VOGONS


First post, by Mystery

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Hi,

so I've recently acquired a mint 3DO Blaster for cheap and with the kind support of Cloudschatze, I was able to obtain the required CD-ROM drive for it.

A couple of days later, the 3DO PC was complete and fully working. Everything is set up properly, the drivers aren't complaining and the Windows 3.1 applications all have the correct settings and the 3DO Player works like a charm. I can play in window mode, scaled window mode and fullscreen in Windows 3.1.

However, several websites, including Wikipedia, mention the existence of a DOS fullscreen mode for the 3DO Blaster.
Since that would really come in handy for my plans for this machine, I tried finding out more about this, but unfortunately I wasn't able to.

There's no mention of it in the manual or the digital documents supplied with the Blaster card and except for a driver that's loaded in DOS, there aren't any executables for DOS which would make this possible.

I'm not sure if I'm missing something obvious here, but I can't seem to get this to work in DOS. So the information could very well be false. Wouldn't be the first time that Wikipedia (and a whole lot of other websites) gets something wrong 😉

I don't want to give up that easily, so maybe someone here has got an idea how the 3DO Blaster can be used without starting up Windows 3.1 first. Maybe there's more software I need, that wasn't supplied with the 3DO Blaster itself or maybe the feature is just somewhat hidden...

Maybe one of you guys has a 3DO Blaster as well, working in DOS and knows the (obvious?) solution to this issue.

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Reply 2 of 6, by Mystery

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There's an internal VESA Feature Connector and a 3DFX-like loop cable.

The software for Windows 3.1x uses a color key to show the 3DO Blaster's overlay and can be in windowed mode, scaled windowed mode and fullscreen mode.

It's really unnecessarily complicated. 3DFX has solved it a lot better. Just override the VGA signal and output your own. Worls flawlessly in DOS without any software. But unfortunately it's not that simple with the 3DO Blaster.

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Reply 3 of 6, by F2bnp

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Definitely want to see a video of that running a few games (there is a video on youtube, but it only shows a bit of Street Fighter 2 🙁

Reply 4 of 6, by Mystery

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Sure, I can capture a couple of videos and post them on my youtube channel. No problem. I know the Street Fighter video you're talking about. Too bad it's filmed right off the screen and not captured. I could show off a handful of games, the Windows Tools and the drivers loading in DOS.

I've shot a few photos while building the system. I can upload those as well, if anyone's interested.

The 3DO Blaster is as interesting as it was unnecessary back in the day 😉

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Reply 5 of 6, by Jorpho

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To take a wild (and probably rather stupid) guess, could HX DOS Extender help?
http://www.japheth.de/HX.html

Reply 6 of 6, by RichB93

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Would be great if you upload a video or two, these are really cool bits of kit imo! 😀