The original CTDV was expensive to produce so Commodore started to develop a cost reduced successor based on the A600. The CDTV-II included a faster CD-ROM drive, larger LCD display and optional internal floppy and hard disk drives. The proprietary memory card slot has been replaced with a standard PCMCIA slot. The motherboard was completely redrawn using the surface mount technology introduced in the A600, but the functional blocks of CDTV were kept. In this respect the newly introduced custom chips, Grace and Beauty, both have their equivalents in the original CDTV.
Despite the successful size and cost reduction of the motherboard, Commodore never released the second generation CDTV. It was too late, the AGA based A1200 was round the corner. Commodore should have already developed the CDTV replacement with the AGA chipset, which held off more than a year in the shape of the CD32.
Only a dozen CDTV-CR (cost reduced) motherboards were produced for testing and a handful of complete units for demonstration purposes.

Processor

A 68000 @ 7.14 MHz is soldered to the motherboard and there is no expansion slot provided for upgrading it. Accelerators designed for the A600 would work in theory but the placement of the 68000 chip inhibits their use.

Memory

1 MB Chip RAM is soldered to the motherboard which cannot be expanded further.
The sole internal expansion slot can hold Fast RAM expansions - the Flash/IDE card installed in the demonstration units has provision for 2 MB RAM. Another 4 MB of Fast RAM can be added via the PCMCIA slot.

Custom chips

Fat Agnus - ECS display controller
Super Denise - ECS display encoder
Paula - audio and I/O controller
Grace - system address decoder
Beauty - front panel controller
(4510) - keyboard controller
CIA - complex interface adaptor

Supported screen modes
PAL
NTSC
Euro36
A2024		 320×256 - 1280×512
320×200 - 1280×400
320×200 - 1280×400
1024×1024		 50 Hz, 15.60 kHz
60 Hz, 15.72 kHz
73 Hz, 15.76 kHz
15 Hz, 15.72 kHz
Multiscan
Euro72
Super72		 640×480 - 640×960
640×400 - 640×800
400×300 - 800×600		 60 Hz, 31.44 kHz
70 Hz, 31.43 kHz
72 Hz, 24.62 kHz
Supported palettes
Low
High
Super
A2024		 32 / 4096, 64 (EHB), 4096 (HAM)
16 / 4096
4 / 64
4 / 16

Fat Agnus (8375), Super Denise (8373), Paula (8364) and the two CIAs (8520) are the same as found in the A600. Grace is a slight modification of the Gayle chip, it adds CD-ROM addressing support to Gayle's IDE, PCMCIA and flash ROM address decoding capabilities. Beauty drives the LCD display on the front panel, handles the buttons and the infrared port. It communicates with the rest of the system through the 4510 microcontroller chip.
Kickstart version is 2.05 (v37.300) just like in the A600.

Expansion slots

1× expansion slot
1× video slot
1× MPEG decoder slot
1× PCMCIA Type II slot

The only free internal expansion slot provided is an 80 pin SIMM-like connector. The demo systems have a half populated module installed in this slot, the CDTV Flash/IDE card, holding 256 kB Flash ROM. The cards have provision for 2 MB Fast RAM, a 44 pin IDE header for attaching a 2.5" hard disk drive and a disk activity LED connector.
The 50 pin video slot is occupied by the video module which holds the RGB, Composite and RF-modulated video ports, and the internal connector for the optional MPEG decoder daughterboard.
The 68 pin PCMCIA slot accepts any industry standard peripherals, their usage is only limited by the available drivers.

CD-ROM drive

The CDTV-II uses a double speed (330 kB/sec) tray-loading CD-ROM drive, which is connected by a custom (neither SCSI nor ATAPI) Sony interface.

Interfaces

1× serial mini-DIN, RS422
1× parallel DB25 female, Centronics
1× video DB23 male, analog RGB
1× composite video, RCA jack
2× stereo audio, RCA jack
1× external floppy DB23 female
1× aux, 6 pin female mini-DIN
1× MIDI In, 5 pin DIN female
1× MIDI Out, 5 pin DIN female
1× IR port
1× 6.3 mm stereo headphones jack
1× internal floppy 34 pin header
1× internal AT IDE 44 pin header
PAL version
1× S-Video
1× RF Out
NTSC version
1× RF In
1× RF Out

All the video connectors belong to a removable video module, thus enabling different configurations for different countries.
The floppy drive controller supports up to four devices - one attached to the internal floppy header and three connected to the external floppy port. Both double and high density disk drives are supported. A 880 kB double density floppy disk drive can be optionally installed in the 3.5" internal drive bay.
The IDE controller's header is mounted on the Flash/IDE module. A 2.5" internal drive bay is located under the floppy drive bay.

Motherboard revisions

revision 2 (Photo)