Before leaving you to the usual and boring description of the product which, among other things, was taken from Wikipedia, i add my opinion;

Among the many uneasy things to use that i own, the Commodore A570 is in the top 10 ranking. :-D

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.

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 Megabyte fast memory expansion, but this proprietary memory module was never put into production and only a few rare developer examples of this exist today.

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 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 device (like the Amiga A590 hard 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.

Gallery:

This computer has kept for many years my BBS “Hidden Power / Nightfall HQ” up until closing, previously the BBS ran on the Amiga 1000 … then A500 and A2000.

I also publish two historical photos of my “BBS Room” where you can see this Amiga 3000 running.

I give a brief description of what was done and what i did today for this computer.

• Year 2001 i have removed the battery and one of the two SCSI Harddisks that was dead.
• Year 2010 i have cleaned the external/internal case and published the photos on the blog.
• Year 2018 i have cleaned the keyboard.
• Year 2019 i have carefully cleaned the motherboard that was covered with a sticky layer of Nicotine (in the BBS Room peoples likes to smoke a lot)
  • Cleaned the Floppy Drive covered inside and outside by a sticky layer of Nicotine, to repair it i had to completely disassemble it.
  • Replaced the Kickstart ROM 2.04 with version 3.1
  • Removed the last died SCSI Harddisk.
  • Installed “new” 250Mb Quantum Maverick SCSI Harddisk.
  • Installed WB 3.1 and MagicWB + a couple of Demos and of course Pinball Dreams Harddisk version.
  • Replaced the WD33C93A SCSI controller chip with AM33C93A-16PC.
  • Cleaned the Keyboard pcb and replacements of the rubber pad, more than 20 keys are died.
  • Removed the Zorro BSC / Alfa Data MultiFace Card 3 (multi Serial) card and installed the Village Tronic Ariadne II (Ethernet Card)

Everything works perfectly as you can see from the photos.

Gallery:

My name is “jaundice” and my last name is “lucky”.  :-)

Why “lucky”? because the battery used in this Amiga was not VARTA but GP, these batteries resist slightly to aging and release less acid.

The only defect of this Amiga 500 Plus was the Floppy Drive which did not read any Floppy Disk, the motor running slower than normal, it was enough replace a 4.7uF electrolytic capacitor to make it work again.

I thank my friend Igor for the donation.

Gallery:

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I decided to clean and fix my Commodore Amiga 500, it’s him, the one you can see in my old photos.

As you can see the switches and buttons are remained in place while the stickers has been removed many years ago.

The Commodore Amiga 500 has always been kept in a box, in fact it has the original color of the case and the keyboard.

The photos below are before cleaning, after cleaning and vintage photos.

Gallery:

The Commodore A601 provide 512k/1Mb of additional memory for the Commodore Amiga 600.

The RAM Expansion Module also provides you a real-time clock with rechargeable battery.

Gallery:

The Commodore A501+ provide 1Mb of additional Chip Memory for the Commodore Amiga 500+.

Gallery:

I must thank Andrea Pierdomenico for The original Black CD Caddy for Commodore CDTV.

Cleaning Commodore CDTV Keyboard:

Gallery:

The Commodore CDTV Keyboard it’s nothing more than a Amiga 3000 keyboard, black with a different connector.

I have received a Commodore Amiga 500 to use as spare parts. I decided to restore because it’s a ASSY 312512 (Revision 3) with key-switch like IBM chiclet keyboards.

The cleaning took me a whole day but with a great satisfaction at the end of the work. The Commodore Amiga 500 works fine, the floppy drive reads very well and i have added a memory expansion (FAST RAM) of 512k.

Gallery of images (before and after cleaning):

Read more…

I thank Fabio Bovelacci (Frater Sinister) for the donation.

Donated item:

• Commodore Amiga 500 with PSU, Mouse, Manual.
• GVP HC+8 Series II for Amiga 2000/3000/4000.
• Compatible 512k Memory Expansion for Commodore Amiga 500
• Psion Organiser II with Serial Cable.
• Sharp – EL-6200 Organiser
• Motorola FPU 68882RC50 50MHZ

Autopsy:

Commodore Amiga 1000 256kb Trapdoor Expansion Cartridge.

I have decided to replace my Amiga 1000 keyboard (US version) with the space key yellowed and a hole in the plastic caused by a wrong installation with a Amiga 1000 keyboard (Italian version) cosmetically perfect and running.

Replaced a old yellowed Amiga 1200 keyboard with a new one.

Material donated:

• Commodore Monitor 1085S (The 1085(S) is a cost-reduced version of the 1084, with lower resolution (.52 mm dot pitch) and no non-glare screen treatment.)
• Commodore Amiga 500 + 512k Expansion.

Autopsy:

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from Wikipedia:

The CDTV (an acronym for “Commodore Dynamic Total Vision”, a backronym of an acronym for “Compact Disk Television”, giving it a double meaning) was a multimedia platform developed by Commodore International and launched in 1991. On a technological level it was essentially a Commodore Amiga 500 home computer in a Hi-Fi style case with a single-speed CD-ROM drive. Commodore marketed the machine as an all-in-one home multimedia appliance rather than a computer. As such, it targeted the same market as the Philips CD-i. Unfortunately for both Commodore and Philips, the expected market for multimedia appliances did not materialise, and neither machine met with any real commercial success. Though the CDTV was based entirely on Amiga hardware it was marketed strictly as a CDTV, with the Amiga name omitted from product branding.

The CDTV debuted in North America in March 1991 (CES, Las Vegas) and in the UK (World of Commodore 1991 at Earls Court, London). It was advertised at £499 for the CDTV unit, remote control and two titles. Commodore chose Amiga enthusiast magazines as its chief advertising channel, but the Amiga community on the whole avoided the CDTV in the expectation of an add-on CD-ROM drive for the Amiga, which eventually came in the form of the A570. This further hurt sales of the CDTV, as both it and an A570-equipped A500 were the same electronically, and could both run CDTV software, so there was very little motivation to buy it. Commodore would rectify this with CDTV’s successor, the A1200-based Amiga CD32, by adding the Akiko chip. This would enable CD32 games to be playable only on the CD32.

The CDTV was supplied with AmigaOS 1.3, rather than the more advanced and user-friendly 2.0 release that was launched at around the same time. Notably, the CDXL motion video format was primarily developed for the CDTV making it one of the earliest consumer systems to allow video playback from CD-ROM.

Though Commodore later developed an improved and cost-reduced CDTV-II it was never released. Commodore eventually discontinued the CDTV in 1993 with the launch of the Amiga CD32, which used which again was substantially based on Amiga hardware (in this case the newer Amiga 1200) but explicitly targeted the games market.

source: wikipedia