Similar to a standard music CD, but it also holds information for driving MIDI instruments.
CD-ROM
Compact Disc - Read Only Memory. A 5 inch polycarbonate disk with aluminium coating,
laser etched with holes for storing computer data. ISO-9660 CD-ROMs can also hold music
tracks that can be played with a normal music CD player as well (or both - often called
'mixed mode' or 'hybrid' discs - many CD32 discs are hybrids).
CDTV
Commodore Dynamic Total Vision. The previous CD based machine by C=. It wasn't
exactly a storming success, mainly due to poor marketing (and the price). Many CDTV
discs will work on the CD32, but some need a mouse and others need a keyboard.
Microcosm was originally a CDTV project. C= gave Psygnosis some financial backing to
develop it, but the CDTV version never saw the light of day, except for some promotional
demos.
CDXL
C='s attempt at getting motion video on the CDTV before low cost MPEG decoder chips
became available. The CD32's version of CDXL can cope with more colours and cover
more of the screen. CDXLs can be about two-thirds of the size of the screen (although they
can be scaled up slightly to fill more, but the side effect is that they look blocky) and they
can also hold mono or stereo sound. (Anyone know of a playback method on the PC? Or an
XL->MPG converter? I am still a licensed developer, but no longer have my developer
floppy discs. Anyone out there help out? - Ed.) A list of games that have these animations
are available at The CD32 Zone.
Chip RAM
Random Access Memory available to both the CPU and Amiga custom chipset inside the
CD32 (and all previous Amigas). The CD32 ships with the maximum amount of chip RAM
that the AGA chipset can handle - 2M.
Copper
CO-ProcEssoR. All Amigas feature a special co-processor as part of their custom chipset,
which allows some graphic chip functions such as colour palette manipulation to happen
asynchronously to other tasks, freeing the CPU for other work.
CPU
Central Processor Unit. The brains for managing data and its manipulation inside a
computer. Amigas, CDTV, and CD32 have all used the Motorola 68000 series of CPUs.
Datatype
Allows the OS to support any graphic, sound, text, or animation format, once the datatype
information is copied to the proper folder on the Workbench disk or hard drive. Programs
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