Deunan, the designer of the official GDEMU (Dreamcast), the Phoebe and Rhea (Saturn) and the Doc Brown (FM Towns Marty) ODEs has just teased a work-in-progress picture of an ODE for the FM Towns tower PCs tentatively called the “Grey Tower Wizard”.
The new device is designed to be installed internally without requiring removal of the original CD-ROM drive, however it cannot be used at the same time as the CD-ROM drive. Users can switch between the original CD-ROM and the ODE with a jumper (that will probably be a toggle switch on the final version) on the device (and a power cycle). The ODE board also features a replacement CMOS battery which may be a more convenient alternative than replacing the built-in battery.
The lack of availability of a compatible CD-ROM connector means that there will be some soldering involved.
The option to use an SD2SCSI interface with an FM Towns PC has existed for years but a good portion of the games cannot be run from a HDD so this has only offered a marginal solution. This ODE could be combined with an SD2SCSI for the ultimate experience with an FM Towns PC. Couple this with the fact that the FM Towns is now on the radar of the Redump project and the near future is shaping up to be a bright one for FM Towns fans.
So far the prototype has only been tested on the 3rd generation towers, and while it is likely to work on any of them, Deunan has put out a call asking for images of the internals of the other series to confirm.
No mention of a release time-frame or price as of yet.
You can find a link to the teaser/preview post here: https://gdemu.wordpress.com/2020/03/31/a-kind-of-magic/
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