Subject: Amiga CATS developer CD 1.0, IBM Storyteller Live

From: Mark <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat Apr 26 12:40:00 2003

Hi,

I posted a question about this to an Amiga newsgroup a while ago, but no-one
there seemed to know much about it.

I have a CD-ROM produced by Commodore-Amiga Inc. labelled CATS Developer CD
V1.0 (CATSCD10). This was probably distributed to registered Amiga
developers circa 1991.

The disc doesn't contain an ISO 9660 filesystem. Examining the raw data
seems to suggest there might be a presentation authored with the IBM
StoryTeller Live! package (StoryTeller Live! was a multimedia authoring
package for DOS PCs, probably similar to Macromedia Director). I have a copy
of the ST.EXE player program on an old magazine cover CD.

One possibility might be that my CD was mis-labelled at the replicator, but
that's unlikely.

If anyone is curious enough to investigate further, I have uploaded a picture
of the CD and image files of its contents to
          http://www.a32768.fsnet.co.uk/CATS_CD_V1.0/

(I split the image file into 4MB chunks and compressed each using gzip. To
recreate the file decompress all .gz files, then join them in order.)

Regards,
-- Mark

---

From: "Gary Dean Hildebrand" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat Apr 26 13:15:00 2003

> of the ST.EXE player program on an old magazine cover CD. 
I think this is a developers package for CD32 gaming.  The CD32 was a 
stillborn version of the A1200, intended to compete with Nintendo, etc.  
I'll bet it autoboots on a CD32 console, if you can find one. 

Gary Hildebrand
St. Joseph, MO

---

From: Ethan Dicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun Apr 27 16:29:01 2003

--- Gary Dean Hildebrand <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Mark writes: 
> > I posted a question about this to an Amiga newsgroup a while ago, but
> > no-one there seemed to know much about it. 
> > 
> > I have a CD-ROM produced by Commodore-Amiga Inc. labelled CATS
> > Developer CD V1.0 (CATSCD10). This was probably distributed to
> > registered Amiga developers circa 1991. 

Interesting.

> > The disc doesn't contain an ISO 9660 filesystem. 

It might have an Amiga FFS Filesystem.

> I'll bet it autoboots on a CD32 console, if you can find one. 

I have one (and an SX-1 to go with it! - what I don't have is the MPEG
cartridge)  :-(

Let me know if you want to pass it along, or just see what it plays in.

-ethan
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com

---

From: Ethan Dicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon Apr 28 01:13:01 2003

> no-one there seemed to know much about it.

In a way, I'm not surprised... the CD-TV was not a big seller.
 
> I have a CD-ROM produced by Commodore-Amiga Inc. labelled CATS Developer
> CD V1.0 (CATSCD10). This was probably distributed to registered Amiga
> developers circa 1991.
> 
> The disc doesn't contain an ISO 9660 filesystem...

I don't know if this would work with any of the Amiga emulators (like
UAE, etc.), but I expect it _would_ work with a real CD-TV (which is
not a CD-32).

The CD-TV was an Amiga in a black box, styled like a VCR or component
CD-player.  It would play audio CDs, CD+G and even CD+MIDI (although
I am only aware of one CD+MIDI disk ever being produced).  It should
resemble an Amiga 500 with an A570 CD-ROM drive (more or less) with
some extra libraries in ROM.  There's a VFD display on the front that
the 68000 can write to, and an early memory card interface (64K/128K?)
for saving game data, etc.  You could get a floppy drive, mouse and
keyboard for it (the floppy was standard Amiga, but black; the mouse
and keyboard were not).

I had one for a while, before it was stolen in a 1990 burglary.  I
paid full MSRP of $799 for it.  Somewhere, I still have the CD that
came with it, as well as the black caddy.  Oh yea... IIRC the drive
is 1X and definitely uses a caddy.

Besides playing audio disks with its built-in ROM-based interface, I
did hook it up to my Amiga 1000 over a parallel cable and built a
boot floppy for it with DNet and the NetKeys handler, so I could drive
it from my regular desktop machine (two CPUs, two monitors, one mouse
and keyboard) to explore the machine.  There's some really great
crud in the corners of the demo disk that came in the package.

Thanks for sharing this.  It makes me miss my CD-TV (but not enough to
go pay too much on eBay for one.  ;-)

-ethan