3DO Blaster

The 3DO Blaster is an unusual piece of hardware, certainly unique in its functionality.

The add-on featured a 3DO logic board on a full-size ISA card. It is was a compatibility card, but no emulation takes place - the whole system is included, and all input (joypads) and output (video) is redirected to PC counterparts.

The product was marketed as a single board for CD-ROM drive owners (but only of a particular CD-ROM drive model, see below) or bundled with the necessary CD-ROM drive. The software drivers allowed for DOS or Windows (3.1) based gameplay, although Windows based gaming featured real-time stretching of the game window and screenshot capturing. As graphics boards of the time (1994) were not up to par with the system's needs, a pass-through using "VGA feature connector" links was used, thus reserving an area on screen to be used by the 3DO Blaster card's output (on the Windows environment - running under DOS, full-screen was the only option). Thus, there was no impact on the CPU. As with the first 3DO system from Panasonic (REAL FZ-1) an FMV daughter-card enabling VideoCD playback was planned, but since the 3DO Blaster failed to achieve momentum, it was never released. Saved games were stored in NVRAM on the card, supposedly not using resources on the PC to prevent hacking.

Required CD-ROM drive

Due to a design choice, the only CD-ROM drive working with the card was the Creative CR-563 CD-ROM drive (a Panasonic model, re-branded by Creative). This was a double-speed drive with recognized reliability, maybe the prime reason for its choice, paired with vendor lock-in.

Bundle contents

The card was sold with the cables needed, a 3DO controller by Logitech and two 3DO games on CD: "Shock Wave" from Electronic Arts and "Gridders" from Tetragon. A third CD, containing demos of popular 3DO games was also included.

Hardware Requirements

* Intel or compatible PC with 80386 CPU and Microsoft Windows
* Any of these Sound Blaster cards: Sound Blaster Pro, Sound Blaster 16 or Sound Blaster AWE32
* A Panasonic CR-563 CD-ROM drive
* A free ISA slot
* A VGA graphic card with VESA compatible connector

ee also

* 3DO
* Creative Labs

References

*http://members.tripod.com/~faberp/cl3dobl.htm