Commodore CDTV-CR, Thought's on a Re-Amiga?

[Woz]

I'm just interested in everyone's thought on this rarest of Amigas, as everyone knows it was never released and just a few prototypes exist. It was very close to being released and the units out there were fully functioning prototypes, so has there been any interest in bringing this back from the dead with a Re-Amiga imagining?

 

[miggymad]

Unlikely but you never know, ...

 

[Woz]

I know that but I thought it would make an interesting discussion here. I'm sure I wasn't the only person who watched this in the adverts and prototype pictures back in the day? There's enough talented people on this site to make it happen so as you rightly say, you never know.

 

[btp]

In my opinion there exist major blocking points for developing a reproduction of a motherboard based on CDTV II or CDTV cost-reduced as was best known.

(i) To design a Re-Amiga you need to sacrifice an original motherboard (usually from a non-working machine). With only a handful of prototypes being manufactured and probably even less available today it would be next to impossible to find one (and then also sacrifice it!)

(ii) Re-Amiga motherboards are of course using original Amiga custom ICs. CDTV-CR used mostly ICs from the A600 but it also had 2 additional unique custom ICs: Grace and Beauty
This makes it impossible to procure the required custom chips even if we had newly available reproduction motherboards!

(iii) The uniqueness and overall appeal of CDTV comes from it's integration with the optical drive unit. Unfortunately both in the original and CR versions Commodore used custom CD-ROM drives with a custom communication protocol! These drives are not available anymore and to my knowledge no other compatible solution exists. Thus even if my previous points were somehow addressed you would be recreating a machine that would not be able to offer the originally intended most important functionality. In that case you can simply use Re-Amigas for the A500 or the A600.

 

[YouKnowWho]

I said it before, and I'll say it again! Simple solution:

Reshape the A1200 Amiga motherboard layout that is already in ReAmiga form into a shape that drops into Amiga 1000 and CD-1000.

Lovely base 020 AGA IDE with tons of accelerators, flickerfixers, keyboard adapters to choose from out there.

 

[YouKnowWho]

Forgive my ignorance on the subject of designing circuit boards in software (I'm imagining Photoshop with layers), but perhaps someone with knowledge could indulge my ignorant questions about it?

What format are the ReAmiga 1200 files in and for what circuit design application?
In that software, is the logic of the connection paths maintained if size or orientation is changed?

...like for example, if I was to move the expansion card connector "object" would the logical connection paths be maintained?

...just wondering how difficult the task for redesigning the shape of the ReAmiga 1200 would be for someone with the software/skillset and raw file.

Perhaps we can crowd fun someone's time to do the design?

 

[Rakeim132]

Too many proprietary chips that you would not be able to find maybe ?

 

[Rakeim132]

Forgive my ignorance on the subject of designing circuit boards in software (I'm imagining Photoshop with layers), but perhaps someone with knowledge could indulge my ignorant questions about it?

What format are the ReAmiga 1200 files in and for what circuit design application?
In that software, is the logic of the connection paths maintained if size or orientation is changed?

...like for example, if I was to move the expansion card connector "object" would the logical connection paths be maintained?

...just wondering how difficult the task for redesigning the shape of the ReAmiga 1200 would be for someone with the software/skillset and raw file.

Perhaps we can crowd fun someone's time to do the design?

The way they have been reverse engineered, they are dead Spring format file of gerbers only (PCB layers) and you cannot do anything with them. Someone must put the schematics in KiCAD and create a proper motherboard design from there, unfortunately, no insurance that the schematics available on the Internet are faithful to enough to make it happen, and to my knowledge no-one ever tried... this is a mystery.

 

[YouKnowWho]

Thank you @Rakeim132. Are there Sprint or more importantly KiCAD files of the 1200 out there to play with and/or reshape? Anyone have these by chance?