Codemasters CD

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The Codemasters CD was a compilation of games from Codemasters which came on a Audio CD, bundled with a special connection cable to connect an Audio CD Player to the Joystick Port. Since the computer can't boot from the Joystick Port, it also included boot software on cassette. The Codemasters CD was announced for ZX Spectrum, Commodore C64, and Amstrad CPC.

However, only the Spectrum and Commodore versions seem to have been actually released. According to the Oliver Twins (the makers of the CD), the Amstrad CPC hardware did exist, too. Though this seems to have been only an unreleased prototype.

Info Fragments on Spectrum CD Games Pack (Code Masters) (1989)

The pack consists of a Audio CD with about 30 spectrum games (each one recorded twice), and a connection cable (cd player's 3.5mm (or 6.3mm via adapter) stereo headphone socket to spectrum 9pin DSUB joystick port) (for Spectrum 128/+2/+3 or 48K with Kempston or sinclair joystick interface), and loading software on tape, to start loading or after a game is loaded one can press Q,U,I,T on keyboard to load (without needing to load tape loader again).

The loader has instructions and calibration so you can adjust the volume from the CD for optimal and error-free loading.

The loader asked the user to choose to use kempston or sinclair joystick interface.

A dissassembly of the loader reveals the following:

For kempston:

Bit 4 (joystick fire) of port &1f is data.

For sinclair:

Bit 1 (joystick right/key '2') of port &f7fe is data.

The loader is patched according to the interface chosen and appears to be a modified Spectrum ROM loader. It seems to load the standard tape data structure: pilot, sync byte, data bytes and checksum byte.

The cable is most likely to be mono, because only 1-bit is used for loading.

No info if/how the stereo signal is used. The cable does reportedly contain a 1bit A/D converter, which is probably a single transistor or so (so it's mono, not stereo?). The CD capacity is said to be "12 Megs" (presumably meaning 12 Megabit = 60 tracks with 25Kbytes each).

It is more probable that the Amstrad loader is similar to the Spectrum loader: 1. The CPC has same CPU as the Spectrum 2. The CPC already has a number of loaders based directly on the Spectrum ROM loader, so a conversion of this loader to CPC would be easy.

Links

  • http://www.kjthacker.f2s.com/docs/audiocd2.html - DIY - caution: the disclaimer on that webpage says that it is not based on the real Codemasters CD - so it may be totally incompatible to the original Codemasters CD - also, Kevin has confirmed that it's an untested and unfinished DIY project
  • http://worldofspectrum.org/ - has a review about the Spectrum version - which conflicts with the DIY info (the Spectrum review implies it contains a mono 1-bit A/D converter, not a stereo connection without A/D converter) (the A/D converter - if it does exist - might refer to something simple, like a transistor)
  • http://www.olivertwins.com/ - according to this webpage, the Oliver Twins created "The CD Games Pack" in December 1989, for Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, and Commodore 64, published by Codemasters

Whether or not the Amstrad CPC version was actually released is a bit unclear. Did anybody ever see it for real?

Pictures

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