Yesterware

The FM Towns PC was one of the very first 32-bit gaming platforms.  Its visual design is a striking portrait of everything that was cool about Japanese technology of the late 80's and early 90's. Ever since getting a first glance of the futuristic gray PC in Electronic Gaming Monthly #4, I have wanted one. I must have read this page out of the magazine fifty times: The article that inspired my obsession with the FM Towns when I was a kid. About 11 years ago someone offered a broken one for sale on Ebay.  IIRC, it was just the PC itself, without a keyboard or monitor.  When I reached out to him to ask about the potential of repairing it, the seller did not want to let me buy the broken one.  He was an Australian living or visiting Japan, and he was evidently trying to make a little money on the side by selling what were common items in Japan but rarities in the rest of the world.  He told me he'd get back with me when he had sourced a complete and f...

What is a 3DO FZ-10 USB Host Controller? [UPDATED] [UPDATED July 2020 - added some images of the installed ribbon in response to requests, updated the link to MNEMO's new website and made a couple of minor cosmetic corrections.] If you know what an "Everdrive" is, that's basically what this works out to being for the 3DO.  This type of device is most commonly referred to as an Optical Drive Emulator (ODE).  It installs into a 3DO game console in place of its CD drive which allows you to load games from a USB device.  The main advantages to this are that there are no moving parts to wear out, and more importantly you can have the entire library of 3DO games loaded onto the console at once. Overview Back in June of 2018, I wrote about a 3DO FZ-10 that I "rescued".  It had a broken latch, and literal dirt and dead bugs in its innards.  The CD drive spindle was seized, and the power and access lenses were missing. My main motivation in purchasing an "as-is...