My M2 just came in today.

[madhatter256]

Well not THE M2 console but the off-shoot hardware when Panasonic got out of the videogame console biz. Its officially called the Panasonic Interactive Media Player Model No. FZ-35S (original M2 was FZ-21S). I opened it up and compared it to the M2 hardware kit from NFGman's website:

http://nfg.2y.net/games/polystars/

When I compare mine with the one he has. It has the CDE2 chip (the 3DO chip), a few other chips. Now the Power PC chips could be on the otherside of the board because I see traces running into a PGA. I can't completely lift the board out because of the ports in the back also keep the board in place.

I booted up the console but all I get is a "Please Insert Disk" message.

Now time to hunt for software.

[ASSEMbler]

good hunting

[cahaz]

lucky one... :prayer:

[madhatter256]

lucky one... :prayer:

You can be lucky too.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8111249394&ed=1089513016000&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOT:US:3

Just click on the seller and look at his bids. I dont think he ships internationally.

Sorry I didn't post the link earlier. The seller has 18 of them left.

[ASSEMbler]

Offer him $30 by e-mail. Mind you theses can only run one thing:

A chevy corvette demo dvd. I have this disc. It *may* someday show up in #assemblerirc

[bigkahuna]

I picked up one of these things as well; the guy lowered his price to $25. I guess a $25 paperweight ? Can it play any media?
Glad to have found this forum....

BigK

[madhatter256]

Media for it is rarer than the hardware. I'd say for the price, keep it because you might someday find some softare for it on ebay.

[Zilog Jones]

Those things are nearly PCs! IDE hard drives, what looks like a standard IDE optical drive, an ISA bus (well it has serial, parallel and PS/2 sockets, so I assume it has one), VGA outputs... only problem is the CPUs...

[ASSEMbler]

Throw ppc linux on it

[madhatter256]

But formating the HDD and configuring the BIOS to read a non M2X DVD/CD media is hard without the proper software.

[Zilog Jones]

Would a PowerPC build of Linux actually work on it? It'll be better than nothing if it does...

[madhatter256]

Would a PowerPC build of Linux actually work on it? It'll be better than nothing if it does...

I uses the 3D0 chip for video display, i doubt anyone out there wrote a driver of it for use in Linux.

[LeGIt]

Plenty of code junkies here though no reason why it couldn'nt be done. Infact it would need a reason to be done if anything LOL

[Greatsaintlouis]

Yeah, I think hardware-wise, the thing is closest to a pre-G3 PowerMac, albeit with dual processors. Hell, with the dual processors, it would be closest to a BeBox.

Just wondering - has anyone out there who has a 35S kiosk taken their hard drive out and hooked it to a Mac or something and seen what exactly is on there? I don't have a working machine to hook it to...

[bigkahuna]

Just wondering - has anyone out there who has a 35S kiosk taken their hard drive out and hooked it to a Mac or something and seen what exactly is on there? I don't have a working machine to hook it to...

Since I have 2 of these coming, I will take one apart. The problem is that I'm not a Mac guy :smt009 (please, easy on the flaming)

[Chip]

I don't think it would matter if the drive is hooked up to a Mac or not just because the processor is an older PPC. Of course it depends on what file system the thing uses. Maybe hook it up to a PC and use a drive utility when booted from cd to examine it (with something like: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/).

[WanganRunner]

Has anyone ever seen this "M2 Model 2" in private circulation?

http://members.tripod.com/~faberp/M2.htm

This is the first I'd heard/seen of it. I'm not even certain this is an actual photo, could be some kind of rendering or something. I figure that if no one on here knows, then it probably doesn't exist.

[MD]

Probably a really stupid and dumb question but does the Konami M2 arcade games do anything on the FZ-35 or FZ-21? Not read anywhere of anyone saying 'It don't work'.

[LeGIt]

hmm no :P The m2 hardware is sort of built in the box with the game :smt023 Lawrence had 1 for sale a while back ...

[vanadium]

Has anyone ever seen this "M2 Model 2" in private circulation?

http://members.tripod.com/~faberp/M2.htm

One colored pure white exists that I know of. I knew a person who possessed it and sold it for a pretty penny. I think more probably exist than that, though. I'm not even sure what his was capable of, but I can't imagine much.

[Greatsaintlouis]

I dunno if the M2 arcade games (Polystars and the other ones nobody remembers) actually do anything in a kiosk... from the hardware specs, I thought the Polystars board had twice the RAM as the 35S, but this doesn't mean anything - the Chihiro arcade hardware has something like twice or quadruple the RAM of an XBox, and I've seen stories of Crazy Taxi 3 running with little or no modification... I'd love to get my hands on a Polystars disc or image and try, though.

[SuperFunkNinjaYoshiiKun]

the Chihiro arcade hardware has something like twice or quadruple the RAM of an XBox, and I've seen stories of Crazy Taxi 3 running with little or no modification... I'd love to get my hands on a Polystars disc or image and try, though.

Yeah, but Chihiro games can use anything from 64 - 512MB RAM. The Chihiro board has an upgradeable RAM module. Crazy Taxi runs on Xbox as it's one of the few Chihiro games that only use 64MB.

[bigkahuna]

Guys, will a regular 3DO controller connect to the port on the back of the Fz-35 system?

[Greatsaintlouis]

I'd try it but I have no 3DO controllers... I've wondered that myself. But then, you still need software to run it with.

[bigkahuna]

But then, you still need software to run it with.


True ..

I got the systems yesterday...will take a closer look at them this weekend...

[Sandman]

Offer him $30 by e-mail. Mind you theses can only run one thing:

A chevy corvette demo dvd. I have this disc. It *may* someday show up in #assemblerirc
Have you uploaded the Chevy Corvette Demo Dvd by any chance? If not, when you think you'll ever do it? (That's if, you ever do it of course . . . ) I've been trying to get my hands on some M2 Software for a while . . .

Sandman