a few more pages on the SNES CD-ROM

most of you have seen this one many times, it's been floating around on the web for years, so I won't bother displaying it again, however, I don't know if these other ones have been seen much. 3 seperate articles.











keep in mind, these are not all the same Nintendo CD-ROM unit. one is the 16-bit Sony Play Station CD-ROM for SNES, another is an early look at the 32-bit 'Nintendo Disk' which was a joint effort between Nintendo, Phillips and Sony.

therefore, there were at least 3 different Nintendo SNES CD-ROM systems


sorry for the poor quality. I don't have a scanner, but you CAN at least read it all.

 

Cool, I've seen the pics somewhere before..but still cool

Ryan

 

I wish there was still some sort of prototype out there with some games. Just a tiny taste of what could have been. :crying:

 

The specs are there, locate similar parts, build a similar system, then learn assembly/delphi/c/any other code and see what happens


Actually, with the 7th Guest for the system, its most likely around there somewhere


Ryan

 

There is a prototype, it was at CGE a few years back (2002?) it's just that no one noticed it, and now no one is sure where it is...

 

Ace...my father read that, his words were "Open Your Eyes, Next Time,....Idiot"


Ryan

 

I was messing with some of my old imported magazines. On EGM #89 (December 1996), they talked about the SNES CD/Disk Drive, comparing it with the N64DD.

Check it out:

 

i was thinking about something.... the internal coprocessor to be included in the snes cd add-on closely resembles the super fx chip.... same clock, said to have 3d capabilities.....

there's lots of cases in wich processors were re-used for different tasks....

 

There is a demo version of 7th Guest for the SNES CD.

Only it is not on CD. It's on a ROM cart.

Contains a small segment of the game, but it was used to demo what the CD system "could do" before the hardware itself was ready.

-hl718

 

NICE find, Johnny. I had forgotten about those. but as soon as I saw them again, I remembered. thanks!

 

indeed, indeed. it would be really interesting to find out if the 21 MHz co-processor for the 32-bit SNES CD-ROM is the same, similar or in any way related to the SuperFX chip or SuperFX2.

 

if only we could have some pictures of the proto depicted in my FAQ

tought it could have not the chip inside it would have been so interesting!

 

This article is from the official Nintendo Magazine Denmark issue 6 1993.

I have translated the text for you

"Finally Nintendo has unveiled all the technical specifications of the new CD ROM which is due to hit the Japanese and American market this fall. Super NES ND (Nintendo Disc) which it is going to be called in Japan, will have a 32 Bit Co processor which makes it superior to all other available systems. The games (discs) won’t look like common CD’s. The CD itself is going to be inside a cardridge which, apart from the CD, is going to contain 256 Kbit of RAM memory opperating like the memory in normal cardridge games. In addision a safety chip protects agains piracy.

All those who complained about the slow opperating processor of the SNES with its 3,58 MHz, can look forward to the SNES ND RISC-based processor which opperates with a speed of 21.477 MHz. In addision it contains a custom chip which actually is a further processor. This enables the CD to read RAM memory without rejecting other tasks. It has a clock frequency of 4,295 MHz. This system which Nintendo have created themselves is called HANDS (Hyper Adcanced Nintendo Data Transfer System)

The primary part of the “brain” will be located in a System Cardridge which means that it will be very easy to upgrade the console if there is any need for it.

What games are comming out for this system is still unclear. Virgin says that they plan to make a SNES ND version of the fantastic popular adventure game 7th Guest and Seta has mumbled something about the RPG Gdleen that will contain natural talk instead of text only. We hope to find out more about the other games comming for this system at the CES in Chicago early June... the same place SNES ND is going to be officially shown for the first time."

Technical specifications:

Ram memory: 8+4 Mbit
Sub memory: 1 Mbit
ROM memory: 2 Mbit
Co processor: 32-Bit RISC
Clock frequency: 21.477 MHz
Average accesstime: 0,7 seconds
Data Output speed: 150 Kbytes/second
Price tag USA: $299
In stores (USA): Fall 1993

 

ipl on a cart? sounds familiar to any 64DD game developer for the same reasons, too

the whole system cart concept however, including the fact that they wanted to upgrade it, looks like nintendo wanted to keep giving life to its SNES console over a longer period of time than one would expect, in a similar manner that one prolongs a patient's life using life supporting machines.

I m pretty sure that one of the (early- pre-snes retail- and final - the SONY one) designs of the CD-ROM add-on included a "bolted and perminant" co-processor/memory/ipl built-in the device, else they wouldn't design the SNES expansion port the way they finaly did, i.e being of a different type than the actual cartridge and then going around to use the primary cart. slot for most of the business of the Add-on. (Did sega use the cart. slot? No, they stuffed everything within the MegaCD and used the expansion port)

This is in contrast with what they have done on 64DD, that the two slots are extremely similar and share the same bus.

 

ehm,ehm, 32x....

actually both ways are viable on a snes, cartdrige slot and ext port too.

 

Such a damn shame no add-on ever did appear to put more life into the SNES, although special chips in cartridges certainly helped. Although I have to say looking back playing StarFox today, the framerate was pretty horrifying. Still a great game but damn... That's a game that would have benifitted from some sort of re-release using the SFX2. I could definitely see a SNES CD add-on using the Super FX 2 or better technology. Just look at some of the SFX2 titles and it's quite impressive.

 

some interesting facts:

SNES Disc Drive

Secret of Mana was originally going to be a launch title for the SNES CD add-on. After the project was dropped, the game had to be altered to fit onto a standard game cartridge. The game received a graphical downgrade and as much as 40% of the original content was removed.[2]



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_of_Mana#_note-SNES_CD



So Square had devkits or prototypes?

 

no, they aren't. unlike the mega drive, the snes cant boot from the expansion port, there must be a cartridge inserted to provide the reset and irq vectors at all time.

and keep in mind that the brains of the satellaview were in the bsx-cartridge,too, just like in all technical drawings of the snes cd-roms internals we've seen so far.
besides, the ext-port just carries the b-bus which cant adress more than 256 bytes and half of it is already occupied by internal registers of the snes.
therefore, you can hardly map rom or ram to it directly, just registers.

 

merely speculation from what i know...