The Amiga A570 is a single-speed external CD-ROM drive for the Amiga 500 computer launched by Commodore in 1992. It was designed to be compatible with Commodore CDTV software as well as being able to read ordinary ISO 9660 CD-ROM discs.
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write to or erase—CD-ROMs, i.e. it is a type of read-only memory.
The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, is the first low-end Commodore Amiga 16/32-bit multimedia home/personal computer. It was announced at the winter Consumer Electronics Show in January 1987 – at the same time as the high-end Amiga 2000 – and competed directly against the Atari 520ST. Before it shipped Commodore suggested a list price of US$595.95 without a monitor. At delivery in October 1987 Commodore announced that the machine would carry a US$699/£499 list price.
Commodore International was an American home computer and electronics manufacturer founded by Jack Tramiel. Commodore International (CI), along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Machines (CBM), participated in the development of the home–personal computer industry in the 1970s and 1980s. The company developed and marketed the world's best-selling desktop computer, the Commodore 64 (1982), and released its Amiga computer line in July 1985. With quarterly sales ending 1983 of $49 million, Commodore was one of the world's largest personal computer manufacturers.
The original designation was A690, and pre-production devices under this name were delivered to developers. The A690/A570 used a proprietary Mitsumi CD-ROM interface. It contained a header for an internal 2 Megabytefast memory expansion, but this proprietary memory module was never put into production and only a few rare developer examples of this exist today.
Chip RAM is a commonly used term for the integrated RAM used in Commodore's line of Amiga computers. Chip RAM is shared between the central processing unit (CPU) and the Amiga's dedicated chipset. It was also, rather misleadingly, known as "graphics RAM".
It is also notable that by the time of the A570's launch, the A500 computer had already been discontinued. The Amiga 600 (ostensibly the A500's direct replacement) was, like the later A1200, incompatible with this external drive. Thus, Commodore were in the position of having launched a CD-ROM drive for a discontinued machine, while a similar device was unavailable for their current low-end Amiga. This move by Commodore marketing department could be justified[according to whom?] by the fact that millions of A500 systems existed already, along with considerable demand for Commodore to release a more advanced data storage solution.
The Amiga 600, also known as the A600, is a home computer that was introduced at the CeBIT show in March 1992. The A600 is Commodore International's final model based on the Motorola 68000 CPU and the ECS chipset. It is essentially a redesign of the Amiga 500 Plus, with the option of an internal hard disk drive and a PCMCIA port. A notable aspect of the A600 is its small size. Lacking a numeric keypad, the A600 is only slightly larger than a standard PC keyboard. It shipped with AmigaOS 2.0, which was generally considered more user-friendly than earlier versions of the operating system.
The Amiga 1200, or A1200, is a personal computer in the Amiga computer family released by Commodore International, aimed at the home computer market. It was launched on October 21, 1992, at a base price of £399 in the United Kingdom and $599 in the United States.
The device (like the Amiga A590hard disk drive that was sold by Commodore for the A500) had no through connector, so it was not possible to connect both an A590 and an A570 to the computer at the same time. The A590, despite having an XT IDE hard disk, also carried a SCSI interface that allowed third-party hard disks and CD-ROM drives to be fitted. While these drives did not carry CDTV emulation, the lack of success of the CDTV format made this a null disadvantage for most users.
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that uses magnetic storage to store and retrieve digital information using one or more rigid rapidly rotating disks (platters) coated with magnetic material. The platters are paired with magnetic heads, usually arranged on a moving actuator arm, which read and write data to the platter surfaces. Data is accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored or retrieved in any order and not only sequentially. HDDs are a type of non-volatile storage, retaining stored data even when powered off.
Features
Single speed CD-ROM reader
Headphone jack on the front panel
Audio control knob on the front panel to adjust the volume of the headphones if connected, it did not change the volume out of the rear ports as they are designed to go to an amplified speaker setup which will have their own controls
Stereo audio in and stereo audio out connectors. The audio in connects from the A500 to the A570 and the audio out goes to the speakers (or monitor).
2 Megabyte RAM internal interface connector
Rear connector bay port to add a SCSI interface card
Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disk drives and tape drives, but it can connect a wide range of other devices, including scanners and CD drives, although not all controllers can handle all devices. The SCSI standard defines command sets for specific peripheral device types; the presence of "unknown" as one of these types means that in theory it can be used as an interface to almost any device, but the standard is highly pragmatic and addressed toward commercial requirements.
CDs could not be inserted directly into the A570 and needed to be put in a caddy before being inserted into the reader slot.
In computer hardware, a caddy refers to a container used to hold some medium, such as a CD-ROM. If the medium is a hard disk drive, the caddy is also referred to as a disk enclosure. Its functionality is similar to that of the 3.5" floppy disk's jacket.
The A570 had no need for drivers. It was automatically recognized as a standard Amiga expansion card by the Amiga Zorro busAutoconfig feature. Programs for playing Audio CDs were available on a bundled 'A570 Tools' floppy disk, public domain software disk collections, and then on Aminet.
The A570 also featured an external power supply, which was the same model as the A500 power supply.
The Atari ST is a line of home computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial ST model, the 520ST, saw limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. The Atari ST is the first personal computer to come with a bitmapped color GUI, using a version of Digital Research's GEM released in February 1985. The 1040ST, released in 1986, is the first personal computer to ship with a megabyte of RAM in the base configuration and also the first with a cost-per-kilobyte of less than US$1.
Parallel ATA (PATA), originally AT Attachment, is an interface standard for the connection of storage devices such as hard disk drives, floppy disk drives, and optical disc drives in computers. The standard is maintained by the X3/INCITS committee. It uses the underlying AT Attachment (ATA) and AT Attachment Packet Interface (ATAPI) standards.
The Commodore Amiga 3000, or A3000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in June 1990. It features improved processing speed, improved rendering of graphics, and a new revision of the operating system. It is the successor to the Amiga 2000.
The Amiga 2000, or A2000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in March 1987. It was introduced as a "big box" expandable variant of the Amiga 1000 but quickly redesigned to share most of its electronic components with the contemporary Amiga 500 for cost reduction. Expansion capabilities include two 3.5" drive bays and one 5.25" bay that can be used by a 5.25" floppy drive, a hard drive, or CD-ROM once they became available.
The CDTV is a home multimedia entertainment and video game console – convertible into a full-fledged personal computer by the addition of optional peripherals – developed by Commodore International and launched in April 1991.
The Zip drive is a removable floppy disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Considered medium-to-high-capacity at the time of its release, Zip disks were originally launched with capacities of 100 MB, then 250 MB, and then 750 MB.
The Atari Falcon030 Computer System is a personal computer released by Atari Corporation in 1992. The machine is based on a Motorola 68030 main CPU, and had a Motorola 56000 digital signal processor, a feature which distinguished it from most other microcomputers of the era.
FM Towns system is a Japanese variant of PC, built by Fujitsu from February 1989 to the summer of 1997. It started as a proprietary PC variant intended for multimedia applications and PC games, but later became more compatible with regular PCs. In 1993, the FM Towns Marty was released, a game console compatible with existing FM Towns games.
A disk enclosure is a specialized casing designed to hold and power disk drives while providing a mechanism to allow them to communicate to one or more separate computers.
The Amiga 4000T, also known as A4000T, is a tower version of Commodore's A4000 personal computer. Using the AGA chipset, it was originally released in small quantities in 1994 with a 25 MHz Motorola 68040 CPU, and re-released in greater numbers by Escom in 1995, after Commodore's demise, along with a new variant which featured a 50 MHz Motorola 68060 CPU. Despite the subsequent demise of Escom, production was continued by QuikPak in North America into at least 1997.
AppleCD is a range of SCSI-based CD-ROM drives for Apple Macintosh personal computers, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from the late 1980s to late 1990s. Earlier AppleCD drives required a CD caddy in order to be used, while later models used a tray-loading mechanism. The original model introduced in 1988 was simply called the AppleCD SC. There was also a version of the CD drive that did not have the Apple logo.
The Media Vision Pro AudioSpectrum family of personal computer sound cards included the original 8-bit Pro AudioSpectrum (1991), the 8-bit Pro AudioSpectrum Plus, 16-bit Pro AudioSpectrum 16, Pro AudioSpectrum 16 Basic and 16-bit Pro Audio Studio. All PAS cards with the exception of Pro AudioSpectrum 16 Basic could connect to CD-ROM drives—variants having SCSI or various proprietary interfaces—and many were sold in multimedia kits with compatible CD-ROM drives.
Xetec was founded in 1983 by Jon Flickinger, and was located in Salina, Kansas, United States. Before closing in 1995, the company produced many third-party products for the Commodore 64, Commodore 128, Amiga, Macintosh, Atari ST and PC computers.
Kickstart is the bootstrap firmware of the Amiga computers developed by Commodore. Its purpose is to initialize the Amiga hardware and core components of AmigaOS and then attempt to boot from a bootable volume, such as a floppy disk. Most Amiga models were shipped with the Kickstart firmware stored on ROM chips.
In addition to the Amiga chipsets, various specially designed chips have been used in Commodore Amiga computers that do not belong to the 'Amiga chipset' in a tight sense.
The Amiga CD32, styled Amiga CD32 and code-named "Spellbound", is a 32 bit home video game console developed by Commodore and released in western Europe, Australia, Canada and Brazil. It was first announced at the Science Museum in London on July 16, 1993, and was released in September of the same year.
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