Above you see a close look at the tray of the CD-i 605T Player. This was a professional CD-i player, but more important, this was a CD-i player used for authoring and development. Philips released a range of professional CD-i players, but not all of them are built for authoring and development purposes, but instead these were released pure for use in professional areas like business, training and education. These professional player are in fact 'just' CD-i players. But how to tell which players are built for authoring and development?
Let's have a look at the overview of professional CD-i players that were released by Philips:
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| The overview of professional CD-i players at ICDIA.co.uk Philips first released the CDI 180/181/182. Philips all time first CD-i system. Jointly developed in 1988 by Philips and Japanese Kyocera. The CDI 18x system was modular, only the CD drive (CDI 180) and the MultiMedia Controller (CDI 181) were needed to operate. The CDI 182 module could be added for authoring purposes, featuring two floppy disk drives, SCSI and parallel ports and an additional 1 MB of RAM. The system could not be extended with a Digital Video cartridge. After that the CD-i 601 was released. First stand-alone CD-i player for professional applications. Available with a floppy disk drive as CDI 602. The system could not be extended with a Digital Video cartridge.  The 605 was an authoring CD-i player. Designed for CD-i authoring puposes, this player featured 5 MB of RAM, SCSI, ethernet and parallel ports and additional diagnostic tools in the player shell. There were two versions, the first of which was not capable of Digital Video upgradability, the second one could be upgraded like the CDI 604. |
The CD-i authoring players like the 180 set and the 605 versions all offered extra memory. The 180 set has 1+1 MB on board; the 605 (released after the 180) even offered 5MB memory. And as it sais in the description, the 605 has SCSI, ethernet and parallel ports and additional diagnostic tools in the player shell. This is what made development possible, it could be connected to other computers and the hardware CD-i Emulator, plus it has diagnostic tools on board.
Other professional CD-i players, like the 660 player as you see below, was not used for authoring and development, but instead the 660 was used in professional applications like education, trainings or other business related areas. It could be used for presentations, but also for catalogues and databases. The contents in these database as well as answers to training questions could be saved on the floppy disc.
The floppy drive in the professional line of CD-i players (those that were not for development) was used to save data from quizes and trainings, to swap between players, purely for business and educational areas. Stats, databases, small updates, those kind of things.
[Thanks, cdiemu.org, icdia.co.uk]