Overview
The Commodore Amiga series of computers were a powerful bunch in the late 80s, having used its excellent graphical and audio prowess to gain a foothold in the market alongside the Apple Mac and IBM PC [clones]. It was only to be expected of Commodore to want a slice of another pie, the home console scene (blueberry).

The CD32 was based around the Amiga 1200 home computer, which had been released in Christmas 1992. This was equipped with a built-in CD drive (emblasened with "32 bit") and a custom version of the "Kickstart" operating system software. Later on, one could buy an expansion allowing one to add a hard drive, floppy disk drive, and keyboards and mice could be plugged into the console, allowing it to actually be a fully fledged Amiga. This was, understandably, very cool, as it opened up the huge library of Amiga games and software to the fledgling machine.

Sadly, it didn't do as well as it should have. Despite being the first 32-bit, CD-ROM-based console available, the machine was not very successful, and began to whither with Commodore's 1994 bankruptcy. The system was pronounced dead later, along with much of the Amiga's past glory too.

Lookin' good...

Models
There Was Only One™, the Amiga-inna-box CD32, pictured just above.

Technical Specifications
CPU: A 32-bit Motorola 68EC020 processor running at 14.32Mhz - a speed demon at the time.
Memory: 1 megabyte of ROM, 2 megabytes of RAM (plus 1K flash RAM)
CD-ROM: Double-speed, top-loading (like all good consoles should be)
Graphics chipset: The Amiga AGA chipset using 4 chips - Akiko (handling CD data transfer, as well as performing the Amiga CIA chip's job, and graphics routines), Alice (blitter and copper), Lisa (the screen display) and Paula (responsible for the stereo sound).

Accessories
FMV cartridge: As with other CD-based consoles of the time, the CD32 was incapable of playing FMV (Full Motion Video) without the use of an additional cartridge such as this. Plug it in, and Video-CDs become playable.
One could plug in Amiga mice to play certain games and other titles - some relied upon it and were not playable without one being plugged in. Of course, if one bought the expansion unit, mice weren't the only thing you could attach - you could build a fully-fledged Amiga around it, with the added bonus of a CD drive. How spiffy!