Author: CDTV Land

How Many A690/A570 Drives Did Commodore Make?

The A570 CD-ROM drive is a fascinating part of Commodore’s legacy, as it is inextricably linked with CDTV: it makes the A500 compatible with CDTV titles. The original CD1000 CDTV player turned out to be an unmitigated disaster for Commodore with approximately just 80,000 units manufactured and Commodore hardly being able to sell them. So how did the A570 fare in comparison, and how many units did Commodore make? And what’s up with that A690 drive? Join me for another excursion into the fascinating world of Commodore’s CDTV history! Continue reading “How Many A690/A570 Drives Did Commodore Make?” →

CDTV OS 2.35 for A570


CDTV owners around the world have been enjoying the benefits of CDTV OS 2.35 for a while now. Today I am delighted to be able to announce the availability of 2.35 for the A570 CD-ROM drive! Yes, all the improvements that CDTV OS 2.35 offers have now come to the A570: support for 68030 accelerators, support for 32-bit Fast RAM, HDD boot delay option, the ability to boot your A500 from any Amiga CD-ROM (not just from CDTV Titles) and more!

Continue reading “CDTV OS 2.35 for A570” →

CDTV Title Display

An official and CDTV-branded promotional item from Commodore that was announced towards the end of CDTV’s short life, was only offered to CDTV dealers, possibly never even saw a release, and was discovered in 2017 in a barn. Sounds obscure enough? Let’s have a look at the wonderful CDTV Title Display!

Continue reading “CDTV Title Display” →

How many CDTV units did Commodore make?

When Commodore started selling CDTV in 1991 they were hoping to kickstart a new category of consumer electronics. Sadly, this dream never materialized. While there are no hard numbers on how many units they sold in total worldwide, the estimate based on quotes from various Commodore sales subsidiaries ranges somewhere in the tens of thousands. This begs the question, how many CDTV players did Commodore actually manufacture? Join me and find out!
Continue reading “How many CDTV units did Commodore make?” →

CDTV Brick Prototype

When CDTV launched, a commonly heard complaint from Amiga users was (and still is) that you can’t connect standard Amiga joysticks to the CDTV player. While it does have a joystick port on the back, the connector is different from the 9-pin D-Sub standard. However, as we will see, Commodore had thought of a solution to this problem early in the development process of CDTV in the form of a special brick shaped device…. that ultimately was never released. Or was it?

Continue reading “CDTV Brick Prototype” →