3DOKid wrote:Bitrate - where can someone dig out a list of the exact components a person would need to get a 3DO blaster running. OS versions, CD roms, etc.? It'd make a good sticky - or something!
It's pretty straight forward, you need a top of the line, bleeding edge, $2500 (USD) PC ... 1994 style.
The processor and RAM is mostly a non-factor because the 3DO Blaster ISA daughtercard is a full blown 3DO; there's no emulation (and thankfully no compatibility problems). It even has its own NVRAM so it doesn't use disk space for storing saved games, which was perceived as a hacking risk at the time). It even has a MPEG-1 decoder slot like the real 3DOs did, but Creative never made the decoder board.
You'd want something in the range of a 486/DX2/66 or DX4/100 up to a Pentium based machine with no more than 64 Mb of EDO RAM (you'd probably only need 8 Mb of RAM for this). Anything faster, where you start approaching the class of a Pentium II, and Windows 3.1 will dump with a "Divide by 0" error. You'll want DOS 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11.
You will want to ditch a NIC or modem and save the IRQs for the Creative stuff. You will also need to either find a still working hard drive smaller than 2Gb, or you'll need a different disk manager to partition a modern drive and allow DOS to format it with FAT without puking.
A non-PnP -- e.g., an old school, jumpered -- Creative Soundcard is ideal, and you'll want the original, bona fide CR-563 double speed CD-ROM. The CR-563 was
the CD-ROM back in the day, and was actually made by Panasonic and rebranded for Creative. Is is the model that was bundled with all Creative's soundcards at the dawn of the CD-ROM era.
Lastly, you'll need a video board with VESA feature connector. The VESA feature connector port disappeared around the time that Intel hit the 133-166 class Pentiums and 4Mb video cards were released to the home consumer targeting game playing. Really, you'd want the crappiest 1Mb Cirrus or Trident video card you can find, precisely the kind of card that discriminating gamers would absolutely
not be caught dead with. Herein you see why the 3DO Blaster was doomed to failure. No gamer who would legitimately want to play 3DO on his PC would have a PC that sucked so hard to have all the compatible features. FWIW, Matrox cards did not have VESA feature connectors, though they did have 24-pin internal pass through port for MPEG decoders. The Matrox boards
look like they had VESA feature connectors on them though, because of this, but they won't work. Stick with a generic Cirrus or Trident. I'd avoid the Diamond boards of the day too. Their drivers were crap.
As for cables, you'll need VGA/VGA pass through for the back (the same type cable provided with all the 3Dfx boards), you'll need one 24-pin VESA feature connector ribbon (internally connects the VGA card to the 3DO Blaster), and you'll need another internal CD audio cable (you'll take the normal 3/4 wire cable that goes from the CD-ROM to the soundcard and instead run it CD-ROM to 3DO Blaster, then another goes from 3DO Blaster to soundcard).