3DO ZONE Forums

Howdy,

At the moment I´m checking my old hardware from the 90´s (that´s why my computer looks like a mess) and yesterday I thought...ok.. let´s throw in the 3DO Blaster.
I was expecting a lot of trouble because I have eight cards in my system (two soundcards, network card, SCSI card etc, etc) and it is not easy to handle all the base addresses, IRQ´s, etc.
So...what should I say.....the installation was done in minutes!
I set the jumper for the base address, put the Blaster and CD-Rom in my computer, connected it, installed the correct CD-Rom driver and installed the Blaster driver disk for Windows.
I had to adjust some overlay settings and then I was able to run Megarace
The first pictures:




My first impression: For the 3DO Blaster I recommend an old (small) tube monitor. I´ve tested it with some big TFT panels but it looked bad because I had pixels big as bricks.

I´ll post more text and pictures later.

Best regards
Andreas

Very nice! Glad to see it works.

That's awesome!

I'm guessing it wouldn't work in a windows xp machine even in compatability mode?

How do the graphics look full screen? Probable as bad as my 3DO full screen on a 72". Lol

Step 1: Graduate from college

Step 2: Get a good job

Step 3: Make ****load of money

Step 4: Get an old school Windows 98 system and a 3DO Blaster

@Dreygor: I don´t think that it will run on XP in compatibility mode.....but maybe it will run with Win3.1 installed on VMWare (?).
The full screen mode is not too bad as long as you use a small monitor (and it is possible to play with the resolution for optimisation).

Here are some hints if someone wants to build up and old PC with the 3DO Blaster.

First of all you have to think about the mainboard you want to use.
There is no must to use a 386 or 486.
You can use a Pentium 1, 2 or even 3 as long as there is at least one ISA slot on the board.
But...whatever you do...keep in mind that you have to install Windows 3.x on the system.
If you buy an old graphic card, for example, check if a driver for Win3.x is available.

In my mind it doesn´t make any sense to build a computer only for the 3DO Blaster. If you do that, then it is just another 3DO console and nothing more.
The computer should be used for playing DOS games too (or watching some cool old school graphic demos like "unreal" or "second reality").


Let´s start with a 386 mainboard (you´ll see a 486CPU on the board but this is a special 486 CPU with 386 pin layout for pimping up old machines).
I don´t think that many young people have seen old PC hardware...so here are a few pics.


This (and 486 and early Pentium too) is a AT form factor board (won´t fit in a ATX case). It will run very well with 4 up to 8 MB ram.
You´ll need an old power supply unit (look at the connector on the board) and an old keyboard with this connector (pre PS/2):

You may have already noticed that there is no connector for hard drives, floppy drives or a mouse on the board.
Therefore you need a so called "Multi I/O" card:

Now you can connect a hard drive but keep in mind that 386 and 486 boards can´t handle big drives. Something between 200 and 400 MB (MB not GB!!) should be enough.
The mouse has to be connected via RS232 port:

If you want to play DOS games, the graphic card is very important. Many old cards like "Trident", "OAK" are very, very slow. I recommend a card with the "Tseng ET4000" chip.

Now we need a sound card. An old Sound Blaster 16 will do the job very well. The card is very common and the driver support is good.


If you want to use a Pentium board, you need something like this:
Pentium 1, Asus P55T2P4 (Hard drive connector, etc. is already on board)


Or
Pentium 3, Asus P3B-F This is a ATX board and will fit into modern cases!


You don´t have to use an old ISA graphic card when there are also PCI slots on your main board. Early PCI graphic cards still have the so called "feature connector" which is very important for connecting the 3DO Blaster.
Here is a "Tseng ET6000", a fast card for DOS and Win3.x drivers are available.


Try to get "Windows 3.11 for Workgroups" disks.
Later you can add a network card and the TCP/IP stack for Windows3.11.
This makes it is so easy to copy games from other computers to your old school gaming system via network and you can also use the old system as a little file server for your home network.

Now you should have an idea what you need for setting up an old system for DOS games and the 3DO Blaster.

Cya
Andreas

What a trip down memory lane. i see that Cyrix on there and I shudder. Those used to be such a headache.

I used to want one of these setups, but now I'm not so sure. I'll just stick to the console.

the x68000 is enough retro computing to keep me busy.

Yes, I know that there were some problems with Cyrix and some AMD CPUs but the 486DLC CPU runs very well when the main board is compatible. When the "Cyrix 486DLC enable" option is available in the Bios then everything should be ok.

are you sure that the 3do blaster will work with a pci card? when i tried it, it refused to work and it went to a blank screen.