Specifications

CD-i FAQ 2000 Edition Revised February 21, 2001

Latest version and more CD-i info: http://www.icdia.org

8. CD-i Mysteries

8.1 Can I connect a CD-i player to a terminal display?

Yes. Every CD-i player from Philips is equiped with a serial port, either as mini-DIN connector at

the back of the player, or it can be made available by connecting a port splitter to the input port of

CD-i players with only one input port (like CDI 450, CDI 550 and FW380i). On players with only

one port for input devices at the front and one at the back, this port at the back can also be used

as a serial port.

The serial port can be used to hook up all kinds of devices to the CD-i player, like a modem, a

touchscreen, a serial printer or a display terminal. You can connect a 'real' hardware display

terminal like a DEC VT220 or you can use a terminal emulation on the PC (for example Telix or

HyperTerm). A detailed description on the layout of the nullmodem cable that should be used can

be found at the CD-i Technical Documentation download section at www.icdia.org. Set the

port speed to 9600 baud, 8 databits, 1 stopbits, no parity and the terminal emulaton to standard

ANSI.

OK, so what can you use this terminal display for? Well, not that much. Some CD-i players (most

notably professional players) display a copyright message and ROM version indication on the

terminal when the player is switched on, but most don't. Some CD-i titles show information on the

terminal during the execution of the program. Mainly the CD-i applications developed by CapDisc

(such as CD-i Pinball) are known to display status information, probably used for debugging

during the development stage.

You cannot give commands to the CD-i player using the terminal, unless you have access to a

command shell prompt (this is covered in full detail in the next question: 8.1.1 How can I access a

CD-RTOS/OS-9 prompt using a CD-i player?). Otherwise, it's entirely up to the application wether

or not it supports the terminal display. Most consumer titles don't.

You can also use this serial connection to transfer files stored in NV-RAM to a PC, or place NV-

RAM files from the PC back into a CD-i player. Refer to: 8.1.4 Can I transfer data from the CD-i to

my PC? for more information.

8.1.1 How can I access a CD-RTOS/OS-9 prompt using a CD-i player?

CD-i's operating system is called CD-RTOS. It is based on version 2.4 of Microware's OS-9.

Every CD-i player resides the kernel of this operating system in ROM, together with other critical

system components such as drivers and the player and CD-Audio shell. Usually this ROM is 512

KB in size (some professional players that contain additional tools have double that size).

To access the roots of the operating system you should use a command prompt shell. OS-9

supports such a shell, which is very Unix-like, but since a consumer CD-i player is not intended to

be used in conjuction with a display terminal, this shell is not included in the ROM of consumer

CD-i players. If you want to access a shell using a consumer player, you need a CD-i disc that

includes such a shell which it should execute during the startup of the disc, or after providing such

an option in the CD-i application (since you have no other means of starting the shell on a

consumer player).

I do not know of any CD-i disc to date that provides the OS-9 shell besides the MediaMogul CD,

but if you have any other CD that starts up a shell the further description would be the same.

MediaMogul is an authoring tool that is intended for authoring players, but it can also be started

on any other CD-i system. When the disc is started, select 'CD-RTOS' from the main menu. Now

you will see a shell on your normal TV-monitor. To start up a shell on the terminal display, type

this: ex shell<>>>/t1 (the name t1 for the terminal descriptor might be different, use