Using a DVD drive inside an Amiga CD32

Connecting DVD-drive/HDD to an Amiga CD32 (without an SX32 etc.)

I was thinking of replacing the CD drive of my Amiga CD32 with a DVD drive in its place.
Does anyone know if this would be at all feasible?

I'm particularly interested in the idea since there's is a freely available toolkit to create your own compilations for the Amiga CD32.
A custom DVD iso would easily be large enough to pack all the WHDLoad games you'd ever want on a single disc.

 

Can't find anything on replacing the CD drive with DVD. Think that is something yet to be done or if it has been done, the info is hidden away really good. These things could be turned into a full blown Amiga 1200 with some 3rd party addons. You might could get away with a HDD for the games since the adapter uses standard ATA plug drives. Could even use a CF to make it solid state. Not sure about the loading of ISO images from it but that might be easier and cheaper than trying to add a DVD drive in place of the CD drive.

 

This is really interesting, I would assume it's possible since the Amiga cd32 is a computer pretty much, keep me posted.

 

I don't think ISO images on a hard drive would be worth doing since WHDLoad installs would be so much easier (though RAM may be an issue, but resetting with a RAD disk might be able to fix that), most of the CD32 catalogue (if not all) has been ripped to work on Amiga 1200s anyway. I'm really looking for a solution for a stock CD32 without an expansion unit. For the ability to add an additional hard drive, floppy drives, etc on an Amiga CD32 you need an SX32 unit (or whatever other ones there are) - which are hard to find and expensive as hell when they are available. Though it may well be possible to replace the CD drive with a hard drive or DVD drive. And you're right, in that case a hard drive (CF with adapter) is likely to be easier since Amiga 1200s already support hard drives, whereas custom drivers etc would likely be needed for a DVD drive.

I just liked the idea of a DVD drive because it would likely still be able to handle CDs fine, and wouldn't require any case modding, thought he more I think about it - the more difficult it seems.. might need a custom BIOS / kickstart and more trouble than its worth with the need to pack everything into ISOs etc. With an internally connected a CF via the IDE port, you might need to switch between CD and CF whenever you want to load disc games. Or maybe a buffered IDE splitter could be used to take care of that. I'm not too sure how you would give prioirty to the CD over the HDD if there is a disc present though(?).

Anyway, thanks for the replies - I'll continue to think out loud in this thread

 

As I recall you can get a floppy drive unit that will work with the CD32 and pretty much make it an Amiga computer.

 

SX-32 addon turns a CD32 into proper amiga

 

Yep, but I already have an Amiga and can't justify the expense for an SX-32 or similar. I'll look into the possibility of adding a CF HDD without using the rare and expensive add-on units and, of course, post results.

 

I've seen people talk about tapping directly into the ext. board to add a CF HDD without an add-on, but one way or another you're going to run into memory issues. I bought one of those cheap floppy disk adapters that have been flooding ebay for years now, and the damn thing actually had to occupy a portion of memory for the floppy disk drivers. It was just enough of a portion (and the CD32 has so little memory) that several of my games wouldn't boot up at all, like Joe & Mac, despite running fine on a stock A1200.

They already make comp. discs that contain like 800 games on them, anyways.

 

Damn, sucks to hear.

Yeah, what I hate about most of these compilation discs is:
1. They all feel the need to make it "the only disc you'll ever need, all the best games evarr in one place!!1@!", so there's a tonne of overlap between them and some lesser known (but good) games are always missing.
2. The compilations almost always have music playing in the menu which slows the whole thing down heaps. Annoying as hell.

I'm thinking of making my own compilation discs some time (possibly by cannibalising existing ones to save time) and have a disc per genre or something with no crappy mods playing to slow the whole menu down. Which brings me back to my original idea of how cool it would be to make a DVD (and mod the console to support it) instead of a CD that could hold virtually every non-cd32 game in existence.

 

There is a reason games are missing from 800 in one discs and you mentioned it, memory is only 2 MB. That is not even good enough for all WHDload games. You are lucky if your favorite WHDload game runs in 2 MB.

And its true, connect a floppy to the Amiga and you loose some memory. Thats why some floppy games wont run on a dual floppy 1MB system (hello F1GP).

Forget the SX1 and SX32 etc... they are very rare and fetch a lot of money at the moment. FYI I offered 500 euro for SX32pro but was not allowed to purchase it, it was too little money WTF :-/

I think replacing CD with DVD-drive is going to be hard. IIRC it is not an IDE-interface in the CD32 but a custom format, maybe you remember the soundcards for PC in 1991 with CD-rom interface, I think its the same thing. Even if you could replace it, how is the CD32 going to know you have a DVD-drive mounted, its not going to happen. Fine with me, all CD/DVD media needs to die and be replaced with CD/DVD-emu.

There is some activity on a german made IDE/memory board for the CD32 and it has been rumoured for years you should in theory at least be able to hook up an A1200 memory card to the CD32 with custom made edge converter. Let us just hope someone make a cheap IDE/Memory board for the CD32 then we will be able to run all WHDload games of off CF-card instead of DVD/CD.

 

ide - compact flash might be better for the amiga CD32, compact flash up to 16gb are not expensive and neither are the converters

 

Like it's been said, you will miss RAM more than storage space with the CD32, 4,5GB of games won't do you any good since with 2MB of RAM all you can run are titles that need 1MB or so... the rest get's eaten by whdload's preload + program ...

 

HI I IS NEW ON HERE
i have been working on this the floppy drive that you can get can be taken apart it have a BOARD THAT CAN BE UNPLUGGED that has got clock with battery i am going to try and remove the board and tap in to the the cd32 motherboard vier the floppy connector to add 8 meg and cf hdd i need to get motherboard schematics to see how to connect

 

I had an sx-32. It indeed made it an a1200