Yes, it indeed looks like ethernet. However this is not the standard ethernet board nor the other expansion board I remember. The name and layout (looks like it mirrors the DVC in some ways?) suggest to me that it's something for classroom applications? Anyway when CougarCDi gets his reply we'll probably know for sure.

 ok, that was easy:

"1994-1995 Onderzoeksprojecten bij Philips Natlab Eindhoven (1 dag in de week). Tijdens deze periode ben ik betrokken bij het opzetten van onderzoek naar de toepasbaarheid van cd-i systemen met een netwerkaansluiting (Imagenet) in een aantal professionele toepassingen. "

"In het kader van het INF/EL-colloquium over de digitale snelweg spreekt woensdag 15 maart drs. Desiree de Lang. Na een korte introductie zal deze Philips-medewerkster ingaan op verschillende nieuwe produktmogelijkheden in diverse marktgebieden voor multimedia netwerk applicaties. Als voorbeeld zullen enkele experimenten worden gedaan met het IMAGENET systeem en gaat ze in op de architectuur van het systeem en de voordelen van cd-i als netwerkterminal en ontwikkelomgeving.

De presentatie zal bestaan uit een algemene inleiding over het verschil tussen VOD (Video on Demand) en NVOD (Near VOD) en de benadering van Philips Research in het IMAGENET-project. "

"Een stap verder gaan de video-on-demand toepassingen die momenteel in ontwikkeling zijn. Zo ontwikkelt Philips het Imagenet-systeem waarmee het mogelijk wordt om multimediale informatie (inclusief complete films) via een netwerk (vanaf ±1,5 Mbit/s) aan te bieden. De apparatuur bij de gebruiker bestaat uit een cd-i-speler met een netwerkinterface. Hiermee kan de gebruiker een film op ieder gewenst tijdstip starten en stoppen of bijvoorbeeld terugspoelen. Een mogelijk gebruikersscherm om films te kiezen is weergegeven in figuur 8. Imagenet is in de praktijk getest op het Roskilde-popfestival. Hierbij werd het gebruikt voor interactieve informatieterminals waarmee achtergrondinformatie kon worden opgezocht over de optredens en de bands in de vorm van foto’s, tekst en video."

"Ontwerp en implementatie van een TCP/IP interface voor een CD-i player aan een Video On Demand Server verschillende hardware componenten aan een CD-i player."

Video-on-demand it is.

hehehe...

Easy for Deutch ones!

I will try to see if I understand something hehehe!

okay that's kind of cool, but is it a piece of hardware that's rare? as all you guys seem not to know much about it

I think that it whould be easier for you guys to set a date and join on the chan and discuss this topic in the chan...
But it's my opinion... Forum is good way too... a bit slower to get an answer... ehehe  

I received an answer back.

The two boards where special made by Imagenet.
The top board with T1C1 has a special connector. It's for a T1 telephone line. The C1 stands for the image stream from the server.
If on the top board no MPEG decoder is present then the bottom board is a special developed MPEG board.

These boards where developed to connect CD-i players to a server. From the server they could get Video on Demand (VOD) or in this case CDi content on demand.
This setup was tested on the auto-RAI of 1995. Unfortunately there where instability problems with the TCP/IP connection and the CD-i players had to be reset several times a day. The problem was not solved. Also the CDi-content was poor.

Imagenet was a very important group within Philips. They developed new extentions on present hardware to gain more market.

According to my contactperson it was very difficult to make software for the CDi player due to a difficult OS and a really bad authoring package. This made it difficult for external developers to make software quick and easy. Also the choice of the processor was wrong. It was too slow.

The processor itself is great and also used on COmmodore Amiga systems
But maybe not fast enough for what they wanted, but capable of more than the average 486 back in that time

 So a 15MHz 68000 has more power than a average 486? I would set the average 486 at DX2-66 (slowest was 25MHz?, fastest 133MHz?), so could you please explain how the CD-i processor is faster than a 486? I will believe many things, but not this .

I agree with you erronous, not only the 486 frequency is above the 68070 frequency but also :
the 486 has a built mathematical coprocessor (execpt the 486SX),
the 486 has an internal cache of 8kB or 16 kB wich speed memory access, and often an external cache of 128kB memory.
the 486 is a real 32 bit processor, not the 68000 wich is a 32/16 bit processor like a 386SX.

But

If we see the whole system, the 486 PC could not play full motion video unlike the cdi players, the operating system of the cdi players (OS9) is much more powerful than the DOS which was used at that time (hiden belo win95) and the cdi graphical interface was very intuitive to use.
I remenber my first 486 (an IBM PS1 486DX33 with 4MB memory) didn't have a sound card nor a cdrom player and I had to put 8MB of memory plus an overdrive processor to play a game similar to chaos control.
For multimedia applications, I could say that cdi players were close to Pentium PC systems.

well on the Amiga you had 4 channel sound, samples, not like ad-lib on pc, multitasking and all of that stuff.
the amiga was running faster and better and had a 68000 processor.

the 68xxx processor is just more powerfull than the 486 processor

Quote :

delorehal wrote : If we see the whole system, the 486 PC could not play full motion video unlike the cdi players,

Yes, and how come the CD-i player can play MPEG video? One hint, this is not because the 68070 processor is powerfull enough to do that.... IIRC you can play ful motion MPEG on a 486.

Quote :

the operating system of the cdi players (OS9) is much more powerful than the DOS which was used at that time (hiden belo win95) and the cdi graphical interface was very intuitive to use. I remenber my first 486 (an IBM PS1 486DX33 with 4MB memory) didn't have a sound card nor a cdrom player and I had to put 8MB of memory plus an overdrive processor to play a game similar to chaos control.

So you could have bought an Unix version for your 486, OS/2, early Linux versions and a couple of other operating systems. It's more the reverse, you can run a much more powerfull operating on a 486 than OS-9. And don't forget a CD-i was awfully expensive in it's day, jsut the same as soundcards and cd-rom drives.

Chaos control is just a glorified video-cd. While running the video-cd, the cd-i overlays enemies and explosions. Given that the CD-i has an extra MPEG decoder chip, the 486 could also have done that without any problems.

The Motorola processor was way better in Multitasking than the 80486 processor

Well, It's not really that the Motorola is better than a '486 at multitasking, it's the operating system.

Windows 95 was the first Microsoft OS to support true multitasking. (Unless you count OS/2). Window's 3.1 was not preemptive.

The CD-I is a perfect example of a system crippled by it's OS.

Well, I wouldn't say that CD-i was "crippled by its OS". The OS was actually perfectly suitable for the hardware, which was somewhat underdimensioned (but you have to remember that the original goal of the system was training and encyclopedia applications, not the games that seem to have made it so popular here). In many ways OS-9 is much more advanced then DOS ever was, and it certainly has a much cleaner and more modular design then Windows (any version).

For information about OS-9, see the Microware OS-9 documentation at http://web.archive.org/web/20040214082407/icdia.org/microware/index.html (some of the PDFs seem to be missing from the archive).

-- a former CD-i developer