220/37?

martyg · Post by **martyg** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 11:01 pm

Hey all, just "rescued" a CDI 220/37 and a bunch of games for US$30. It came with the manual, but I'm interested (from a collector's position) how the 220/37 is different from the other 220's? I found a differences chart on the web, but the 37 wasn't listed and I haven't been able to find anything else about this specific model online.

Thanks!

Post by **Bas** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 10:52 am

Hi there! I guess you found the comparison table from ICDIA.co.uk...? So there is no /37 in the list. We've had a few other discussions about different 220-slash-xx versions which were unknown to us, possibly country specific or just a revision (firmware, drivers...) of the older 220/20.

CD-i fan has a very extensive list in which he explains the differences between all the CD-i players available:

"There are many differences between CD-i players. Most of the basic player models exists in several different generations, and even within the generations there are often different ROM versions."

click here

Although the /37 is not in it (I conclude after a quick scan) but I reckon it's nothing special but a revision.

Ofcourse, if anyone has some additional info, they will let you know

cdifan · Post by **cdifan** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 10:11 pm

The slash number /37 is built by combining /20 (for an F1 player) with /17 (for a USA player).

So the 220/37 is the USA version of the European 220/20.

The cditypes.rul file (part of CD-i Link and CD-i Emulator) that Bas refers to does not normally distinguish between market/TV standard versions of a player, because this is usually not detectable from the ROM contents (versions for different markets/TV standards will often have identical ROMs). The ROM determines from board jumpers what player version it is running in.

To confirm this, play with the -ntsc and -pal options of CD-i Emulator (these change the emulated board jumpers as seen by the ROM); in several cases a player will suddenly change from "Philips" to "Magnavox" or the reverse

Post by **Devin** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 10:27 pm

That last point is new to me! I have CD-i Emulator set so it goes straight into the game, shall have to try out the regular 'boot' sequence now.

martyg · Post by **martyg** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 11:42 pm

Just wanted to say thanks guys, appreciate the help. Someone should put that in an FAQ or something. Looking at the page at icdia.co.uk now in hindsite, I can see where that's alluded to in there. But its not very clear.

Anyways, just picked up an FMV cartidge to put in there (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0017008347) based on your guy's info. I hope that's the right one.

Marty

cdifan · Post by **cdifan** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 4:45 pm

Devin, there's more to CD-i ROM's then meets the eye

A few months ago I acquired the service manuals for a large number of CD-i players. From this I found out that there is an even more low-level test in the ROMs then the one you can trigger with the space bar: it seems that you need a special "test terminal thingy" (schematics are in the manuals, but unfortunately not the contents of the microprocessor ROM on it; it looks somewhat like a hex calculator) to trigger this test. The test communicates in hexadecimal, mostly. I have not yet searched the ROMs to find out the communication protocol for this thingy.

Unfortunately, the service manuals provided little new information other then the above tidbit...

Post by **Devin** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 11:13 am

How many Low-Level tests can one ROM handle?

Borman · Post by **Borman** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 3:05 pm

Id wager it would be similar to the test functions of say, a SNES or Genesis test cart or setup, that allows you to test various functions of the console, inputs, outputs, rightputs, leftputs (err...yeaaaaa....something like that). Sounds like something to keep an eye out for though.

cdifan · Post by **cdifan** » Tue Sep 05, 2006 10:41 pm

From the service manual description, it look as if most of the tests themselves are similar or identical to the "other" low-level test function, but there are less of them and the results are reported quite differently.

There is also no selection menu, it's just "next test".

And yes, it's indeed things like "test slave communication", "test cd drive", "test ram", "test rom", "generate rom/ram chip selects" (useful for hardware diagnostics), etc.