The Commodore CDTV CR.

The Next Step, The last step.

The Commodore CDTV CR was to be the next step after the CDTV, It had two main goals, To be cheaper and fully compatiable.
The CDTV was designed by a small group in Commodore simply called "Special Projects" who did one off's for schools & Businesses, They didnt really care much for cost cutting and most projects worked out very expensive, This ment the CDTV worked out very expensive and didnt sell many but Commodore knew that incorperating a CD-Rom into computers was the right thing, The CDTV-CR was to be the next step, Desiged by the normal hardware developers to be cheaper and to incorperate some of the sugestions magazines and developers had put forward.
How did the CDTV CR get its name? Simple It was to replace the CDTV, Being aimed at the same audiance so that name stayed but they were going to reduce the cost of it so: The Commodore Dynamic Total Vision Cost Reduced (CDTV-CR).

The new design replaced all but 5 chips with surface mounted versions, The 5 chips left were the Kickstart (OS), the new single Prom (CDTV screens and programs), Beauty V1.0 (Audio, floppy and joypad), Grace V2.0 (Graphics & video out) and 1 chip controlling the expansion connector.
Now one thing that you may have just noticed is two chips that are called Beauty and Grace, Havent you heard of them? No? Thats because the CDTV CR is the only computer to have them and it wasnt released or even shown to the public (Or Developers?), Now when cost cutting it isnt a good idea to start redesigning chips that will work but they did and that was one of the reasons the CDTV CR never saw the light of day, These chips where to replace the Paula and Denise, Paula does the audio, Floppy and joypad work, Denise handles the colour pallete, sprites and video out.
There is no noticable difference in the new chips, CDXL playback is a little faster but thats about it. Maybe they where bored. :), Maybe there is a true colour 1600X1200 screen and it just need a differen program to open it, But I doubt it.
Other changes include the replacement of the memory card slot with a PCMCIA slot as found in the A600 and A1200 Amiga's with one little change, Its to small, The width is fine but its not high enough, A CDTV memory card will fit in the gap but wont connect to the pins, a normal PCMCIA card wont fit, normal cards have a raised centre which wont fit through, Strange that.
Other changes include the removal of the mouse / joystick and keyboard ports (Replaced with the soon to be called AUX port from the Soon to be developed CD32), The video slot was updated to incorperate all signals from the external RGB port and extra signals, The video card has a small (40 Pin?) connector for an optional FMV card, This card would let you play Video CD's (Mpeg videos on a CD) with no CPU usage, Only 1 FMV card was known to be made and is still owned by the Amiga's OS developer (And creator of the CDTV's screens). The card was latter adapted for use in the CD32 but I have been told by Richard (Dont know his last name, He didnt say but his name is on the CDTV's egg) that it worked very well even on a CDTV CR (with only a 7.14Mhz CPU).

The CDTV screens were also redesigned, The main thing was the addition of white to the menus, This colour does stand out when you open screens, Maybe a little to bold but it is very clear.
The Prom (A chip that holds the CDTV features like screens and drivers) was updated, This needed to be done to add the new colour but it also needed altering because unlike the original CDTV the CDTV-CR only has one Prom, Not two. The Prom is now upto version 3.32.
The preferences screen has had a little shake-up, The language selection has switched sides being replaced with a new section, the new section lets you choose where to save the preferences, Either to the CDTV's small flash memory or standard Ram bank(I think).
The easter egg is still there, Found the normal way by using the joypad.