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The A570 CD-Rom for the Amiga 500. The A570 was launched in 1992, It added a CD-Rom to the Amiga 500 and 500+ computers. The card also has a single Prom which holds the same information as in the CDTVs Proms which is loaded on power up, The program gives the A500 standard CDTV screens including a CD player and screen saver. The A570 uses the same controler chip as the CDTV does, This means that the interface is the same so the CD-Rom out of the CDTV was used, the CDTV`s rear Expansion connector is also present. The A570 connects to the side expansion port on the A500 and is powered by its own power surply, The Power surply is a standard A500 square connector. The CD-Rom will only turn on if the A500 is and the A500 will only turn on if the CD-Rom is turned on. On the back of it are two audio in and two audio out connectors (Left and right speakers), The audio in connects from the A500 to the A570 and the Audio out goes to the speakers (or Monitor). On the front panel is the Audio control nob (Under the CD-Rom to the left), This adjusts the volume to the headphones if connected, They do not change the volume out of the rear ports as they are designed to go to an amplified speaker setup which will have there own volume controls. On the left of the volume control is the headphone socket, This is designed for the large connector, Partly because thats what was used on hifi`s of the times, Partly because you can get an adapter to make it smaller but an adapter to make it bigger is hard. Under the CD-Rom to the right is a vent (The lines running from center to the right), Recest in one of those lines is the power light (Which is green) and a drive read light (Which is Orange), Note: If the A500 is turned off when the CD-Rom is powered up the power light will remain off. The A570 does not give you 100 % CDTV compatability (Titles known not to be A570 compatable are shown in the CDTV Titles section), This is for a number of reasons but at the end of the day its just because it is an add on, The CDTV`s CD-Rom interface is an important part of the motherboard makeup and that sort of thing can not be duplicated and yet still remain usable on all A500`s. The A570 when new sold for £299 (Dec 1993) but then dropped as the CD32 replaced the CDTV and hit a low of £99 for a new unit with 3 CDTV titles. The price hasnt droped much lower as A570 still sell for around £50 for a good example, I paid £25 for my unit with no PSU, box, disk or manual a few months ago. The A570 is very simple to install, No software needs to be installed and the manual isnt needed (Well I didnt need it), There are programs on public domain sites for free that let you play audio CD`s from Workbench on both CDTV`s and the A570 (Also available from the Downloads section of this site). The expansion port on the rear of the A570 only has one card available, This is the Amitrix SCSI-TV A570, This card adds a full SCSI interface with internal and external connectors, The card is different from the CDTV version because there is less room in the A570 drive so more has to be outside, A large metal case is mounted on the Amitrix card and a small (And rare) 2.5" SCSI harddrive can be mounted onto the card. The best place to pick up a A570 now is through the Amiga only private add site Amibench.org or the Electronic auction site Ebay. For more information on the Amitrix A570 SCSI card click here.