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Hardware: Inside the FM Towns Marty

Inside the FM Towns Marty

We take one of our prized examples of the unfortunately forgotten console powerhouse, the FM Towns Marty, and open it up to see whats inside.

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Lets Play: Mario Artist Paint Studio

Mario Artist: Paint Studio

Released for the ill-fated magneto-optical drive addon for the Nintendo 64, Talent Studio was part of the Mario Artist range of titles which also included Talent Studio and Polygon Studio.

Paint Studio was released alongside the Nintendo 64 mouse which allowed more accuracy than the joystick.  Although mostly aimed at 2D painting it also allowed you to edit 3D scenes.

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Lets look at: Bandai Apple @Work Pippin: Apple’s gaming folly Part 2

Bandai Apple Pippin Part 2

Apple’s relationship with games has always been a little confused, but during the PowerMac era when they were trying to gain market share in any way possible gaming was seen as a possibility.

Enter the Apple Pippin architecture, a hardware reference based on the Quadra PowerMac line and featuring an entry level 603 processor.  Apple hoped to sell this to manufactures as a way of gaining access to the living room.

In the end only two manufacturers joined the program, Bandai who concentrated on Japan and North America and Katz Media who released the European version.

In the end the high cost and relative lack of performance to the rest of the Fifth Generation  consoles killed the project.  Japan and North America saw less than 100,000 sales combined and Europe only ever saw a very limited release before being cancelled.

Continue reading “Lets look at: Bandai Apple @Work Pippin: Apple’s gaming folly Part 2”

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Lets look at: Bandai Apple @Work Pippin: Apple’s gaming folly

Bandai Apple Pippin

Apple’s relationship with games has always been a little confused, but during the PowerMac era when they were trying to gain market share in any way possible gaming was seen as a possibility.

Enter the Apple Pippin architecture, a hardware reference based on the Quadra PowerMac line and featuring an entry level 603 processor.  Apple hoped to sell this to manufactures as a way of gaining access to the living room.

In the end only two manufacturers joined the program, Bandai who concentrated on Japan and North America and Katz Media who released the European version.

In the end the high cost and relative lack of performance to the rest of the Fifth Generation  consoles killed the project.  Japan and North America saw less than 100,000 sales combined and Europe only ever saw a very limited release before being cancelled.

Continue reading “Lets look at: Bandai Apple @Work Pippin: Apple’s gaming folly”

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Car Marty Floppy Drive Pinout

Car Marty Pinout

Here’s the Pinout for the Floppy port on the Fujitsu Car Marty.  This will allow you to connect an external Floppy Disk Drive (Japanese 3 mode, 3.5″)

Port as seen from the back of the machine.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

IMPORTANT: Some of the ports marked NC (No Connection) are actually attached to the +7V line, make sure these are unconnected.

1 +7V 14 Step
2 Index 15 GND
3 +7V 16 Write Data
4 Drive Select 17 GND
5 +7V 18 Write Gate
6 Disk Change 19 GND
7 NC 20 Track 00
8 Ready 21 GND
9 HD Out 22 Write Protect
10 Motor On 23 GND
11 NC 24 Read Data
12 Direction Select 25 GND
13 GND 26 Select Side One

This is still a WIP