xjas wrote:

EDIT: actually now that I think about it, it has to do something unusual at least for CD-ROM access since it goes through the SB16 interface via the ISA bus. Would love to know how that works.

Possibly the 3DO uses areas of a CD that are normally "out of bounds" on regular CD-ROM drives or the IDE interface? It might also mean you need a period-correct CD drive if it's the former...IIRC, that was used on some gaming systems as an early copy-protection feature.

yawetaG wrote:

It might also mean you need a period-correct CD drive if it's the former...IIRC, that was used on some gaming systems as an early copy-protection feature.

Yes it needs a certain model, the Creative or Panasonic CR-563. IIRC somebody on Assembler at least tried to get it to working with another drive.

It needs a drive that can access CD-ROM XA, which was rather uncommon back then. 3DO discs are nothing special otherwise, apart from the file system, but that is high-level and not important for the drive anyway.

Someone would definitely be able to make an adapter to use other drives, but considering how rare the card is, I doubt we'd see it. Would be good though, in the interests of preservation.

There is no copy protection on 3DO discs. 3DO games can be burnt to CD-R and will play (at least in Panasonic and Goldstar consoles) without modification, there's also no region locking. All games will boot in all consoles (though there are a few titles that won't run correctly on a PAL console). I guess the reason for the CR-563 was simply that the CR-562 didn't support the XA format. Perhaps if it has came out a bit later it could have used any IDE drive, but by the time IDE CD-ROM drives were standard the 3DO was already dead.

The point I was making is that a regular 3DO doesn't have an ISA bus, nor a Sound Blaster card with a Panasonic CD-ROM interface on it, so the 3DO Blaster must be doing some kind of bus translation or accessing the drive differently form a regular system, regardless of what's on the disc. Having a dump of the BIOS would be a step towards figuring out how that works (and maybe making a hacked version that can run any drive.)

I'd love to know if it communicates with the host system in other ways too. AFAIK the controller ports are on the card itself and video is sent over the VESA feature connector. Most 3DOs generate video as 480i exclusively, but I'm guessing the Blaster version doesn't output interlaced video either (there are some games that are known to screw up on 240p machines; Another World for example.) Not sure what it does for sound.

I have a 3do blaster and would love to dump the bios if someone could help me do it.

Notackan wrote on 2023-02-26, 07:10:

I have a 3do blaster and would love to dump the bios if someone could help me do it.

Hi! Interesting idea to dump the bios from Creative 3DO blaster. Did you have any kind of jtag programmer ?
Datasheet for contacts on bios flash we know, so need jtag programmer, software, wiring and iron.
Datasheet https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/vti/vl86cx/vy86c06020

Do you have a PC with ISA slot for this card ? If there is, then this can be done without soldering, a simple connection of ODE.

The PC it currently is in has ISA slots. I have a pentium overdrive 83 system that it’s in with windows 3.11.

Notackan wrote on 2024-04-12, 19:24:

The PC it currently is in has ISA slots. I have a pentium overdrive 83 system that it’s in with windows 3.11.

I would be very interested in extracting the bios of the 3DO blaster. I have done a lot of work with the 3DO - universal RGB mods, correct 240p switching, native RGB conversion. I am interested in replicating the 3DO blaster but realised the BIOS is essential in making it work due to the unique way it needs to communicate with the CD drive and Video overlay chip. Do you have any tools to extract the ROM chip? JTAG is one way but requires JTAG tools and soldering to the ARM cpu. Another way is to desolder the ROM chip and read it in an IC programmer. This is the most reliable method but risks damaging the chip or traces if you don’t have the experience.

Taijigamer wrote on 2024-11-10, 22:41:

Notackan wrote on 2024-04-12, 19:24:

The PC it currently is in has ISA slots. I have a pentium overdrive 83 system that it’s in with windows 3.11.

I would be very interested in extracting the bios of the 3DO blaster. I have done a lot of work with the 3DO - universal RGB mods, correct 240p switching, native RGB conversion. I am interested in replicating the 3DO blaster but realised the BIOS is essential in making it work due to the unique way it needs to communicate with the CD drive and Video overlay chip. Do you have any tools to extract the ROM chip? JTAG is one way but requires JTAG tools and soldering to the ARM cpu. Another way is to desolder the ROM chip and read it in an IC programmer. This is the most reliable method but risks damaging the chip or traces if you don’t have the experience.

Hi! I think you can ask Felix (who write first 3do emulator (freedo project)), I know he buy one of the 3do blaster for disassembling.

The way the 3DO blaster communicates with the CD-ROM is the same as other Sound Blaster cards communicated with the Matsushita/Panasonic drive interface.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panasonic_CD_interface

If anything at all is in the BIOS for the CD-ROM I'd be surprised... it should just be a DOS/windows driver...

Mr.Hunt wrote on 2024-11-20, 21:08:

Hi! I think you can ask Felix (who write first 3do emulator (freedo project)), I know he buy one of the 3do blaster for disassembling.

Hi, thanks for the suggestion. I hadn’t thought to ask Felix. I’ll check if he did dump the ROM.

MikeSG wrote on 2024-11-21, 11:21:

The way the 3DO blaster communicates with the CD-ROM is the same as other Sound Blaster cards communicated with the Matsushita/Panasonic drive interface.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panasonic_CD_interface

If anything at all is in the BIOS for the CD-ROM I'd be surprised... it should just be a DOS/windows driver...

The 3DO Blaster is essentially a complete 3DO motherboard on an ISA card so it seems to still use the Gate Array to communicate with the CD-ROM. But there is definitely some other communication going on. Archive3DO desoldered his 3DO blaster ROM and put it in a Goldstar and vice versa. The Blaster ROM could run the Goldstar but the Goldstar ROM couldn’t run the Blaster. It would be good to obtain the ROM file and check it against the retail ROMs in a Hex editor. Notackan has kindly provided some high definition pics of his 3DO blaster so I will attempt to map out the connections.