 FF890-1000, GNU C++, PasTex 17Bit Collection [2] 17Bit Collect. Phase IV 17Bit Continuation Auge/Cactus CD Express PD Galore 17Bit Compend. [2] LSD-149, AGA Pics+Anims Multimedia Toolkit Network CD Saar/Amok II Saar-800, Amok-106 Amiga Tools Utilities Professional Giga PD Update 1 Giga PD Update 2 Giga PD 2.2 Giga PD 3.0 Deutsche Edition Time, Bavaria Graphic+Video Imagine Enhancer CD Imagine Objekte WS Fonts WS Clipart Desktop Video CD Geuther Grafik CD Graphics I Knowl. Media Imagine CD V2.0 R-H-S DTP-Kollektion Clips, Fonts, Pcitures, PPrint Grafik CD Vol.1 Grafik CD Vol.2 Raytracing 1 Raytracing 2 Quickforms PageStream Fonts & Clips Clipart Warehouse Pictures Space & Astronomy pics from the NASA Animazing 1000 GIFs Animazing 2 Fractal Universe GIF Galaxy [2] GIFs Galore Women of Venus GIFs Das Magische Auge Games MegaHits 3 Games Nordlicht, advertisement games Gigantic Games PD-games Games & Goodies NTWICG I Now that's what i call Games NTWICG II ditto Berliner Spielekiste 900 games, BBS Ready 100 Games 1 100 Games 2 100 Games 3 Power Games Vol.1 Demos+Music EuroScene 1 WS Sounds Teriffic [2] Audio Resource Lib Demo Collection Demo Collection II Town of tunes Ultimate MOD Collection Demomania 1 1500 Mod Files Learning Mathematik bis 4.Kl. Othes AMOS PD CD Exchange Vol.1 Pandoras CD Professional CD-ROM Qwikforms CD Video Creator Visions Ultimedia I Ultimedia II CDX Change Arktis Edition 1 Number of CDs in [] brackets Please note that there is currently no commercial application (Like Pagestream3, ADpro or FinalWriter) available on CD. A. Glossar ---------- AT-Bus, IDE-connector := This often complies to the proprietary connectors from three different drive manufactures: Mitsumi, Sony and Panasonic. These connectors are not real IDE connectors and all the drives requier a special controller either on a seperate card or on a sound-card. Only the Mitsumi-style connector is supported on amigas. Note that these connector have nothing to do with the harddisk interface of the same name! EIDE := EIDE or better ATAPI describes the change from the propriertary connectors to real IDE-style conectors. Since the ATAPI command set is a feature of EIDE anyway they are often refered to as EIDE drives, but they're not. So there is a little shift in naming conventions: Type harddisk CD-ROM drive ------------------------------------------------ IDE IDE Mitsumi, Sony, Panasonic EIDE EIDE IDE(ATAPI) High-Sierra := first draft of a standard with FAT 8+3 naming and limited directory-struture. ISO-9660 := High-Sierra draft with minimal changes. XA := the XA-standard has new sector formats including audio- and data-sectors to interleave. In a normal CD-ROM mode it saves 2048 bytes (form-1) and 2336 bytes (form-2) of data. The XA (Extended Architecture) format saves in a differing method in form-1 2048 bytes, in form-2 2324 bytes of data. RRIP := »Rock Ridge Interchange Protocol«, fully downward compatible to ISO 9660. It offers support for the extended features of other files-systems then DOS (long filenames, more flags, deeper directory-structure, object-links) MultiSession := PhotoCDs are not written in a single shot, but in several sessions. Each of this sessions has a "lead-in" (that includes the directory), the data and a "lead-out". The next sessions contains the directory of all prevous sessions plus the current session, then the data and the "lead out". If your drive can not read multi-session CDs it stops searching after the first "lead-out", so you can read the first, but not the following sessions and their data. This applies only to the "golden" Write-Once CDs, commercial PhotoCDs are just normal, single-sessions CDs. (NOTE: the handling for the multi-sessions is different. Only two drive melt the sessions internally to one, big session (Texel/Plextor x024 and x028). Toshiba offers a special command to access the last session (and its directory), others leave it to the driver to combine the sessions for the file-system.) B. Legal Stuff: --------------- The stuff in this FAQ is based simply on my own knowledge. Firms and product names are used freely, but are the property of their owners. I live in germany and therefore have little knowledge about the other markets. So if I'm missing something please drop me a note! KLAATU@NEWSWIRE.GUN.DE Joachim E. Deußen Hubertusstraße 60 41334 Nettetal Germany VDF: ++49-2153-730451 Commercial products can be found in your local amiga store or by mail-order. Look in your favorite magazine for availability and current pricing. PD stuff can be found on FreshFish or the Aminet. Feel free to publish this FAQ on any electronic medium, on disk, CD or via BBS and the internet. If you quote, please leave a hint where to get the whole document. CDROM.FAQ - Copyright © 1994,1995 by Joachim E. Deußen C. Extensions and corrections: ------------------------------ technical info: J.LILIENBORN@AMTRASH.comlink.de (Juergen Lilienborn) hints: fjrei@kbsaar.saar.de (Franz-Josef Reichert) Audio-Mix: Th.Stephan@KDS.ZER.SUB.ORG (Thomas Stephan) PhotoworX: olsen@sourcery.han.de (Olaf "Olsen" Barthel) AmiCDROM: ln_fmu@pki-nbg.philips.de (Frank Munkert) (anyone with a valid EMAIL?) CD32-Games: Nemesis@Insider.sub.de (R. Geiger) KGB@Mountain.RHEIN-RUHR.de (K. Goertz) A special thanx for checking the english translation goes to: walaj@essex.ac.uk (Jonathan Waland) D. How to get it: ----------------- To get this CDROM.FAQ there are several possibilities. First Aminet, via CD-ROM distribution or ftp: ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/pub/aminet ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet Via EMAIL you may request it directly by me. You can request the newest version by sending a message with the subject "REQUEST CDROM.FAQ" or you can subscribe to a mailing list with the subject "SUBSCRIBE CDROM.FAQ". To unsubscribe simply sent a "UNSUBSCRIBE CDROM.FAQ" to me. The body text may be empty, since my tool parses only the subject. Feel free to fill the body with any comments, suggestions or hint. Via access to WWW: http://www.in.tu-clausthal.de/~lamers/amiga/CDROM.faq