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Articles / TULARC / PC info / Amiga / Amiga CD32 / | |
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This article is from the Amiga CD32 FAQ, by Stuart Tomlinson with numerous contributions by others.
AFAIK
As Far As I Know. The CD32 expansion connector pinout is only
available to registered CD32 developers, AFAIK.
AGA
Advanced Graphics Architecture. The name given to the latest custom
chipset for Amigas, which allows 8 bit (256) and HAM8 (262144) colour
graphics from a palette of 16.7 million. The CD32 uses AGA chipset as
do the Amiga 1200 and 4000 computers.
Akiko
This chip handles the data coming from the CD drive and includes the
functions of the CIA chips in other Amigas.
It's also more famous for chunky to planar conversion. Chunky and
planar are two different methods of storing the screen in memory.
Chunky is often used for 3D games. Planar is useful for scrolling
games, and it's the method used by the CD32. This chip quickly
converts from one t' other, helping developers to port code across
from other platforms that use chunky.
Alice
The replacement for Agnus in older Amigas. Contains the Blitter and
Copper, amongst other things.
AmigaDOS
The part of the CD32's operating system that's on CD-ROM (or floppy
or hard drive). Developers must obtain a license to distribute even a
small part of AmigaDOS on their CD-ROMs - it's copyrighted.
Audio CD
Your normal CD that holds music. Given a different name for computers
because there's so many different types of CD about. The CD32 can
play these.
Blitter
BLock Image TransfER. Special part of the graphics chip hardware
which speeds up many operations, by moving blocks of chip RAM around
with DMA, while performing logical operations on them. Lines and area
fills are among the most popular uses for the Blitter.
Boot
Putting the CD-ROM in the drive and automatically launching a program
without having to go through the operating system (eg. Workbench,
MS-DOS, Finder, etc...) and all the messing around with keyboards and
mice that it entails.
CDs will only boot for the computer that they were written for, even
though the files on the CD are readable on all CD-ROM machines
(ISO-9660).
If you intend to use the CD32 as a CD-ROM for other computers and you
don't have other storage devices (such as floppy or hard drives)
available, you must find CD-ROMs that boot up and load communications
software (such as Parnet, Sernet, or Twin Express).
Bootblock
A small piece of copyrighted code that must be on a CD-ROM in order
for it to boot. Developers must have a licence to use the bootblock.
C-Cube
This is supplied in the FMV cartridge. It decompresses the MPEG-1
picture from the Video CD and puts it on the screen. It's also found
in the CD-i's FMV cartridge.
CD+G
Compact Disc + Graphics. A standard music CD with the addition of
graphic pictures that can be viewed with an appropriate player. CDTV
and CD32 both play CD+G discs. CD+G discs were never plentiful, and
may not even be produced any more.
CD-i
Compact Disc - interactive. System for multimedia developed by
Philips; made available to the public shortly after CDTV was. Not
expandable to a popular computer platform such as CD32 is expandable
to an Amiga. CD-i software titles cannot be played on a CD32 and
vice-versa.
There is a new cut-down version of the CD-i (smaller box, less
connectors) that looks remarkably similar to the CD32...
CD-i Digital Video CD
A Video CD for the CD-i. The difference is that the they also have
bookmarks of interesting parts of the film on them. These can also be
played on the CD32 with FMV cartridge, but the bookmarks are missing.
CISC
Complex Instruction Set Chip. Contains lots of nice instructions,
but it ain't so good in the speed department.
CD+MIDI
Similar to a standard music CD, but it also holds information for
driving MIDI instruments.
CD-ROM
Compact Disc - Read Only Memory. A 5 inch polycarbonate disk with
aluminium coating, laser etched with holes for storing computer data.
ISO-9660 CD-ROMs can also hold music tracks that can be played with a
normal music CD player as well.
CDTV
Commodore Dynamic Total Vision. The previous CD based machine by C=.
It wasn't exactly a storming success, mainly due to poor marketing.
Many CDTV discs will work on the CD32, but some need a mouse and
others need a keyboard.
Microcosm was originally a CDTV project. C= gave Psygnosis some
financial backing to develop it, but the CDTV version never saw the
light of day, except for some promotional demos.
CDXL
C='s attempt at getting motion video on the CDTV before low cost MPEG
decoder chips became available. The CD32's version of CDXL can cope
with more colours and cover more of the screen.
CDXLs can be about two-thirds of the size of the screen (although
they can be scaled up slightly to fill more, but the side effect is
that they look blocky) and they can also hold mono or stereo sound.
Chip RAM
Random Access Memory available to both the CPU and Amiga custom
chipset inside the CD32 (and all previous Amigas). The CD32 ships
with the maximum amount of chip RAM that the AGA chipset can handle
- 2M.
Copper
CO-ProcEssoR. All Amigas feature a special co-processor as part of
their custom chipset, which allows some graphic chip functions such
as colour palette manipulation to happen asynchronously to other
tasks, freeing the CPU for other work.
CPU
Central Processor Unit. The brains for managing data and its
manipulation inside a computer. Amigas, CDTV, and CD32 have all used
the Motorola 68000 series of CPUs.
Datatype
Allows the OS to support any graphic, sound, text, or animation
format, once the datatype information is copied to the proper folder
on the Workbench disk or hard drive. Programs can ask the OS to load
the file for them without knowing anything about the file format
themselves.
This can come in very useful if you want to read ISO-9660 CDs
generated on other computers (once you've upgraded your CD32 to a
computer, of course).
DMA
Direct Memory Access. Allows other chips apart from the CPU to access
the RAM, at the same time as the CPU. This frees up the CPU for doing
other work, whilst the Blitter is copying memory for example.
Fast RAM
Random Access Memory available to the Amiga's CPU, but not the custom
chipset, thus faster for compute intensive tasks as no time sharing
between the custom chipset and CPU is involved. Adding fast RAM
should almost double the speed of the CD32 for non-graphics intensive
work.
The CD32 ships with no fast RAM, but third party expansion boxes may
allow for up to 8M of fast RAM expansion if you do not have the FMV
cartridge, or 4M if used with the FMV cartridge.
Flash RAM
RAM which can have data stored such that it survives being powered
down. CD32 uses flash RAM to allow saving high-scores or game
position information for the next time you play. Also known as NVRAM
(Non Volatile).
FMV
Full Motion Video - just what it says. Full screen moving pictures.
Often mis-used by journalists to mean any picture, including those
that have 10 colours and are around the size of a postage-stamp,
that's spooled from the CD-ROM.
FMV Upgrade
A plug in cartridge that gives the CD32 capability to play MPEG-1
encoded CDs such as CD-i Digital Video (Star Trek VI, Top Gun) or
Video CDs.
GIF
Graphic Interchange Format. GIF compression is a standard for storing
still pictures with 8 bit colour (256 colours on screen at once) and
no loss in picture quality.
HAM6 or HAM
An earlier version of HAM8, found on A500s, A2000s, and A3000s, that
remains for compatibility. This allows up to 4096 colours on screen
at once.
HAM8
Hold And Modify - 8 bit. An Amiga screen mode which can have up to
262144 colours on screen at once by changing some colour registers on
each succeeding pixel on a given scanline. This is most useful for
static pictures or predefined animation sequences, as it is difficult
to constantly compute the best pixel colours in constantly changing
action games.
HAM8 is often used to display JPEG format pictures or predefined
animations (CDXLs) with better than 8 bit colour (256 colours), often
up to near 18 bit (262144 colours) quality.
IFF
Interchangable File Format. Developed by Electronic Arts and put into
the public domain. Any IFF file can be read in by any program that
understands the IFF format (if it's suitable - there's no point in
a graphics package loading in an IFF sound file, for example).
Took off on the Amiga in a big way, so much so that any program that
doesn't understand IFF is guaranteed not to sell. Didn't do so well
on the PC for some reason (perhaps it was too good an idea...).
IMHO
In my humble opinion. The CD32 is the best inexpensive multimedia
delivery platform, IMHO.
ISO-9660
The different computer manufacturers got their act together and
agreed on a standard format for CD-ROMs, unlike the mess that we're
still left with today for floppy disks.
You can read any CD32, CDTV, Mac, or PC CD-ROM in any of the others.
Although the files are readable, the file formats are still different
for each computer (unless it's the CD32/CDTV), but if you have some
conversion programs or datatypes you can display the graphics, play
the sounds, or show the text from the CD-ROM.
ISO-9660 CDs are also cunningly compatible with Audio CDs, so you can
play tracks 2 onwards (track 1 is computer data) in a hi-fi, and
computers can mix the music from the Audio CDs with the sound output.
JPEG
Joint Photographic Expert Group - JPEG compression is a standard for
storing still pictures with 24 bit colour (16.7 million colours on-
screen at once).
Kickstart
The part of the CD32's operating system that's in ROM.
It contains all the code needed to access the CD-ROM and multitask,
as well as other things that will never see the light of day unless
you add a keyboard and some kind of storage (floppy or hard drive).
Lisa
Handles the screen display. There's a palette of 16.7 million colours
- each colour made of one of 256 shades of red, green, and blue. From
that any power of 2, up to 256, or 4096 (HAM6), or 262144 (HAM8)
colours can be displayed. The resolution can be most combinations of
320, 640, or 1024 across and 256, 512, or 1024 down (although there
are other modes available).
MPEG
Motion Picture Expert Group - they've decided the format of MPEG-1
and MPEG-2 compression.
MPEG-1 is the accepted standard for video compression on CDs... It
uses a variety of techniques to achieve staggering compression ratios
while still maintaining good picture quality. Other parts of the MPEG
standard include synchronized digital audio to make the format useful
for movies on CD-ROM.
MPEG-2 isn't used on CDs but it looks even better.
NTSC
The television standard used in America.
NTSC screens cannot be as deep PAL screens. This can lead to problems
when some software written in PAL countries is run on a CD32 using a
NTSC screen. The software may use the bottom section of the screen
that NTSC owners cannot see.
This is entirely the fault of software companies, there are enough
ROM routines in the CD32 to tell the program what TV standard it is
running under and the program should make allowances.
PAL
The television standard used in most of Europe and Australia.
Parnet/Sernet
Freely distributable networking solutions for Amigas. Uses the
parallel ports (Parnet) or serial ports (Sernet) to allow one to
mount drives on multiple machines. In this way the CD32 can access
the keyboard and hard drives of another Amiga, and the Amiga can
access the CD32's CD drive.
CDTV was often used as an external CD drive for Amiga computers via
Parnet.
A version of Parnet is now available for PC computers, allowing you
to link from CD32 to PC.
ParNFS
An Amiga only update to Parnet. This new version is faster and has
some bug fixes.
Paula
Gives you four channel stereo sound. Each channel can have 64 volume
levels and can play either waveforms or sound samples at almost any
pitch or octave from RAM. This chip is used to create sound effects,
or play music from memory often when the CD-ROM is tied up for some
reason (a CD-ROM cannot be used to load game code AND play CD music
at the same time).
Photo CD
Transfering pictures taken from a camera onto CD. These can be read
by the CD32 if you can find a CD-ROM with a photo CD reader on it,
use it as a slave drive, or expand it to a computer and download the
proper (freely distributable) software.
The Communicator is bundled with a Photo CD reader called Photolite -
this is available seperately too. Also Weird Science's Network CD has
a Photo CD reader on it.
RAD
RecoverAble RAM Drive. An area of RAM that doesn't lose its data when
reset. Any area of RAM can be used as RAD. Games can use it to save
data in, so it's possible to play a game of Liberation, save your
place in RAD, reset, play another game, then return to Liberation
later. Some games don't like RAD being there though.
RAM
Random Access Memory. Specialized computer chips that can store
information for as long as they powered on or the CD32 isn't reset.
RAM chips and be read and written to by the CPU or the AGA chipset.
RISC
Reduced Instruction Set Chip. A CPU that contains only a limited set
of instructions. The idea is that each instruction is so simple that
it doesn't take long to execute and any of the more complicated ones
that are missing can be built up out of the simple ones.
ROM
Read Only Memory. Specialized computer chips that store data and
instructions for computer operation and cannot be erased or written
over.
Shovelware
Taking an Amiga game, putting it on CD-ROM with no improvements
whatsoever, and usually charging more than the original disk version.
Slave drive
Connecting the CD32 via serial or parallel link to another computer
and using networking software such as Parnet, Sernet, or Twin Express
so that the other computer can read the CD-ROM in the CD32.
Spool
Quickly taking data from the CD-ROM and shoving it on the screen or
sending it to the audio output, or both. Eg. CDXLs or the Microcosm
tunnels.
3DO
Three Dimensional Objects (I think). Another CD-ROM based multimedia/
games system developed by Electronic Arts and former Amiga people.
This also is not expandable to a regular computer system. Slightly
more expensive for the both hardware and software than the CD32. It
has more limited screen resolutions. Only just released in Europe.
Twin Express
A program to transfer files from one computer to another through a
serial link. The front end works similar to FTP. There are versions
of Twin Express for the PC and Amiga.
Video CD
If you have a FMV cartridge you can play these. There were 100 films
available in August '94, much more now.
Continue to:
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