One of Commodore's last acts before going under was the launching of the worlds FIRST 32 bit game console. Featuring sound and graphics abilities way ahead of the competition, Commodore demonstrated once again their uncanny ability to render themselves irrelevant in a market they should be dominating.

Sigh

The Cool thing about the CD32 is that it is completely backwards compatible with the CDTV, meaning that one can take advantage of the CD32s enhanced speed, both in CPU power and CD-ROM speed, to play the older games. The CD32 also has the ability to be expanded into a full computer, and thousands of kits have been sold to do so. Now, why one would rather do that than just buy a fully expandable Amiga computer, I don't know.

Statistics, features, and CD32 resources:

CPU: Motorola 68020EC

• 14.7 mhz

RAM: 2048 kilobytes

ROM: 1024 kilobytes

Video: CSG "Lisa & Amber" chip

• Text: 60 X 32 and 80 X 32
• Hires: 320 X 200 through 1280 X 512
• Millions of colors

Sound: CSG "Portia/Paula" chip

• Four voice stereo Sound

Ports: CSG "Portia/Paula" chip

• 9-pin Mouse/Joystick ports (X2)
• RF Composite Video port
• Expansion port

Extra hardware:

• Internal 2X CD-ROM Drive

Personal Note: Another eBay find. I have been somewhat disappointed by this machine. The top loading cdrom drive is a bit awkward, and while there are more games for this machine, they do not take as much advantage of the abilities of the CD32/CDTV as the pure CDTV games did. Still, I do keep mine plugged in and ready to go.

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