Absolutely amazing!!! You essentially have the holiest of vaporware, thank you for sharing!! How I wish someone would spill all the beans about the story that is 3DO from Panasonics pov, like Sony and Nintendo I'm sure they have a story of what, why, how, where, and finally why pay $100 million for m2 tech only to cancel it a year or two later. Maybe one day.
3 года назад+1
Perhaps someone else were interested in having one less competitor in the gaming industry...
From my experience in the Arcade community there are some really great people that have done some amazing things with broken arcade boards that perhaps might be willing to give it a look. You're absolutely on the right track, every trace, every capacitor, every diode must be checked. Can't wait to see where it goes from here. Good stuff 👍
This series of video is really great ! It made me want to support your channel a bit, so I did. I also loved the video you made on D / D2 Secret Codes. Great content !
Really looked forward to the next episode in the series and it’s a bummer that you didn’t get it to start up yet! I really hope you manage to get it to work, it’d be awesome to see it come to life! Do you know of any source that has a working M2; perhaps they can provide a high resolution photo of both sides of the board so you can compare the botch wires (if any)…
Be interesting to see what the scope reveals. Fingers crossed it's something relatively simple. I guess it makes sense for an engineering sample to use swappable media for the BIOS rather then a ROM IC. Thanks for sharing and looking forward to part 2.
Yes that way they could iterate on revisions quickly. That one chip is hotter than my arcade boards and kiosks are though. I can’t say that’s a bad thing but it’s suspicious
I have to say, that is one of the coolest looking consoles I have ever seen. Whoever designed that case knew how to make a striking product. It is Sega Genesis Model 1 w/Sega CD Model 1 sleek. It even gives the mighty Neo Geo AES a run for its money in style. I grew up in the 1990's and am still a console fan...I would have purchased one of these had it made it, no question. I have questions...how does it stand up against the hardware it was set to face? I'm assuming this was designed to run against the Sega Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox. Did it have the chops to succeed and if so where would it sit in the power hierarchy?
@@VideoGameEsoterica I don't know...the machine is very much a 6th generation console. While it looks weaker on paper than the Dreamcast and the games that were made for it were not as advanced I would really like to know more about it. Not just what the sheet says but what kind of techniques were used when developing games for it. This will give me a better idea of how close Panasonic's M2 was to the Dreamcast. Let me give you an example... We know on paper the PlayStation 2 is more advanced in many areas than the Sega Dreamcast. However, we also know that the hardware spec sheet does not show us the full picture. The Dreamcast was a much more efficient machine. If I remember correctly the Sega Dreamcast was the first console to ever build only front facing polygons, textures, what have you (I can't remember what it's called) on the fly at the hardware level. Basically if you're staring at Sonic standing behind Tales the console will only create what is necessary. So if Sonic's legs are not in view the Dreamcast does not render his legs but it is loaded in memory and tracked should you change your position. The PS2 cannot do this through hardware and will generally render everything around you which is far more costly. I want to call it culling but that's not it...it's not ambient occlusion either. At any rate, all 3d games are made today using this technical trick. Another good example (I think) is the 10MB of EDRAM on the Xbox 360. That seldom talked about feature gave the Xbox 360 antialiasing at almost no cost. Sorry, I have a passion for this stuff...
Maybe try some electrical contact cleaner or deoxit on the PCMCIA pins. Maybe corrosion over the years? I know those pins are small, so look at them closely.
@@VideoGameEsoterica I have a couple G3 PowerMacs, a G5 PowerMac and a G5 iMac, but I have no Powerbooks! I must say that I enjoy the simplicity of Mac OS9 and earlier. I do miss some of the modern features, but I absolutely love the clean, no-frills UI. And this is coming from a non-Mac person. I got all my Macs from my old job at a computer repair shop. People were just tossing them so I took them home to give them new life. They're really nice machines, too good to be thrown away.
I find it hard to believe that this never worked. Especially with the bodge wires. Someone took the effort to not only get it working but get it working correctly. Although from what I remember of the last video, it sounds like from the numbering it was possibly a pretty early sample. Bodge wiring doesn't always hold up over time. If I'm fixing something for a customer, I'll run wires but fix them in place and cover the main joints with conformal coating, to: 1. make it obvious where the work was done, and 2. protect the solder connections from any potential movement. On these older prototypes though they don't care about how it looks or even how it lasts, they just care about solving trace issues to get the final board layout nailed down. I remember watching Ben Heck fix the SNES CD and some of the bodge wires weren't working anymore. That's completely understandable given how old it was. It's entirely possible there's a bunch of things needing fixing with this board, but I think it's more likely to be just one or two small things (assuming it was actually working at some point). I'm no expert at making things work, I only know how to fix Macbook boards because I have schematics and boardviews. I don't know how Ben Heck does it, but I'd certainly love to learn someday. Maybe if all else fails, we can turn him to the 3DO dark side!
Yes I believe it worked too but I can’t say that with certainty. The bodges have continuity. I am worried about cold solder joints on the pcmcia slot but I can’t use a hot air gun to reflow it since it’s 99% plastic.
@@VideoGameEsoterica You should be able to tackle those joints by hand, I'm guessing that they were still using leaded solder back then which is much easier to melt. I would just go over them all, plenty of flux and maybe adding some new solder to help flush out any old gunk.
The issue is it’s not pins, it’s blades. They are so thin and so delicate and flexible even trying to come at them with an iron moves them too much. It’s gotta be hot air somehow
@@VideoGameEsoterica Oh, I see. For something like that, I would use kapton tape for a heat barrier and throw a healthy bit of flux on it. If you can't add a bit of leaded solder first with an iron, then I'd probably just try with the air using the smallest nozzle and on fairly low heat. I'm assuming they were still using leaded solder back then so it might melt easier than the joints on a newer board. Usually plastic pieces can take a good bit of heat, until they can't and then they start to melt pretty rapidly, so a careful application of heat should be able to loosen the solder up without any damage. I have a Quick 861DW with a set of angled nozzles that I got from Rossmann Repair, the smallest one works well even for tiny stuff like iPhone chips. Although, I wouldn't attempt this without doing it under a microscope. Not that it couldn't be done, but once I started using a scope I've never gone back. It's a huge benefit to be able to see the state of the solder and the quality of the joint up close like that. (I have the cheapo AmScope SE400-Z and it's good enough for any soldering that I've done, although there are better options for a little more money.) I wonder if those PCMCIA connectors are still available new. If so, then it's probably easier to just blast the old one off and solder a new one on. This is what I do with Macbook LCD connectors which also have plastic in them. A new one might not be as fragile as the old one. Something like this, but you'd have to match it up to the original part: www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/te-connectivity-amp-connectors/5535653-1/2188148
Bit of a long shot but you might try reaching out to Curious Marc or Ken Shirriff. I've never seen them working on consoles but they sure know old PC hardware.
I know this is stupid, and maybe you checked off camera, but I noticed in the video the pvm had no video signal input buttons lit up. Also did you try with both composite and svideo? Maybe one of the outputs doesn't work?
Now is time to go trace by trace. You can hate the machine but makes a cool and good content! Check the video out if its sending something with a multimeter.
Is it possible that it has something to do with the CD-ROM drive? I haven't looked at M2 documentation, but could it be that the unit doesn't boot without the drive plugged in?
Oh great, my previous comment got auto-culled. sigh I had some good info on there about using a Logic Analyzer or o'scope. I didn't even post any links in it.
(I managed to copy n paste the other comment after it failed to post, due to the deleted OP.)... Poking around a few signals on the M2 using an o'scope can tell you quite a lot. You could see if the clocks, resets, and power rails are good, etc. And if the o'scope can capture enough data in one go, it should show a difference when the card is plugged in vs when it isn't. Do you think it's even outputting sync to the monitor when powered up, like if the OSD on the monitor stabilizes to a slightly different size when you first power up the console? (I don't recall if the 3DO needs the BIOS to initialize the DAC and everything first, but probably.)
I'll try to remember what my OP was... A Logic Analyzer could be hooked up to the PCMCIA slot via an extender PCB, or just using the tiny test clips. That could show you the whole boot process, and whether it's reading the BIOS correctly from the card. You can get USB Logic Analyzers now for around $150, but need at least 32 channels ideally. (the popular older 8-bit CPUs tended to have at least 16 bits of address. That plus the 8-bit data would leave only 8 more inputs on the LA for control signals etc. On a 32-bit console, you need way more channels.)
There's an open source project on the sigrok wiki called CoLA which looks awesome. It's a USB 3.0 based Logic Analyzer with 96 Channels. :o That's basically unheard of for anything costing less than $500 commercially. I need to get one built soon, as it's better than the 64-channel thing I was working on. That's assuming the Cyclone V chip can even be bought right now. lol
Yes the next step is to probe lines to check for activity. See where a fault may lie. Make sure there is a clock signal first then start checking for activity on the PCMCIA data lines, etc
I tried to get a copy of the bios of es3 from the Tom thebaz and he wouldn't want anything to do with that, because he was worried it would erase his card in his es3. His bios on the screen it was a black box with a ball that bounces around.
Some caps tested. Not all. Nothing fails as of yet. I still think it has something to do with the pcmcia slot / bios. One joint on the connector could be cold. Who knows
No help to you whatsoever but sorry you couldn’t get it running bud. I’ve had my fair share of no go fixes over the years and it bugged me every single time!😞 It totally sucks but I really hope ingenuity and someone out there who knows about this can help you further!🙏👍
Next steps are component by component testing. If that fails when it’ll be pull the GPU and reball it with a known good working arcade unit. That’ll be sent out to a friend though
Symmetrically it shares a bit from PlayStation in that like ps (its ubiquitous big circle with two smaller circles on either side) the M2 has one large square with angled buttons on either side. Still love the look of both systems they are quite aesthetic.
@@VideoGameEsoterica yeah I don't know why. I always saw the blue version but this Grey one looks like a PS1 but with everything squared. Probably the buttons on the left and right.
I'd probably send it to someone that actually understands what they're doing.
3 года назад+1
Didn't they try to demo an M2 unit to Sega and it failed because the Bulldog chip wasn't fabbed correctly? What are the chances that was the exact same console lol
Keep the M2 coming! Really excited to see the day when you get this thing playing games.
lol who knows when that'll be
Absolutely amazing!!!
You essentially have the holiest of vaporware, thank you for sharing!!
How I wish someone would spill all the beans about the story that is 3DO from Panasonics pov, like Sony and Nintendo I'm sure they have a story of what, why, how, where, and finally why pay $100 million for m2 tech only to cancel it a year or two later.
Maybe one day.
Perhaps someone else were interested in having one less competitor in the gaming industry...
ill do a story episode one day as I have all the details stashed away
the cancellation really makes no sense
@@VideoGameEsoterica with the 3DO being one of my favorite systems I would love to see that video and story
same
From my experience in the Arcade community there are some really great people that have done some amazing things with broken arcade boards that perhaps might be willing to give it a look.
You're absolutely on the right track, every trace, every capacitor, every diode must be checked.
Can't wait to see where it goes from here. Good stuff 👍
Yep. Now it’s time for the really tedious stuff that isn’t fun to show on camera!
Wish I had any enlightenment... I'm in the corner of the cave just enjoying watching you with your hammer n torch
I am frustrated enough to try a hammer next lolol
This series of video is really great !
It made me want to support your channel a bit, so I did.
I also loved the video you made on D / D2 Secret Codes.
Great content !
Thanks!
I don’t know anything about electronics, but it’s still exciting to see how this goes!
Haha yes hoping for more success in 2022
Loved all the PCMCIA info!
Haha pcmcia was a fun format
Really looked forward to the next episode in the series and it’s a bummer that you didn’t get it to start up yet! I really hope you manage to get it to work, it’d be awesome to see it come to life! Do you know of any source that has a working M2; perhaps they can provide a high resolution photo of both sides of the board so you can compare the botch wires (if any)…
I haven’t even started on the next part so it’s gonna be a bit!
Be interesting to see what the scope reveals. Fingers crossed it's something relatively simple. I guess it makes sense for an engineering sample to use swappable media for the BIOS rather then a ROM IC. Thanks for sharing and looking forward to part 2.
Yes that way they could iterate on revisions quickly. That one chip is hotter than my arcade boards and kiosks are though. I can’t say that’s a bad thing but it’s suspicious
Datasheets for CPUs + Logic Probe + "Work Backwards" == Profit
LOL profit is not something this channel is aware of
Darn this is getting suspenseful lol. Beautiful paperweight but hope you can crack into it in the next video(s)
Soonish. In the works :)
Oh man! That's one stubborn machine!
Yeah it is! Stupid thing lol
I have to say, that is one of the coolest looking consoles I have ever seen. Whoever designed that case knew how to make a striking product. It is Sega Genesis Model 1 w/Sega CD Model 1 sleek. It even gives the mighty Neo Geo AES a run for its money in style. I grew up in the 1990's and am still a console fan...I would have purchased one of these had it made it, no question.
I have questions...how does it stand up against the hardware it was set to face? I'm assuming this was designed to run against the Sega Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox. Did it have the chops to succeed and if so where would it sit in the power hierarchy?
It was not designed to go up against those. It was meant to release in 1996 so well before anything in the list
@@VideoGameEsoterica
I don't know...the machine is very much a 6th generation console. While it looks weaker on paper than the Dreamcast and the games that were made for it were not as advanced I would really like to know more about it. Not just what the sheet says but what kind of techniques were used when developing games for it. This will give me a better idea of how close Panasonic's M2 was to the Dreamcast. Let me give you an example...
We know on paper the PlayStation 2 is more advanced in many areas than the Sega Dreamcast. However, we also know that the hardware spec sheet does not show us the full picture. The Dreamcast was a much more efficient machine. If I remember correctly the Sega Dreamcast was the first console to ever build only front facing polygons, textures, what have you (I can't remember what it's called) on the fly at the hardware level. Basically if you're staring at Sonic standing behind Tales the console will only create what is necessary. So if Sonic's legs are not in view the Dreamcast does not render his legs but it is loaded in memory and tracked should you change your position. The PS2 cannot do this through hardware and will generally render everything around you which is far more costly. I want to call it culling but that's not it...it's not ambient occlusion either. At any rate, all 3d games are made today using this technical trick.
Another good example (I think) is the 10MB of EDRAM on the Xbox 360. That seldom talked about feature gave the Xbox 360 antialiasing at almost no cost. Sorry, I have a passion for this stuff...
I'd probably start with a logic probe and start poking around to see if there is any activity.
That's the next step for sure
Maybe try some electrical contact cleaner or deoxit on the PCMCIA pins. Maybe corrosion over the years? I know those pins are small, so look at them closely.
I checked under magnification. Clean from what I can see
you can also get those little pin to usb thingos to read the ic's
thingos lol. I see you use the same scientific terms as I do. "You just gotta use this dealie to dump the chip"
I like those Powerbooks!
Haha I love my PowerBook collection. Both mint and modded to an inch of their life
@@VideoGameEsoterica I have a couple G3 PowerMacs, a G5 PowerMac and a G5 iMac, but I have no Powerbooks! I must say that I enjoy the simplicity of Mac OS9 and earlier. I do miss some of the modern features, but I absolutely love the clean, no-frills UI. And this is coming from a non-Mac person.
I got all my Macs from my old job at a computer repair shop. People were just tossing them so I took them home to give them new life. They're really nice machines, too good to be thrown away.
I find it hard to believe that this never worked. Especially with the bodge wires. Someone took the effort to not only get it working but get it working correctly. Although from what I remember of the last video, it sounds like from the numbering it was possibly a pretty early sample.
Bodge wiring doesn't always hold up over time. If I'm fixing something for a customer, I'll run wires but fix them in place and cover the main joints with conformal coating, to: 1. make it obvious where the work was done, and 2. protect the solder connections from any potential movement. On these older prototypes though they don't care about how it looks or even how it lasts, they just care about solving trace issues to get the final board layout nailed down. I remember watching Ben Heck fix the SNES CD and some of the bodge wires weren't working anymore. That's completely understandable given how old it was.
It's entirely possible there's a bunch of things needing fixing with this board, but I think it's more likely to be just one or two small things (assuming it was actually working at some point). I'm no expert at making things work, I only know how to fix Macbook boards because I have schematics and boardviews. I don't know how Ben Heck does it, but I'd certainly love to learn someday. Maybe if all else fails, we can turn him to the 3DO dark side!
Yes I believe it worked too but I can’t say that with certainty. The bodges have continuity. I am worried about cold solder joints on the pcmcia slot but I can’t use a hot air gun to reflow it since it’s 99% plastic.
@@VideoGameEsoterica You should be able to tackle those joints by hand, I'm guessing that they were still using leaded solder back then which is much easier to melt. I would just go over them all, plenty of flux and maybe adding some new solder to help flush out any old gunk.
The issue is it’s not pins, it’s blades. They are so thin and so delicate and flexible even trying to come at them with an iron moves them too much. It’s gotta be hot air somehow
@@VideoGameEsoterica Oh, I see. For something like that, I would use kapton tape for a heat barrier and throw a healthy bit of flux on it. If you can't add a bit of leaded solder first with an iron, then I'd probably just try with the air using the smallest nozzle and on fairly low heat. I'm assuming they were still using leaded solder back then so it might melt easier than the joints on a newer board. Usually plastic pieces can take a good bit of heat, until they can't and then they start to melt pretty rapidly, so a careful application of heat should be able to loosen the solder up without any damage.
I have a Quick 861DW with a set of angled nozzles that I got from Rossmann Repair, the smallest one works well even for tiny stuff like iPhone chips. Although, I wouldn't attempt this without doing it under a microscope. Not that it couldn't be done, but once I started using a scope I've never gone back. It's a huge benefit to be able to see the state of the solder and the quality of the joint up close like that. (I have the cheapo AmScope SE400-Z and it's good enough for any soldering that I've done, although there are better options for a little more money.)
I wonder if those PCMCIA connectors are still available new. If so, then it's probably easier to just blast the old one off and solder a new one on. This is what I do with Macbook LCD connectors which also have plastic in them. A new one might not be as fragile as the old one.
Something like this, but you'd have to match it up to the original part:
www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/te-connectivity-amp-connectors/5535653-1/2188148
Best of luck getting that unit to work. I wonder what the bb means on the bulldog chip?bad bug?
I’ve wondered that myself. No clue!
You should send it to Ben Heck. He'll fix ANYTHING.
Bit of a long shot but you might try reaching out to Curious Marc or Ken Shirriff. I've never seen them working on consoles but they sure know old PC hardware.
I have not yet but I do have some inquiries in :)
I know this is stupid, and maybe you checked off camera, but I noticed in the video the pvm had no video signal input buttons lit up. Also did you try with both composite and svideo? Maybe one of the outputs doesn't work?
I tried every combination of cable, input, etc etc. I just didn’t talk about all that minutiae on camera :)
I also tried two different PVMs and a crt and a capture card just in case
Damn what a shame. silly idea but worth a shot. the spot that the switch could be put in the blank position. could that possibly flash it?
I tried in the blank too. I tried every combo. No response sadly
Origins of a SSD… technically PATA SSD lol (oh and pcmcia uses parallel tech, not quite serial yet)
I kind of miss PCMCIA. Fun format
Now is time to go trace by trace. You can hate the machine but makes a cool and good content! Check the video out if its sending something with a multimeter.
I’ll need a scope for video out to check for a confirming signal
Is it possible that it has something to do with the CD-ROM drive? I haven't looked at M2 documentation, but could it be that the unit doesn't boot without the drive plugged in?
Drive is plugged in. No signs of life on it. I still think it’s just not posting as it has no bios being recognized
You may not have had success, but it was still an interesting video!
Haha failure is fun too to watch at least
Oh great, my previous comment got auto-culled. sigh
I had some good info on there about using a Logic Analyzer or o'scope.
I didn't even post any links in it.
(I managed to copy n paste the other comment after it failed to post, due to the deleted OP.)...
Poking around a few signals on the M2 using an o'scope can tell you quite a lot.
You could see if the clocks, resets, and power rails are good, etc.
And if the o'scope can capture enough data in one go, it should show a difference when the card is plugged in vs when it isn't.
Do you think it's even outputting sync to the monitor when powered up, like if the OSD on the monitor stabilizes to a slightly different size when you first power up the console?
(I don't recall if the 3DO needs the BIOS to initialize the DAC and everything first, but probably.)
I'll try to remember what my OP was...
A Logic Analyzer could be hooked up to the PCMCIA slot via an extender PCB, or just using the tiny test clips.
That could show you the whole boot process, and whether it's reading the BIOS correctly from the card.
You can get USB Logic Analyzers now for around $150, but need at least 32 channels ideally.
(the popular older 8-bit CPUs tended to have at least 16 bits of address. That plus the 8-bit data would leave only 8 more inputs on the LA for control signals etc. On a 32-bit console, you need way more channels.)
There's an open source project on the sigrok wiki called CoLA which looks awesome.
It's a USB 3.0 based Logic Analyzer with 96 Channels. :o
That's basically unheard of for anything costing less than $500 commercially.
I need to get one built soon, as it's better than the 64-channel thing I was working on.
That's assuming the Cyclone V chip can even be bought right now. lol
Yes the next step is to probe lines to check for activity. See where a fault may lie. Make sure there is a clock signal first then start checking for activity on the PCMCIA data lines, etc
power rails are good at least INTO the motherboard. I haven't checked past a few components in from the connector yet
I tried to get a copy of the bios of es3 from the Tom thebaz and he wouldn't want anything to do with that, because he was worried it would erase his card in his es3. His bios on the screen it was a black box with a ball that bounces around.
Dumping the cards bios is not hard but I understand peoples worry. I myself would want it dumped so it could be restored if need be
Have you tried recapping the unit or testing caps with an esr meter?
Some caps tested. Not all. Nothing fails as of yet. I still think it has something to do with the pcmcia slot / bios. One joint on the connector could be cold. Who knows
dammit that sucks. hope you can get it running
Fingers crossed!
Where's Ben Heck?
I’ve chatted with him. Nothing concrete
🎵Blue Mary's Blues🎵
A man of taste I see!
😍
She's a beaut. A big, useless, paperweight beauty!
Try to populate both PCMCIA and play with switch.... who knows................ ;)
Tried off camera. Nothing doing. I know of another unit that boots with just the bottom slot populated too
No help to you whatsoever but sorry you couldn’t get it running bud. I’ve had my fair share of no go fixes over the years and it bugged me every single time!😞
It totally sucks but I really hope ingenuity and someone out there who knows about this can help you further!🙏👍
Next steps are component by component testing. If that fails when it’ll be pull the GPU and reball it with a known good working arcade unit. That’ll be sent out to a friend though
@@VideoGameEsoterica sounds like the best route, good luck with this and I really hope we see some more progress on this at some point!👍
Appreciate it!
I always loved the look of the M2 but it just hit me. It really looks like a PS1
Really? I don’t see it that much. Sure it’s a rectangle but minus that
Symmetrically it shares a bit from PlayStation in that like ps (its ubiquitous big circle with two smaller circles on either side) the M2 has one large square with angled buttons on either side.
Still love the look of both systems they are quite aesthetic.
@@VideoGameEsoterica yeah I don't know why. I always saw the blue version but this Grey one looks like a PS1 but with everything squared. Probably the buttons on the left and right.
Ahh I see what you mean
The blue one looked fun. I liked there was a potential console that wasn’t black or white
Call Ben Heck?
Chatted with him
I'd probably send it to someone that actually understands what they're doing.
Didn't they try to demo an M2 unit to Sega and it failed because the Bulldog chip wasn't fabbed correctly? What are the chances that was the exact same console lol
Yes. Missed silicon layer that caused no direct ram access between Bulldog and memory
Heartbreaking.
I mean I haven’t given up yet
BEN HECK might help you
I’ve been in contact :)
@@VideoGameEsoterica This is a colab I would love to see!
Hopefully I can work something out!
修理できる見込みが無いのに落札したのか…
It’s in process of repair