Nintendo's Playstation Prototype found?

[CZroe]

I've seen non-prototype devices with incorrect polarity markings that cause damage when reversed. I think it was intentional on this particular product, but it's even more likely to be intentional when you are trying to protect a prototype from being stolen along with other secrets.

It's certainly worth taking to an expert first.

 

[lamedude]

I want to see the specs reverse-engineered so we can figure just how this would have influenced the console wars. Was it basically an SNES with some SRAM like they put in cartridges? How much memory was available per-level? Did it have a DSP or some other coprocessor?

The specs were leaked last year tl;dr SuperFX2 that can play CDs.

 

[CZroe]

The specs were leaked last year tl;dr SuperFX2 that can play CDs.

Thanks. This is actually the Philips / Sony specs (much later unit), but it was interesting. The short version doesn't tell me if Shang Tsung's transformations are going to freeze because there isn't enough memory to preload all characters into RAM, but the long version answers that.

 

[lamedude]

It lives!

 

[ImpulsE69]

Yea I saw the articles yesterday, but was too lazy to post it. Cool that it is real and works.

 

[CZroe]

It lives!

I read that last night and saw them stupidly using the "200 prototypes" speculation again. It's so stupid that they keep using this number that someone guessed at just because they can source it to someone's uninformed guess... even if that guess is so bad. It's actually ludicrous and anyone could make a better guess than that.

I expected we'd see rework all over the PCB and that's exactly what we see here. This is a real prototype on every sense. I wonder how hard it is to reverse the disc drive's interface and simulate it for a possible repair... assuming that they are right about the drive being broken. It could be Engrish referring to there being no disc inserted and not actually saying that it doesn't see the drive.

I still wish they'd stop referring to the disc format as the platform name ("Super CD").

 

[Kenmitch]

It lives!

Interesting....Guessing to the right person it's worth a sizeable chunk of cash.

 

[ViRGE]

It lives!

Mercy, I do believe I'm getting the vapors.

X-rays, disassembly, that article has the works. I'm shocked (but happy) they were willing to open it up like that. Bummer it doesn't fully work, though it was admittedly a prototype.

I do find the discussion of "will it play Playstation games?" to be annoying though. This is from 1991(ish); it's a SNES with a CD-ROM drive. The processors for the Playstation had not been designed yet.