Magnavox CD-i 200
I was thrifting in my secret place in Black Lake, and I stumbled on a wierd looking device burried with CD players. There was this strange mini-din connector in the front and that got me interested. I took the unit to check the back. Thatās when I noticed the video output. No regular CD player shoud have a video output! So I took a good look at the front and wow, this had the CD-Interactive logo on the CD tray. I knew I had something special in my paws. At 30 Canadian ruppees, I felt obliged to take it home, and so I did!
The unit was in pretty good shape, no apparent damage. It came without any controllers, and without the āDigital Video Cartridgeā. This meant no MPEG-1 decoding capabilities. The tray was also having issues closing and opening. I changed the belt to fix the issue. I went on Ebay later to acquire the said āDigital Video Cartridgeā. But without controllers, thereās not much the unit can do, only start playing a music disc or confirm the launch of a game.
The present
We went to our local electronic store (shoutout electromike !) to buy two mini-din 7 pins connectors, and we interfaced the thing with an Arduino. According to documentation on the interwebs, CD-i controllers uses serial communication instead of an analog system. Thereās even libraries to interface an Arduino with the CDI. We paired our Arduino Uno to a KS0153 keyestudio JoyStick Shield to make a controller, not a very ergonomic one, but at least a functionnal one. While we are ācode-completeā, the thing doesnāt seem to work. Weāll have to dig a little more into the documentation to understand what is wrong. We went straight ahead with the CDI and the controller but the next step would be to send simple hard-coded commands to the CDI first. Stay tuned for more updates on that project! Updates I have! Weāve been able to plug our Arduinos into the CDI, and with a bit of trial-and-error, weāve been able to use our shield as remote controls! The only game I have is Burn:Cycle, and oh boy, it is not a fun one. The story has some potential, but like many FMV video games, itās poorly implemented, relying too much on reflex and reaction time. We still want to interface the famous Gravis gamepad (the PC DB15 version) on the CDI, but this is on hold for the moment. Second update! My partner completed the project as one of his college project and now we can use a gameport controller (we use a Gravis gamepad) on the CDI! We havenāt really played anything, but it works!