CDTV Project - A (very long) photo story

Hi everybody.

Some months ago I got my hands on a CDTV as I thought it would be a nice way to have one of our beloved amigas in the livingroom. I wanted this to have whdload installed with some games, so when I have some free time I can have a quick 15 minutes of amiga joy

I think this is the only "wife approved amiga" but to get a stock CDTV to be able to load whdload and play some games there are some things that need to be done.

We start with a stock CDTV ...




and change the default 68000 CPU to a 68010 just to give it a little boost and some whdload flexibility



we add a megachip (PAL) to raise chipram to 2ΜΒ



and an elbox CDTV/2 to raise fastram to 2ΜΒ



boot roms 2.30 so we can use a higher version of kickstart and to install OS 3.X



kickstart 3.1 to install OS 3.X



SCSI controller so we can use an HDD






and last but not least, joystick ports as by default CDTV has not got any



There are 2 official solutions when it comes to add some joystick ports.
One is the Briquette and the other is this one from Germany (pretty obvious with such name...Das Vector)

Following this guide (thanks dony) how to install a scsi controller + HDD (in greek but can be really helpful to non Greek speaking folks) we remove the front of the unit and the motherboard so we can install a SCSI HDD...

The 50 pin scsi cable needs to be devided so it can be more flexible to move around the unit so lots of attention is needed there.



A SCSI 50pin 1 GB HDD from ΙΒΜ is installed.

There is another solution using a SCSI->IDE bridge and an IDE-> CF adaptor but the cost for storage is much higher and it will be a pain in the rear to set it up.

We put back the front face of the unit and the motherboard and install all other memory expansions and ROMS







The unit closed with SCSI controller installed and internal HDD connected





Preparing the HDD



1GB partition



I chose ClassicWB as the operating system. It's complete and ready to rock and roll



showconfig



Directory Opus so we can copy the whdload files and games from the CDROM unit (took ages to decompress this from an lha file)



All set. Time to play some games...!



The ultimate logo...



Yeah... shadow of the beast!







Monkey Island anyone?



That's all folks...Thanks for looking

Nikos

Pretty nice little project, especially since it has approval of the missus.

nice job dude

Great work

Thanks for sharing

Great job! These are some pretty rare stuff you have Niko.

Nice CDTV. Great work updating it.

BTW: What happened to the Joystick ports?

Oh and register your WHDload... it only costs a few $$

alexh said:

Nice CDTV. Great work updating it.

BTW: What happened to the Joystick ports?

Oh and register your WHDload... it only costs a few $$

Click to expand...

Thanks everybody

The joystick ports need to be removed from their backplane. They were supposed to be installed in the expansion port, but that one is already in use by the scsi controller.

All I need to do is cut the chassis of the unit close to the scsi controller so I can use the ports...

Nice rig Nikos! I hope you enjoy it

Thanks for sharing such a project Nikos! Finding shiz for the CDTV is hard itself and anyone messing with it will realize that it requires a lot of time to make it nice and usable.
Thumbs up my friend! \o/

You have to add a Super Denise chip. Or you have already added one ?

Nope. I have not added a super denise yet

Wow great stuff Wish I could find some of those parts for my CDTV. :roll:

That is awesome! I do love the CDTV. As you say, it's a 'missus-approved' Amiga that can go nicely in the lounge, but it needs a lot done to it to get it up to a decent enough spec to play WHDLoad games.

You've got some mighty fine upgrades there. If I had the time and money, I'd love to do something similar with a CDTV, but it's a long way off for now.

Also, as Seaside suggests, you might want to think about banging a Super Denise in there. Alongside the Megachip, it would give you a full-ECS CDTV, which is quite awesome in itself!

So, indeed, nice work and thanks for sharing the lovely pics! I hope it brings you many hours of gaming fun!

thats a great little machine mate good work

Congratulations! This CDTV looks mint and have all the bells & whistles one can aspire for it, only lacking the ECS Denise.

May I ask you a favour to yourself? Low the size of the boot partition to around 200Mb maximum and create another one for the games. If something goes wrong you'll have to wait to even three days to get the partition re-validated!

Also sack out that battery from the Elbox board or replace it with a lithium coin + diode.

Too bad that replacing the ZIP chips to achieve 8Mb of RAM is very hard to do, as the board have all the chips soldered instead of socketed.

That is a fantastic project & very well done indeed

Thanks for sharing with us

TC

Great work, it's just like mine

For the joy ports I've created a custom backplane (see the pic), but I had necessary to cut a little piece from metal from the cdtv backplane (it remains however covered).

Please let me know how do you have partitioned your HD, do you added some terminations? I got my partitions always invalidated (not the boot one atm).

fantastic stuff ! Any hints as to how you managed to get hold of those rare parts - An Elbox joystick adapter alone went for REALLY silly money on eVILbAY only last week.... Lord only knows the silly prices for the other rare stuff

I have a 500+ I can cannibalise for my CDTV - how easy it to swap bits to my CDTV and which bits should I swap ?

So jealous

So jealous

As someone who waited 6 months to get one of these when they first came out I am gob smacked just how much you were able to do I only fitted the Fat Angus and she ran great with Keyboard and external floppy.

Well done mate excellent upgrade and cool machine

cugar

Thanks again everybody...

@rkauer

This is test setup to see in hardware level if everything works ok. I thing I will go for SFS or make a small boot partition of 80-90MB. That's more than enough for ClassicWB

For the CDTV/2 it's really sad that the memory is soldered and not socketed.

@Kyle

Ciao Francesco! At the moment I have one partition that is the same size as the HDD, 1GB. I have not used any terminators or fancy stuff.
The SCSI controler was built by an Italian guy (Antonio) a couple of years ago.
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/fmiapa/cdtvinfopage.html
The SCSI cable has 2 connectors one end for the HDD and one end for the SCSI controller.

@z3spacial

I saw the ELBOX joystick adapter's price. It was kinda high indeed.
I got most of the stuff from German ebay and Greece.
You can not cannibalise an 500+ because the only thing you can get out of a plus is a super denise chip. Most of the parts I used are made for CDTV exclusively