3DO ZONE Forums

didn't get the right units...

Yeah...

I wouldn't mind but i sent them pictures and made doubly sure... so either there was an epic mess-up in translation or they ripped me off. The Jury is out, I'm giving them time to respond...

Darn... that's..

hope you get compensation for this..
So what kind of units they sent you?

-Pete

The long wire ones with wrong plugs and the small guide holes. The one we explicitly said we didn't want.

3DOKid wrote:The long wire ones with wrong plugs and the small guide holes. The one we explicitly said we didn't want.

I don't know how much more clear we could have stated the
laser type and make what we needed to them..

there must be some way how you can get those units replaced
for free or get your money back.. this just is unacceptable.

please let me know as soon as you get an responce or something to clear
this mixup..

-Clive

Of cause, if I figure out a way to drill the holes and make the connectors fit (neither of which is rocket science) I'm rich. relatively speaking. Well, I will 'own' the 3DO lens replacement market

3DOKid wrote:Of cause, if I figure out a way to drill the holes and make the connectors fit (neither of which is rocket science) I'm rich. relatively speaking. Well, I will 'own' the 3DO lens replacement market

lol, as for the connectors, sure you could, but its pain in the arse..
you could proly try to wire the 4 pin connector to the motherboard and try it out.. the 14pin flat cable should fit ok without any modifications.

but if you paid via paypal you can get your money back just by
contacting paypal and tell them that you were ripped off.

-Clive

They were perilously keen on me not using PayPal - but I did.

Tonight I will investigate the requirements for a conversion process. I still have the Polish one to experiment with.

And then, I will PayPal them

Will

any progress?

nah. I went for the PayPal option: "They lied".

I sort of assumed i was going to get ripped off. The alarm bells rang, but I ignored them. Ever the optimist. Fortunately, Paypal sort of favours that.

it's a shame.

I'm British. And we, deservingly or not, have a reasonably good reputation when it comes to doing business. I, personally, believe in fair-play, and I know Chinese people do too, but it's symptomatic of an common ethos, when people can lie so easily. I know there are Chinese people, people in Beijing, who would frown on lying to a customer for a poxy $600

I mean, what's the point?

but there you go...

yes, that is unfortunate..

but.. I will not give up.. I will find a compatible laser unit
no matter what.. only thing is that I don't have much free time as I used to have..
because my work takes pretty much all my time.

but yeah, I was working on a second option of bypassing
the 3do cd drive all together.. it is based on a IDE interface so
wiring a IDE pc cd drive into 3do would not be impossible..

hard but not impossible.

but yeah.. that's one project for some nothing else to do weekend

btw.. if you still have the one unit wich you orderred from polland
send it to me, I could proly investigate that option once more from
a different approach.

*Update*

made an inquire straight to sanyo, let's see if they will write me anything
interesting.


-Clive

if you were to get an ide adapter working, would that allow a DVD drive to be used instead? I'd love to see something made similar to http://benheck.com and his crazy units. Using the 3do internals. I think the cd drive will need replacing though before that is going to be possible.

I have been able to Mac Gyver one laser unit that 3dokid sent me
to work with the 3DO FZ-1, it's not much yet.. but it plays audio cds
almost flawless.

havent got any games to run yet, but I think it has something
to do with the angliment of the unit it self..

Im not gonna promise anything yet, but we could be looking
for a 3DO FZ-1 laser replacement units, within 2 or 3 weeks
if and when I get this "prototype" modified sf92.5 laser to work right.

- Clive

I was wondering about this the other day. Thanks for the update!

YEAH!

I need to a pen a song, as a tribute to Clive.

Allmost got the audio cd's working perfectly, about 90%
CD reading is now better as I made another adapter for the laser,
but it's still picking up some noise interference from the other components thus causing the laser to lose it's focus from time to time..

I have to design an adapter that is as short as possible,
adding more length to the ribbon cables will cause some major
problems.. currently my desing has some wires crossing each other so
it's probably what's causing the problems.

also I will be posting a schematic of the prototype adapter
so that others can test it's function if possible..

that would help narrow down some problems..

also my 3DO might have a failing power supply because some times the machine is shutting down by it self..

- Clive

Major update!!

FINALLY got the games working, audio cd's work 95%
normal.. games are bit glitchy at the moment, but
it's down to some minor adjustments..

burned cd's work pretty good better than with the original
SF92.5 laser unit.

will get back to you guys with the instructions
in few hours..

-Clive

GREAT work clive! We are waiting patiently.

I sent the instructions to 3DO kid so that he can test the adapter
and the lasers too.. currently the only lasers I've been able to test
are the chinese SF92.5 that 3DOkid has so dont yet know if the ones
work that they sell at donberg or cdlens.com

but yeah, my 3do works the same as it did with the original
laser.. bit glitchy but it's because my cd drive mechanism is
too worn out..

Next thing would be to mount a 3do cd internals to a pc cd drive
and use the pc cd drives mechanics...

if I can manage this then we would pretty much have a perfect 3DO system.

*UPDATE*

Currently trying to design a adapter pcb for the laser unit
so that it would be easy enough for the end user just to
fit the new laser to the 3DO..

as for the PC cd drive mechanics, well it's a work in progress
I just have too much other work related things to do.. so it might take
some time..




-Clive

From 3DOExp:
Your post has been moved to the Technical support forum. Hopefully you'll find a fix.

*UPDATE*

Good news guys, in the next couple of days if
everything goes as planned "fingers crossed"

we are goin to have a fully working hopefully non buggy
laser replacement for panasonic FZ-1

and yes hold on and ALSO for the 3DO FZ-10 model!

the pc cd-rom mod was a dead-end..
but in my continuous internet searching, I came a cross
some technical specs of SF92.5 lasers.

in my big suprise I noticed that the FZ-10 model uses
the same laser units as it's predecessor the FZ-1

Did some more research and found out that some
Russian dude had already made a step by step guide
in how to replace the old laser unit in FZ-10 with the
newer SF92.5 units that they are selling now..

the adapter that I was working on is the same,
but bit more bulkier, and difficult to make and use.

The Russian dude had came up with a similiar
crosswire adapter that is soldered in to the 3do
cd drive motherboard, and after that you can just plug in
your new laser.

anyways I will be making simplified tutorial for the FZ-1
machine, and if somebody speaks russian, then we could
have the russian FZ-10 tutorial translated.


If anyone has a broken 3do fz-1 cd drive mechanics,
and could send it to me "I can pay for the shipping fee"
it would be much apriciated.

drive does not need to have any circuit boards, just
the motor assy that moves the laser and it's small plastic cogwheels.

mine is busted beyond repair so cant do much work with that one.

Here is a link to the russian tutorial on FZ-10 laser replacement
http://www.eserviceinfo.com/downloadsm/ ... FZ-10.html

it has pictures so you get the idea what the
author of this tutorial is after.


-Clive

thanks for your hard work clive - I too have run into a dead end - after purchasing a Sanyo laser from Cicon on line to test as a replacement in the Goldstars - they have come back to me with a "continuous backorder" story - so I am still searching for a supplier

keep it up!

Well I just read this for the first time. And I was just wondering what the progress was on this? My 3DO works just fine, but it would be comforting to know that I can replace the laser if I needed to, rather than buy an entire different console.

Sorry for the delay, but i finally got the time to finnish this project..
got the machine working with the SF92.5 laser replacement
with the russian instructions, so they are good..

just need to make a cross cable adapter in order to fit the new
laser in..

here are few videos of the work in progress

http://www.youtube.com/user/Peteju2#p/a/u/0/uOBZvlMaTr4

http://www.youtube.com/user/Peteju2#p/a/u/1/xvcpJ3Hyew0

98% of burned discs work like charm, dont have any original discs to
test with but I would imagine that they work even better.

I will be compiling a complete PDF tutorial when I get the change..
if you want to ask questions about this just drop me a PM

-Clive

I want one! But I fear I dont have the ability to put one in if it's really tricky. I do have quite a bit of free time now though.

It's kinda tricky as you need to desolder the old laser connector,
and rewire it to the cd drive motherboard..

also you need to drill 3.5mm holes to the laser unit's guide rail..
laser unit's tracking and focus connector flex needs also hardwiring
to the motherboard..

in my case I had a lot of problems due faulty cd drive mechanics,
it took a lot of tinkering to get it work just right.. but people
with good drive mechanics should be just fine..

*Update*

Found out something interesting..
when trying to burn 3DO games with my new laptop and imgburn
the games simply would not work on my 3do..

so I piced together an old pc with old LG 8x cd burner on it,
burnt the game with 4x "Disc at once" via nero 5.5.9.0 to same kind of cd-r that
did not previously work, and yeah... it works when burned with this
old pice of s**t

*Update 2*

yeah all I can say that my 3DO is working like new with the newly installed SF92.5 laser and the modifications that the laser needs to work..

have been testing the console for about 15+ hours now and it WORKS!!

only problem after playing like 3hours straight is that the console
tends to heat up and that can cause some FMV skipping
but it's only matter of fixing the cooling on the system.

One sollution would be to make the console's powersource external
and so it wouldn't heat up the whole console.

-Clive

I'm reading this whole topic and I'm coming to one simple conclusion:

I'm F****.

I bought a used 3DO on the net for small cash. Damn, was I happy. But when it got to me I realized that it's previous moron user just threw it into an oversized box, with absolutely no anti-shock measures and sent it to me. Idiot. The console obviously didn't work. Well... I guess it wasn't because of the shock because I think the laser simply failed. The CD spins, but the games won't load. I opened up the console (model Panasonic FZ-10) and it seems that the laser isn't really moving on it's rails. I'm not a MacGyver type. I'm an engineer but I fail at solding. I read that this could be the plastic gears, but I couldn't see any gears just strange bolts. So I figured I would buy the whole damn laser unit (replacing the whole unit was easy I guess). but know I read this and I see there is no hope to buy a matching laser. Or maybe there is? So can anyone give advice on how to fix my console without jumping through a bunch of hoops MacGyver style? Is there any hope left?

Hey are you the guy that I invited over at Digital Press? I hope someone here can help fix your problem. It seems as though this guy above you has figured it out, but it looks like a lot of work, not a direct swap.

Good luck I hope you get up and running, cause you are missing out on one really cool console.

Nah, I got here through Google. If anyone had a matching laser I would love to buy it . I would giveaway my 3DO games even . Total Eclipse and Star Wars Rebel Assault.