Any interest in a new 3do emu?

Hello all. I've started a project called 4do... an attempt at an open source emulator for the 3do. We could use a little help.

I'm working on the emulation of the ARM60. I'm getting a little hung up on the memory bus and DMA. Unfortunately, nobody in the team right now has all that much hardware experience. I could probably figure it out eventually, but it would help me greatly if someone could chat with me about the basics. All the remaining ARM60 functions left to code involve communication with other components.

I'll take this time to advertise the project page:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/fourdo

By the way, if you are interested in helping with the project, please let me know! There's plenty to be done.

 

I can't help you in any way, but you have my approvation good luck

 

Hi there, a new 3do emu is a great idea! I'd really like to help but I don't know anything about programming, so good luck ^_^

 

Not being a skilled programmer or a source of inside info, I'm afraid I can't contribute. But I can tell you that the 3DO has many unique games that have not been duplicated on or ported to other platforms. I'm talking about Return Fire: Maps O' Death, Shockwave Assault, Guardian War, CPU Bach, and many others. While the best 3DO games were ported to Saturn and Playstation, it's those exclusive titles that should form the basis for testing of your emulator once you've identified them.

In my opinion, there's a lot of valuable gaming properties that won't be Remembered in any other form. A working 3DO emulator would go a long way towards preserving those games for the future.

 

Thanks for the support! The project is going fine so far, and as long as we continue to upload all progress onto sourceforge, none of the progress is really "lost", even if the current team simply gives up.

The project is going fine so far. The documentation regarding the main CPU (ARM60) is very thorough, and this is where the coding has started. The 3do file system has also been "cracked", and we've found source code to read it. Additionally, complete documentation for the 3DO SDK is fully available.

This is my main motivation behind wanting a full-blown 3DO emulator. I love emulation because it allows the software for extinct systems to live on. 3DO hardware becomes more rare every year, and it's only a matter of time before they're just plain gone or too expensive. Unfortunately, at least one of the patent holders for the 3DO hardware is seemingly uninterested in helping out at all.

Anyway, about the only non-coding thing we could use help on would be someone interested in developing a barebones website or WIKI on the sourceforge page, since they provide those services. Although, I guess that's development, too. As always, if you happen to know anybody interested in contributing, please let me know!

 

I had all of those at one point. Although I'd never heard of CPU Bach. Is that one of those goofy educational programs? Those had their charm too!

 

CPU Bach is a baroque music generator. Sid Meier noticed that music of the period was pretty rigidly mathematical, and created a program that produced passably listenable music using part or all of the orchestra. When deciding what platform to release it on, he chose the 3DO because he didn't think that the Soundblaster would have a future. Who knew?

 

I can't contribute to development, but if it's any inspirational help, I would use a stable 3DO emulator with good audio quite a bit.

 

I have the same exact thoughts. Best of luck to you!

 

Thanks for the support. But darn. Very few spare time developers out there... and even fewer with interest in 3DO. At least I have a couple friends who are offering to help a little bit.

Actually if someone has a broken 3DO they want to mail to me, I'd be happy to take it. I only have a single Goldstar 3DO to toy with, and we'd probably need at least one per serious developer. I would pay for shipping.

 

Actually i am a BIG fan of the 3DO and i think a good emu would be really great. If someone could add the m2 too would be wonderfull! Anyway i could send you as many 3dos you want if that helps. I could also provide anything you want,since i have debug console dev hardware and some manuals. Sadly i dont know anything about programming.;-)

 

Just so everyone knows, any documentation regarding 3DO development (or any component of it) is extremely useful. This avoids painstaking reverse engineering which we haven't had to do so far.

 

Might be worthwhile to take a look at one of the 3do Blasters if you can get ahold of one.

 

you rock they'll be precoious to them!

 

Good job!! Keep it up dont be scared! Just take your time for reseraching and you'll find all the solutions!

Bye!
kammedo

 

You also might try posting on the MESS message boards:
http://www.bannister.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=1&page=1

MESS contains the start of a 3do driver.

 

Have you talked with any MAME dev's?

 

I hope so!:icon_bigg A project like this needs a lot of help,since the 3do dev stuff is dissapearing!:-(

 

hmmm Return Fire has been ported to Windows back in the win95 days. But still I think, I know where kendrick is heading with that comment.
And best of luck with the emulator.

 

Absolutely!! :nod: Having dev docs for this would be a dream come true!

I will have to check on status of the 3DO portion of the MESS project... thank you for the suggestion! I also haven't talked to any of the MAME developers. This is a good idea too.

Yes... that 3do blaster hardware would also be a prize to own, even if I were just using it to play with.

So far, though, I'm more worried about finding documentation than I am hardware. For example, with the ARM60 datasheet, I'm able to emulate that part just by reading the document rather than somehow monitoring the behavior of an actual 3DO machine (which will be much slower or possibly not even feasible). The ARM60, Opera file system, and video's DAC are the only items that I currently have all the information I need.

Since I doubt I can get documentation on ALL components, so I'm planning on doing HLE emulation (which as far as I know is not compatible with the type of framework in the MESS project). With this option, I'm thinking hardware won't be as critical besides being able to compare the functionality of the emulation to the real thing (probably by creating some homebrew debug programs). Additionally, HLE would mean the graphics and audio emulation could be improved on (such as increasing the native resolution!). I believe the information for the 3DO SDK will provide what's necessary to emulate the OS (Opera):
http://thdo-homebrew.narod.ru/3do_dev_tools.htm

Of course, I don't want to get anyone's hopes up, and for now I don't want to accept donations except for information and broken hardware. It's possible everyone currently involved will lose interest (one is already MIA). On the plus side, all the progress is open source and up on sourceforge, so no effort is truly wasted.

By the way, I'll reiterate that creation of a 4DO WIKI and/or homepage is a task that's up for grabs. What we could use most out of the WIKI is to use it as a public "database" of the information I'm getting out of the 3DO R&D, once again in case the project gets dumped. The information available on 3DO on the internet is also fading away quickly...