My 3DO M2 collection

[bitrate]

I began collecting for the 3DO system about nine years ago and one day when I get the time (and room to take things out of boxes) I'll get some pictures taken of everything. While the 3DO collection will have to wait, I recently put most of my M2 collection together to grab the images you see below.

This represents about seven years of searching/collecting for the M2 and shows most of the hardware that I have (not including the Konami arcade hardware, and a few other odds and ends).

I will probably take some pictures of them running software a little later and update the post at that time.

Enjoy :)



The two all white consoles in the pictures below contain just the CD drive hardware and support circuitry for communicating with the M2 development system.
The multi-colored console is an early prototype which contains all of the M2 hardware, but requires a BIOS to be loaded (WIP).
The all black console is a fully functioning M2. It plays M2 software and VCD's.
Two of the pictures have M2 prototype control pads hooked up to the consoles.


http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/bitrate_photos/M2_CollectionPics/DSC06228_25.jpghttp://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/bitrate_photos/M2_CollectionPics/DSC06234_25.jpg
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/bitrate_photos/M2_CollectionPics/DSC06212_25.jpghttp://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/bitrate_photos/M2_CollectionPics/DSC06213_25.jpg





The two pictures below show a couple of M2 development kits. The large white box on the right is a factory sealed kit, and the large white box on the left has been opened with its contents displayed around it.



http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/bitrate_photos/M2_CollectionPics/DSC06207_25.jpghttp://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/bitrate_photos/M2_CollectionPics/DSC06211_25.jpg
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/bitrate_photos/M2_CollectionPics/DSC06194_25.jpghttp://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/bitrate_photos/M2_CollectionPics/DSC06197_25.jpg




continued...

[bitrate]

The pictures below show various versions of the M2 Nubus cards included with the M2 development kits (or independent of them). Also pictured is a CD emulation card and a couple close-ups of the prototype M2 control pads.



http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/bitrate_photos/M2_CollectionPics/DSC06215_25.jpghttp://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/bitrate_photos/M2_CollectionPics/DSC06221_25.jpg
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/bitrate_photos/M2_CollectionPics/DSC06222_25.jpghttp://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/bitrate_photos/M2_CollectionPics/DSC06223_25.jpg




The picture below shows a couple of the released products endowed with the M2 chipset. Both the FZ-35S and FZ-55 units are shown below, and both have M2 hardware. They were used as point-of-sale/interest media kiosks as well as various other applications.



http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/bitrate_photos/M2_CollectionPics/DSC06224_25.jpghttp://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/bitrate_photos/M2_CollectionPics/DSC03469_25.jpg




The last couple of pictures here show a little of the mountains of paperwork I have accumulated over the years.



http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/bitrate_photos/M2_CollectionPics/DSC06236_25.jpghttp://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u49/bitrate_photos/M2_CollectionPics/DSC06237_25.jpg

[pooch]

Wow this is just amazing, purely awesome, never seen alot of this stuff before. IIRC, I think I bought a factory sealed kit from you on Ebay.

[vivaeljason]

I second the amazing comment, but I have to wonder: where in the blue hell did you find all of this stuff?

[Dangerboy]

Thirded! Though never a true believer of 3D0 (I had one with like 60 games, sold it all off), I was always intrigued by teh M2 drama as it would have been a direct contender with the PlayStation.

Aren't the square decks just CD-Rom drives? Or like, if you actually programmed something on the dev hardware, would it have run on the deck?

Awesome stuff :D

[Steve W]

And was the black unit the finalized version of the casing? I thought they were still trying to decide what design the console would have been when the project got the axe (or that's at least what I vaguely remember).

It's odd that they decided to use Nubus cards for development, when Apple was going PCI around that time. I guess post-release development kits would be PCI based, once the console went mainstream.

Since the games were being developed on Macs, what kind of development software did they have for it?

[jcalder8]

That is just 100% pure awesome. Thanks for taking all those pictures.

[-hellvin-]

Awesome accomplishment man! Can't wait to see the rest of the 3DO collection.

[bgreenlee]

Awesome pictures! Thanks for sharing. Care to share any stories of how you tracked this stuff down?

[Marriott_Guy]

I am truly impressed. I have seen your collection before at Assemblers - I have only the FZ-35S and some software (holding back my jealousy). I have been working on the 'Hands On' review portion for this system, but undoubtedly you could do much better than I. Your thoughts\insights on the M2 would be appreciated. Drop me a PM\email to discuss.

The referenced M2 page (which Timo\Borman have previously contributed to):
http://www.videogameconsolelibrary.com/pg90-3do_m2.htm

Terry

[Bojay1997]

And was the black unit the finalized version of the casing? I thought they were still trying to decide what design the console would have been when the project got the axe (or that's at least what I vaguely remember).

It's odd that they decided to use Nubus cards for development, when Apple was going PCI around that time. I guess post-release development kits would be PCI based, once the console went mainstream.

Since the games were being developed on Macs, what kind of development software did they have for it?

The black unit was actually released and sold to industrial users. I recall we had two of them and a fully working dev card equipped Mac for doing interactive training videos at the municipality I worked at in the mid-90s. While it is probably hardware identical to what they would have sold as the M2 gaming unit, I don't believe that most of the licensees would have stuck with that case design had it actually been released as a consumer product.

[Oldskool]

Most impressive.

[Clownzilla]

The black unit was actually released and sold to industrial users. I recall we had two of them and a fully working dev card equipped Mac for doing interactive training videos at the municipality I worked at in the mid-90s. While it is probably hardware identical to what they would have sold as the M2 gaming unit, I don't believe that most of the licensees would have stuck with that case design had it actually been released as a consumer product.

We used the M2 (they were called something else) units for kiosks in our automotive showrooms. I say "M2" but I'm sure if they kept developing the unit as a game system then it would of had some different specs. The prototypes in this listing are much more stylized and game centric then the kiosk units we had.

[poloplayr]

Mindblowing!!! Thank you for sharing.

[bombman]

That controller looks atrocious. Have you ever tried collecting the M2 arcade games that Konami released?

[Paet]

This may be a dumb question, but have any of the M2 games ever leaked out? I'd specifically be interest in the M2 version of D2.

[TurboCro]

Wow and I thought the M2 was just talk. Nice collection and thanks for the pics.

[bitrate]

Thanks guys, it's been a long road :)



I second the amazing comment, but I have to wonder: where in the blue hell did you find all of this stuff?


Various places, including everyone's favorite auction site. Although, the rarer pieces were acquired outside of auction sites. A lot of perseverance.



Aren't the square decks just CD-Rom drives?


The all-white decks are basically just the CD-ROM drives (with some communicatin circuitry). The black and multi-colored units have full M2 hardware.



I am truly impressed. I have seen your collection before at Assemblers - I have only the FZ-35S and some software (holding back my jealousy). I have been working on the 'Hands On' review portion for this system, but undoubtedly you could do much better than I. Your thoughts\insights on the M2 would be appreciated. Drop me a PM\email to discuss.

The referenced M2 page (which Timo\Borman have previously contributed to):
http://www.videogameconsolelibrary.com/pg90-3do2.htm

Terry


Will do. I'll try to get in touch with you in the next few days.



That controller looks atrocious. Have you ever tried collecting the M2 arcade games that Konami released?


The casing for the control pads is from a cheap 3rd party 3DO control pad manufacturer and just used during the development stages. I have images of one of the intended release game pads that I will post. The black M2 console pictured in the first post has an image of the pad (resembles N64 pad) in it's BIOS and is displayed in the menu during VCD playback.

And yes, I have the Konami arcade games as well.



This may be a dumb question, but have any of the M2 games ever leaked out? I'd specifically be interest in the M2 version of D2.


No, not leaked. There are games though :)

[tubeway]

Hey Bitrate, any luck on an online repository for all of your 3DO related information?

[bitrate]

Hey Bitrate, any luck on an online repository for all of your 3DO related information?


I have been chipping away at it little by little. I have a large portion of my imports tripple scanned (front, back, spine) with serial #'s and so forth. Same for US releases. I have mountains of more work to do though.
I am currently trying to get the last of the games scanned (and all of the variants) before moving on to the peripherals. Even when that is done, there's a ton more to do. But, at least at that point I'll have plenty of material things rolling.

[MrRoboto19XX]

Wow, I know everyone's saying this, but this is really great stuff. It's stuff like this and people like yourself who really help propel the engine of our hobby, thanks for sharing!

[Guy Bramsworth]

I know nothing about M2, do any of those play games? From people's comments it sounds like all those systems are just either plain cd drives or hardware used for other stuff(fitness videos and crap, I have no idea how you'd ue a game system for that either!).

Have any games at all btw? Do you ever play anything on these? I also heard that the M2 ended up having its casing used for lots of other equipment out there, including a coffee maker and some thing in a dentists office or something. Are you after those?

I'm very naive about this system to forgive me if I sound like I don't have a clue what I'm talking about :)