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3DO Dev Stations

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 10:01 pm
by Devin
So I have a couple of 3DO Development Stations which are in point of fact really really old Apple Macintosh Quadra computers circa 92' - 95'.

I've tried to link them up to a display in the past but get no picture on the monitor once they're turned on.

Any Macintosh types in here that can give me some knowledge would be much appreciated. Might be some nice resources on these computers hard drives to share with you guys! :D

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 11:29 pm
by Devin
Quick update here.

I just took apart one of the units and identified the hard drive as a Seagate ST11200N.

It seems to be a 50-Pin SCSI device so I'm guessing some form of Adaptor will allow me to hook this up to a modern PC.

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 11:43 pm
by 3DOKid
Devin wrote:Quick update here.

I just took apart one of the units and identified the hard drive as a Seagate ST11200N.

It seems to be a 50-Pin SCSI device so I'm guessing some form of Adaptor will allow me to hook this up to a modern PC.
I'm not a an expert but eBay has a fine and sometimes suprisingly cheap collection of convertors.

Maybe this will do it?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ADAPTEC-2940UW-Ul ... 240%3A1318

yours for a fiver. :D

The next problem will be, how is the drive formatted? FAT? FAT32? EXT2?

I dunno. Any Mac experts out there?

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 11:58 pm
by Devin
I was looking at that exact auction! :D

The power adapter is a standard molex connection, so no problem getting power to the unit. Just tried a power up and the hard drive I took out is happily chirping away, so at least one of these discs is still spinning over a decade on! Hopefully it's just a case of installing the software for this PCI card connecting up the power and an additional 50 pin ribbon cable to the hard drive. Then with any luck good old Windows 98 will investigate the drives contents. The next step would be to get the operating system working on the hard drive itself as if it were in the original Mac chassis. That would be a bonus.

Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2009 12:01 am
by 3DOKid
I wonder if you can VM (Virtual Machine) it in some way?

Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2009 2:00 pm
by WindowsKiller
3DOKid wrote:The next problem will be, how is the drive formatted? FAT? FAT32? EXT2?
HFS, of course, which Windows can't read natively. Even worse, Windows will destroy the hard disk's filesystem due to its nature to write data to some sectors of every hard disk found in the system, even if it's formatted with an unsupported filesystem. So better don't try to connect it to a Windows PC.