Nintendo SNES PlayStation finally uncovered! [READ THE FIRST POST BEFORE POSTING!]

The only thing I think could be fun/exciting is someone were able to reverse engineer the whole thing, and then potentially reproduce it.

Why? Independent developers could go back and write software for it to take advantage of the CD. But this leads to a chicken-and-egg scenario:

- costs to replicate/rebuild the device would likely be incredibly high
- getting independents to develop software for it

It's certainly plausible - hell look at all the retro development happening for Atari consoles, or that Atari 7800XM device (pointing it out - I realize it still hasn't shipped). I think there was even an effort (not sure - too tired to look) to release for the Colecovision the whole "Super Drive" add on.

But I do agree, there isn't anything to emulate - unless that disc is the Forteza game (and I don't know how complete it was - I'm guessing not much, or just a tech demo - otherwise it would have likely been released on Sega CD).

 

Imagine getting a working power supply. You could use this thing as a regular SNES and feel awesome every time you play SNES. I know I would playing games on this thing.

 

Wow, cool!

 

Been following this from the start and i gotta say i am amazed that this console is around today. I have a thing about bios screens. When at home i would sometimes just power up my consoles just to view the bios screen and maybe play around with the settings. I would love to see what the bios screen looks like on this.

 

Funny you mention this Brian, because the SD2SNES cart with the MSU1 chip sort of provides the storage and advanced audio capabilities which the SNES CD could have.

 

I'm also curious about the bios. I'd like to see it dumped, there could be a lot to learn from it

 

Do we have any more news of what is going on with the unit?
Did he get his expert to take a look at it?
If so what does he intend to do next?

 

Regarding this particular unit, can someone confirm what the cartridge's edge connector looks like?
It's flipped toward the camera about 18 seconds into the video, but it's too dark to make out.
This would be a nonintrusive way to determine if there's other, much more interesting, goodies inside besides vanilla RAM/ROM chips.

By which I mean, does it only have the center 46 pins (as most SNES carts do), or does it have all 62 pins (like Super FX and SA-1 carts do)?

 

it has the extra pins on there

 

Now that's getting interesting. Those pins are only present when there's an extra chip and stuff like that...
I guess opening the cart should be taken into consideration, that's actually something good to know.

EDIT:
Who knows what's in there? The least I can expect is a ROM and lots of RAM for CD loading.
But that's not enough of a reason to include those pins. There must be something else to it.

EDIT2:
Here's a lower contrasted version of the same picture:

 

@LuigiBlood Hmmm...Indeed

 

Yeah, this definitely needs to be opened as soon as possible

 

Youtube gamer interviews Nintendo/Sony playstation owner


[youtube]fXO0Ir9wUps[/youtube]

 

It's been 20 years, it can wait a little. Acting too fast with that kind of item could be disastrous.

Nice video. Check the shoutbox archive for a bit more info on what he is planning to do with it in the near future.

 

Yeah, whiners can be quite annoying at times, especially if it's about this unique prototype! They should be told where to stick it!

 

I tried to cover this yesterday in my first post on Retro's SNES CD discussion thread.
There's alot more inside this cart; this is the real heart and soul of the machine here.
The CD-ROM itself is just a means to an end, but all the special goodies are in the cart.
The BIG question is which revision is it? The 16-bit one or the 32-bit one? Given the 1992 year, almost certainly 16-bit. Then again, the 32-bit system cart was announced in early 1993, but decided on in November 1992, and who knows how long they had samples going around before then.

Either way, you will have a 2 megabit ROM/EPROM for IPL/splash screen. (Who knows what else? Any helper functions, like polygon drawing routines? Any code ripped from Star Fox? This was never announced publicly, so only developers know for sure.)
Either way, there will be a flavor of HANDS, and also audio DAC/amplifier connected to the sound input pins. (They added more sound channels so you can stream stereo audio off the disc AND play more sound effects AND use the SNES sound hardware at the same time.)
The 16-bit version will have a 16-bit RISC chip (most likely Super FX/Mario chip), a small SRAM (to render to, just like StarFox), and 2 4 megabit DRAMs. Probably all memory chips are 8-bits wide, at least the interfaces talking to the FX chip are.
The 32-bit version will have a V810, a 1 megabit PSRAM (8-bit wide), 3 4 megabit DRAMs (all 16-bit wide).

Electrically, the pin assignment on this standalone Sony unit cart slot is same as SNES (after all, it plays SNES carts). However, it is an open question how much power this unit provides directly to the cartridge. Remember that this standalone Sony unit (an all-in-one unit like TurboDuo) survives on only 1 AC adapter. The a-la-carte Nintendo units had their own AC adapters (like Sega CD) because the SNES can't supply enough juice on its own. Does the Sony unit supply more power to the cartridge than a regular SNES can? It's an open question if this cart can run (at full-speed and heavy load) on a regular SNES because even the FX chip alone is close to its limits. (They say so themselves in the development manual. See section 1.5.7 in page 2-1-5.) But it shouldn't matter. More than likely the cartridge on a regular SNES will fail to find the CD-ROM and print some error on screen before running any serious code. (Still, a real geek would prudently measure the SNES 5V rail to make sure it doesn't sag when the Sony sytem cart is inserted.)

 

This prototype's cartridge most likely just has some circuitry for CD audio and some extra memory, as well as a boot rom.