Hi there,

after a while of abscense ;) (some 16 years *oohhhh*) I decided to give my CDTV some love and bought a whicherCDTV and an SD card adapter :). I also bought a 3.1 ROM so it could boot from IDE.

After preparing the SD card with WinUAE I put the SD card in the SD card adapter connected to the wicherCDTV, but it wouldn't boot. :/. The power LED on the SD card adapter lights up, but the "active" LED does not blink once.

WinUAE boots just fine from the SD card (in a card reader connected via USB). In WinUAE I add a hard drive, pick the SD card "(RDB)[1.8GB,RO] Generic - USB3.0 CRW-SD 1.0 ..." and change the type from "uaehf.device" to "IDE (Auto)". - WinUAE is setup to emulate an A600 with ROM 3.1

By the way, HDToolBox (in WinUAE) shows me two 935 Meg partitions on that 2 GB SD card formated with FFS.

Maybe one of you has an idea what the problem might be or what to try next!? - Any help appreciated. :)

Cheers,
snurf.T

PS:
This is what i bought:
https://www.sordan.ie/product/607/44-pin-ide-to-sd-adapter--ribbon-cable-for-amiga-600-1200/
https://www.sordan.ie/product/615/extended-rom-set-u34-u35-v230--kickstart-31-for-amiga-cdtv/
https://www.sordan.ie/product/645/wicher-amiga-cdtv-8mb-fast-ram-memory-card-with-25-inch-ide/

PSS:
The systems finds the 8 MB RAM on the wicherCDTV. :) (when I boot a workbench via floppy disk)

@snurf.T

I think perhaps the 3.1 for CDTV only supports the original scsi interface for CDTV, and not the "gayle" IDE. Afraid you should have bought the A600 3.1 kickstart... or even for A1200 if the wicher has 020. I may be utterly wrong though :)

Last edited by kolla on 20-Jul-2019 at 03:46 PM.

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@snurf.T

What's the version of Extended rom on your CDTV? (U34 & U35 on motherboard). Wicher CDTV seems to need version 2.30 which IMHO is newest one.

Hi! Many thanks for the replies! :)

@Rose
When I start the CDTV, the boot screen (CD with laser and rotating "CDTV"-writing) shows 2.30 in the lower left corner.

Ohhh, and when I pull jumper JP15 on the CDTV motherboard, the boot screen shows the 3.1 animation. In that mode I can press both mouse buttons and get the boot menu. That boot menu sometimes shows a "CC0" ("carddisk-0"). Not always though! I haven't found out yet when it does and when not. But that does not help anyway. :/

@kolla
Since this is what I bought https://www.sordan.ie/product/615/extended-rom-set-u34-u35-v230--kickstart-31-for-amiga-cdtv/ , I really hope it came with the proper ROM.

Last edited by snurf.T on 20-Jul-2019 at 05:12 PM.

Ooooh no please say the CDTV doesn´t have one of those alkaloid battery in it, totally forgot to check for that killer when i was messing around inside last time...

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@khayoz
No worries! There is no such battery on the motherboard of my CDTV (haven't disassembled the whole thing though).
Astonishingly the capacitors in my roughly 25 years old machine look alright. The CDTV itself works like a charm. Just the remote control seems to be somewhat sluggish (the CDTV does not always react on every key press).

@snurf.T
Ooooh good to hear about the battery!

The capacitors is probably good on the motherboard because the CDTV was made in Japan (not by Commodore) with quality products!

Except in the power supply(or it may be to weak)!
When i run my with a SCSI card and SCSI2SD, its random boot.
If I power the SCSI2SD externally it boot every time 100%.

Yeah I´ve been thinking of replacing the IR led sender and IR reciever on mine with
modern replacements.

Last edited by khayoz on 21-Jul-2019 at 10:31 AM.

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@khayoz

Ian Stedman is selling ATX adapters for various Amigas including the CDTV if you want improve on the existing supply.

http://www.ianstedman.co.uk/Amiga/designs/Amiga_ATX_Adaptor/amiga_atx_adaptor.html

@khayoz
Did you ever (try to) burn your own CDs for the CDTV?

I followed the steps described here:
http://www.lemonamiga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3425
which works nicely. - Plus, I added the command "RMTM" to C: and "C:RMTM" to S:startup-sequence.

Anyway, when I boot such a CD the CDTV sometimes recognizes the CD, sometimes it doesn't. And when it does there are random crashes (some command would just fail / crash). Well, it seems random to me. In the end it's a matter of luck whether the boot process finishes to the end or not. - It works in 1 out of 10. Yeeha!

The drive itself seems alright. Original CDs from back in the day are not a problem. - Maybe it's got something to do with the burn speed. I tried 8x, 10x and 16x with all the same result. Trouble here: the mentioned speeds (8x / 10x) are the lowest speeds the burn-tools I have offer (Nero on Win 10, Brasero on GLinux).

PS: I am preparing a workbench 3.1 CD, so that I can try to access the wicher CDTV IDE interface from there.

To be continued ...

@snurf.T

Don't know if burn-speed has such an influence on the rate of success. However, back in the early days of CD-burning (I must admit, that was on a Windows PC), I seemed to only have success burning the cheapest recordables available. De best result went to the CDs with the same 'color' as original discs.

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Back home...

Yieeehhaaa! It works! ... Ohhh k, calm down...

Dudes and dudettes,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Interested readers,
dear Amigans,

the CDTV boots from IDE / SD card now! - That took me a while and I am really glad it works now!
So, here's the story:
I did not solve the problem with burning the CDs properly, but I found out that the poorly functioning CDs are actually the main problem. Even if the CDTV recognizes a self-burned CD and boots it fully, it does not mean that everything (all the commands) were executed correctly. - I realized that the 8 MB RAM of the wicher CDTV were sometimes there and sometimes not. That only happened when booted from (my own) CDs. It never happened when I booted from floppy disk!
The following bit may sound weird, but I was young and ... When - out of frustration with the situation back then - I gave away all my Amigas, I just kept the CDTV, some original discs and disks and ONE (1) blank disk. For working with the wicher CDTV I needed OS 3.1 which I put on CDs (which did not work properly as mentioned above). Since I have no means of writing Amiga disks, I had to assemble a Workbench 3.1 disk via those poorly functioning CDs...

tldr;
Via a properly working Amiga Workbench 3.1 install disk I was able to partition the SD-card (connected to the wicher CDTV) and install the Workbench. - That's the whole trick.

So, sorry for all the commotion and many thanks for the help!

Cheers

@Rob
Nice ! Will check it out.Quote:

Rob wrote: @khayoz Ian Stedman is selling ATX adapters for various Amigas including the CDTV if you want improve on the existing supply. http://www.ianstedman.co.uk/Amiga/designs/Amiga_ATX_Adaptor/amiga_atx_adaptor.html

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@snurf.T

Congrats to get it working!

Never tried to burn any selfmade cd´s with the copyright file(from the NDK) but I have
burned a lot of iso´s to cd, and all works great.

Last edited by khayoz on 02-Aug-2019 at 06:56 PM.

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