Mystery might be able to help you, I'm pretty sure he has a working 3DO Blaster with the included manuals/disks whatever.
Send him a PM!

Thanks a lot! I'll give it a shot!

F2bnp wrote:

Mystery might be able to help you, I'm pretty sure he has a working 3DO Blaster with the included manuals/disks whatever.
Send him a PM!

I thought swaaye had one, too.

I had a 3DO console for awhile but not the 3DO Blaster card.

Yes I've still got my 3DO Blaster up and running 😀

The hardware should be the same. The only difference is that the japanese card should have the extra kanji ROM, which is missing on US and european models.

I should have images of the driver disks somewhere. I'll send them to the email adress you provided in your PM 😀

Do you just have the card or all the other required parts as well?
The CR-563-B CD-ROM and a graphics card with a vesa feature connector plus the loop cable and the vesa cable are a must.

Thank you very much! You are an absolute life saver.

I do have the CR-563-B and a graphics card with a feature connector ready and waiting. My hobby is putting together increasingly complicated old machines for the Wing Commander games and finding a 3DO Blaster has been my dream addition for a few years now. I finally happened onto one on the Japanese Yahoo Auctions site last month and it arrived yesterday!

(I'll stick the Japanese software disk online tonight, on the off chance someone else needs that someday.)

You guys (both the American and the Asian version) might want to dump the ROMs/firmware from your cards for historical purposes and upload to VogonsDrivers or someplace. Same goes for the driver discs. 😁

Bandit LOAF:
Yeah, it took me several years to get my 3DO Blaster.
I'd still like a japanese version, but it's not a priority since I've already got a japanese FZ-1 system. Maybe I'll get lucky in Akihabara next year 😀

Could you do me a favor and take a photo of the japanese blaster? I was wondering if the Kanji ROM is just a software/rom thing or if it fills up the empty spot next to the ISA connector: http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/2460/file0049.jpg

Stiletto:
I'm not sure how I could dump the firmware. I can upload the driver discs, no problem. I've actually got two different drivers for the CR-563-B drive.
The ROM itself shouldn't be any different from the retail console, except for the different boot logo.

No problem! I actually stuck a picture on Instagram last night and it looks like you're exactly right: http://instagram.com/p/Nw6kcEilBh/

I can take a higher resolution photo tonight if you'd like to see it up close! (And I'm also happy to dump the firmware, providing someone can tell me how to do that.)

Ah just as I suspected. There's an additional eprom on the card. So making a us or eu blaster compatible with the japanese games would take quite some work. The rest of the card is 100% identical.

lucky bastard! have fun with your 3DO blaster
I'll have to look at the yahoo japan auctions more often

what are the chances of dumping that extra EPROM and burning the copies onto another EPROM chip? will they fit in US/European 3DO blasters?

Just in case anyone else needs them, here are the windows drivers for the 3DO Blaster and the CR-563-B CD-ROM drive:
3DO Blaster Drivers: http://www1.zippyshare.com/v/90864970/file.html
CR-563-B Drivers: http://www1.zippyshare.com/v/28755316/file.html

TheMAN: If the ROM was dumped and someone could write it to a compatible chip it should work. Maybe the card would need the japanese bios as well, but from a hardware perspective there shouldn't be any problems at all since it's the exact same card, just with/without the japanese kanji rom.

Thank you very much! I owe you one!

Here's a higher resolution picture of the card, if folks are interested: http://hamtwoslices.net/photos/3DO_Blaster_DOSV.JPG

latest/last version of the CR563B drivers:
http://ccftp.creative.com/Drivers/Others/413/sbcddw95.exe

version 4.22 for DOS
version 1.17 for Win9x

full installer and basic utils included

Just wanted to report back that I installed the 3DO Blaster last night and everything works perfectly! It all went in flawlessly, which is a surprise since it has half a dozen or so internal connections you have to make. Absolutely no problem using the English software, if anyone in the future ever has that question.

Super Wing Commander on the PC! So, so cool. My long-suffering FZ-10 can finally get some rest. 😀 Now I just need a new holy grail piece of hardware to look for!

Make sure you don't chose a resolution above 640x480 for the fullscreen mode or the scaling will reduce the image quality significantly.

Another advantage of the 3DO Blaster is the superb image quality, even exceeding the RGB modded consoles.

Good to know that the software works with the japanese card as well. I was sure it did, because the cards are basically identical, but you never know, especially with such an exotic piece of hardware.

How about getting a PCFX-GA next? 😀

It probably doesn't, but... could one of you guys load up DOS and MSD (MicroSoft Diagnostic) to see if the 3DO Blaster loads a BIOS extension? It should show up in the list of BIOS extensions if so (like your VGA card).

If for some strange reason it does, you should be able to use DEBUG to dump the firmware. If not, then you'll likely need to get it dumped by someone with a chip programmer.

I'm asking about this because I'm not sure if the 3DO emulation scene ever got a firmware dump of this card. I think not...

Stiletto I think you should ask on forum here
http://www.freedo.org/

I'll be happy to give it a shot, Stiletto! I'll try it this weekend and report back.

And boy a PCFX-GA would be cool... my rule is it has to be for Wing Commander, though. Otherwise I'd go crazy 😀

Here's a weird question: was there ever a feature connector splitter? I ask because the 3DO card is replacing a Forte VFX-1 in this computer. I wonder if it'd be possible to have both... a computer with a VR helmet AND a 3DO in it would be the most 1994 thing I can imagine.