About Me
I used to be a CD-i developer at SPC Vision a.k.a. The Vision Factory and have been professionally working with the CD-i platform from early 1993
until the "demise" of the CD-i system somewhere around 1999.
I still own or have access to a large number of CD-i players and also have an large
but certainly incomplete collection of CD-i titles, both games and
non-games, including a number of professional titles. Mostly anything I've
been personally involved in is included.
See the Contact section of this website about ways to reach me.
Information about the development of CD-i Emulator and related software
can also be found on my blog CD-i Bits.
The frequency of new posts varies widely.
Emulation
Many years ago I started investigating the CD-i emulation scene;
there did not appear to be any viable offerings so I endeavored to
start my own. Not wanting to raise any false hopes and not even sure
that I would ever finish, I kept quiet about this for a very long time.
It was all done on private time anyway so I didn't want to commit to
anything until I was sure the commitment could be met.
As I expected, the project has taken a considerable amount of time;
this should not surprise anyone who has investigated the matter somewhat
because the CD-i system is quite complex. At the initial release,
the results of my efforts amounted to over 70,000 lines of commented C++
code in over 350 files.
Distribution
Around Christmas 2004 my emulator
started being somewhat usable, to the extent that I began
thinking about distributing my work to other people. This raises a
problem because my CD-i Emulator program is basically a hardware
emulator and thus needs basic system software to make it into a functional
CD-i player. This software is normally contained in the CD-i system ROMs inside the CD-i player. Luckily, you can upload the
ROMs from an actual physical CD-i player via the serial port, allowing
anybody to obtain the required ROM files for himself.
The CD-i system ROMs are copyrighted and cannot be distributed freely,
but using them for emulation purposes should be allowed as
long as you own the CD-i player they were obtained from.
CD-i Link
I started writing a program to make the uploading easy which ultimately
grew into CD-i Link, which can do much more
then just upload the ROMs although its primary purpose remains just that.
The program was first made
available for download in April 2005.
At the time I didn't have a website and so asked Arno Witkamp from
cdi.eigenstart.nl
to host it for me, which he kindly did. He also knew what the program
was intended for and posted a somewhat cryptic hint that very few people
seemed to get. I was actually hoping for feedback but this
proved to be sparse, probably not surprising since I hadn't announced
the real purpose of the program.
CD-i Emulator
After this I continued with the emulator program; it still needed
quite a lot of work to make it generally usable. Work remains to
be done as there are still a few unsupported CD-i player models
and probably quite some emulation bugs as well. To find the latter
I needed users, however, and I thought that the
CD-i Emulator
program was now good enough to actually be useful to people. As of
June 2005 I started distributing version 0.5.1-beta to a limited
number of people. This produced enhusiastic responses which even
resulted in the setup of a teaser website, using screenshots and screen movies
provided by me. When that beta test period was over version 0.5.2
became available to everyone at the end of September 2005.
However, because of the amount of work involved and for other reasons
having to do with community issues I decided to
not just give the program away but to ask for a small payment.
A three-minute time-limited edition can be downloaded for free
so that people can try before they buy, and I heartily recommend
everyone to try this before buying the unlimited edition.
The unlimited edition is serialized and a one-time activation
is required after it is first installed.
Version 0.5.3 beta releases started in 2010 after the CD-i driver
effort of MESS/MAME catalyzed development and
resulted in a number of emulation compatibility fixes
and new features that were modeled on or developed in tandem with MESS.
They also for the first time released the so-called "proof of concept" support for MPEG playing
on Gate Array MPEG cartridges for which development had already started in 2006.
These beta releases are essentially limited editions that enforce
the three-minute time limit unless you have
already activated an unlimited edition v0.5.2 on your machine or you
are using a Philips Mono-I player system ROM (200 F1, 210 F1, 220 F2).
Starting with version 0.6.0 of which a first public beta release is
expected soon, the three minute time limit between player resets
will be gone; there will no longer be separate limited and unlimited editions.
As a consequence, it is no longer needed to activate these versions and they will will be available free of charge.
Donations
If you like my work and/or would
like to support future development, you can send me a donation. You can
send PayPal payments to payment (at) cdiemu.org or use one of the following
websites:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/cdifan
https://ko-fi.com/cdifan
As of right now you can also still buy the unlimited edition of version
0.5.2, but in the future this will no longer be possible. Go to the Payments section of this website and get an
original serialized version while you still can!