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From: taab5@isuvax.iastate.edu (Marc Barrett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.multimedia
Subject: Re: CDTV titles on an A500?
Message-ID: <1991Jun6.014546.3026@news.iastate.edu>
Date: 6 Jun 91 01:45:46 GMT
References: <1991May31.093712.47965@cc.usu.edu> <1991Jun3.054319.10135@news.iastate.edu>,<105@nsq.uucp>
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In article <105@nsq.uucp>, sjorr@nsq.uucp (Stephen Orr) writes:
>In article <1991Jun3.054319.10135@news.iastate.edu> taab5@isuvax.iastate.edu writes:
>>
>>   The CDTV uses a modified 1.3 ROM.  The 1.3 ROM is 256K, however the
>>CDTV uses a 512K ROM.  The extra 256K is filled with system software
>>specific to the CDTV.  This 256K of software may not be present on an
>>Amiga with the Commodore CD-ROM drive, and certainly will not be 
>>present on an Amiga with any other CD-ROM drive.  There are other
>>features of the CDTV that also may not be present on an Amiga with
>>a Commodore CD-ROM drive, but the extra 256K of ROM is the most
>>important one.
>>
>Think of the extra ROM as an Autoboot ROM and I beleive the solution
>become aparent.  Commodore will have to allow the A690 access to the Audio
>output of the Amiga (in order that mixed Amiga Audio/CD Audio be possible)
>and will also provide a driver/filesystem that is capable of generating
>input events (as the remote control generates these, and some stuff uses
>the new RAWKEY code (PLAY/FF/REW/STOP).  I don't know how the gnelocking
>stuff will work.  There is however a different problem with thge A690
>running CDTV titles on an A500.  The CDTV has 1Meg of chip memory, and
>as CDTV apps tend to be heavy on digitized sounds, it tends to be used.
>Many programs may refuse to run on a 512k chip memory machine.

   That takes us back to Commodore's titanically stupid practice of 
putting the 1M Agnus chips into 1M A500s, and then only wiring the Agnus
chips to address 512K.  It makes sense with 512K A500 machines, but
makes no sense at all with the 1M A500P systems.  As far as I know, 
Commodore is still doing this.


>
>				Stephen Orr
>				SandIsoft
>
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