I've been an 3do enthusiast for 10 years now, watched the machine's development since it's release in 1993.
I've been waiting all the time for any movement in a 3do homebrew development scene - since now.
I am not a programmer but a musician, so my knowledge about this is
surely limited. Nevertheless, I am wondering why, though so many
enthusiasts are out there, no one makes a start.
What would we need?
First of all we needed a UniBios for the machine that allows it to run
self-developed software.
Sure, there are no EepRom Chips that fit mechanically to the BIOS chip
used within a stock 3do, but there can be quite easily an adaptor socket soldered.
An UniBios could based upon the standard FZ-10's Bios, with some modifications:
-disabling the encryption
-adding the japanese font for full compatibility of all machines
-dumping all multimedia graphics for gaining some more storage space
within the bios datafile itself
-adding a simple filesystem manager
-a network protocoll to communicate with a computer used as harddisc via
the expansionport (could also be used for linking consoles)
-maybe a compressing routine for boosting the 32kb of NVRAM
Dont get me wrong, I *surely* do not underestimate all the work that
would be required for a project this.
But it *can* be done, in fact things like these *have* already been done
with machines like the Atari Jaguar, the Commodore Amiga, the SNK NeoGeo, etc., and I am wondering why not for the 3DO.
There are many programmers out there, even some who worked for 3DO
and are skilled in programming for this very machine - those people could be asked for advice and maybe they would be glad to help.
Not forgetting to mention the people who did great work with the
FreeDO emulator! This emulator would make a great job in testing
betaversions of a new bios.
A friend of mine is a 3D graphics artist.
He could design a simple 3D scene, roughly based upon earliest
Direct 3D benchmarks in 320x240x16 resolution.
Writing the code for the 3do could become an open source project,
showing what this hardware is able to do.
Further on this open source code could be used for porting it to different
consoles like the Jaguar, the PSX, the Saturn to even do a direct
hardware benchmark comparison.
So many possibilities.
Why does it seems like no one of all 3DO fans is interested in a project
like this?
Best regards,
Jones
