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

This guy's SNES CD, he has what was the first SNES CD proposal, the 16-Bit Nintendo-Sony Play Station. Basically a CD-ROM add-on drive for the Super Famicom. And the stand-alone combined unit, is what the OP has.

Then there would be the Philips CD-ROM drive for SFC / SNES. And probably have compatibility with CD-i.

The most interesting SNES CD-System was an effort between all three companies (Nintendo-Sony-Philips) for a 32-bit SNES CD add-on (and eventually a combined unite) that would have a System Cart that housed all the RAM, the "HANDS" CD-controller / video compression chip, and most importantly, a 32-bit Co-processor clocked at 21-MHz. Most likely this was the improved SuperFX2 which just so happened to be clocked at 21 Mhz. SuperFX2 was the extra processor in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, and several canceled games like StarFox 2, and Nova Logic's Comanche. This final proposal for an SNES CD system would have surpassed Sega's MEGA CD / Sega CD addon/upgrade in specification and capability. Perhaps more capable than FM-Towns Marty, Commodore CD32, and even if not upto 3DO's R.E.A.L Player in spec, would still have been far more successful than Jaguar / 3DO/ FM Towns / PCE CD / Commodor / SEGA / etc.

 

I cringed while watching this video. Why in the hell is she continually pushing him to try powering it on? You can tell he's annoyed the first time she asked. She needs to be slapped.

 

#1. No, this is all in the documents posted on the other thread. See the EGM Express article and then the EGM volume 44 article. Note the differences, despite BOTH system carts being clocked at 21 MHz.

#2. No flavor of SuperFX can ever be called "32-bit". It is not a 32-bit design, and its cache is only half the size. It also lacks floating point hardware. And the C compiler. The whole point of that 32-bit migration was improved flexibility and accessibility.

This was the era of simple video encoding (e.g. Cinepak). MPEG was still too expensive. But even then you needed to offload these simple video CODECs to something else to avoid bogging down the main CPU in gameplay. I do agree that either way, this system cartridge would surpass the Sega CD. And I wouldn't be surprised if this cart WAS the older SuperFX cart.

 

Hey, I just found out about this yesterday and registered a moment ago, it's pure speculation on my part, but looking at the shape of the cart in the picture back there, in the casing at least, I see some similarity to the n64 carts and it wouldn't be surprising to me at least if some aspects of this were reworked into n64 later on.

 

Obviously you are American since you don't know that everywhere in the world has SNES games that look identical to the one in this video. That's everywhere but the US that is.

 

Sorry about that, I am American and quite ill informed sometimes as well, but still this does fall somewhere between n64 and snes in the push for more power and ended up creating the PlayStation brand, it would be great to get some insight into how this project informed the design of future consoles. edit:very very sorry for being an idiot, and for multi posting, I actually can't see new posts sometimes and I assumed that my phone dropped the signal before posting.

 

Not sure why everyone keeps saying this. Yes it is a possibility, but pretty much every old console I've ever encountered has worked flawlessly. That old console tech is very reliable and obviously this system was designed the same way and has a similar resilience.

Obviously I still think he should absolutely check the PCB before powering it up, however I think that there's a decent chance that it might boot fine without any fixes or that it will require only very minor fixes to restore the unit. I think the least likely option is that the unit is unfixable or requires a high level of maintenance.

-doulomb

 

The key word here is pretty much, which mean NOT ALL, and that implies there's a chance it fries. You don't wanna take chances with that kind of item.

Anyways, at least a visual inspection of the caps is always a good idea before powering on 20 years old hardware, depending on its storage condition and its components/manufacturing quality the condition might be very variable. Now if it's a very common console it's not the end of the world to fry it, you can buy another. In this case ...

 

yeah personally i guess it would probably be fine, but with it being a 1 off i certainly wouldn't feel like risking it just because it would *probably* be fine, same way as i wouldn't just run across the road without checking because there *probably* isn't a car coming, nobody is saying it should never ever be powered on...well probably some will think that, but i guess most are probably in favor of it being powered on at least once just to see it in action, but obviously with this being such a rare item every effort should be made to make sure that any risks are minimal, and as this is a prototype we really don't have any idea of the internal build quality, these would of been fairly crude prototype hardware and could very well of been poorly made as it was never meant for distribution but was just for internal use

PS, pretty much every game gear i have come across as had issues, so just because its old hardware doesn't mean that its infallible, and as times goes on more and more systems are hitting that hardware reliability wall, a lot of zx spectrum's are dead too, it all depends on build quality and quality of parts used, as this was almost certainly built by sony on pretty much their first venture into games consoles we cant be sure how exactly they planned to go about things

 

You're being a bit too simplistic. We don't know anything about apart from articles and most recently pics / video. May, might, should... It's all assumptions.

In my opinion, the most important thing to do before trying to power it on is to get more information about it and how it was being developed. This is a product that had it's development abruptly stopped in a controversy that changed the gaming industry.

And like i said before, we don't know if the system is complete internally. Some of you are forgetting that this item was sent to be destroyed. The guy's father was the one that saved it. We don't know if Sony or Nintendo removed parts / roms with important content before dumping it.

Also, let's not go back to the same discussions over again. This topic had to be cleaned way too much times.

 

@Johnny You're right. The circuit boards might not have too many chips on them, and considering that the console is a prototype, it may not be so complete like you said

 

I wish more photos and video could be uploaded soon, of angles we haven't seen, without opening the console, like details on the cartridge port, and a clear zoom of the cart connector, for example...

 

Yup, please don't dwell on the opening - we've left the arguments for it up early on in the thread (e.g. don't turn something on if you don't know it doesn't work, don't have the correct PSU and can't replace it... unless you've taken proper precautions) and the owner has said he doesn't want to do that. His decision.

As for the cartridge pins - interesting comment, but surely a lot of blank boards for prototyping would have had all pins present, just in case? Whilst it would be great if it means something, I'm not sure it necessarily does - other than that it's a prototype cartridge.

There are plenty of photos, plus the video - they really cover any angle that will tell you anything. Top, front, back, bottom, a peek in the cartridge slot.... again, let's not clutter the thread with hopes - just be patient and see what comes next.

 

Don't worry about it we all need to start our knowledge somewhere.

 

In case what? There's no debug ports there. However, yes, of course you can have those extra 16 pins and not connect them anywhere.
In fact, StarFox really only uses one pin (pin 1, the clock pin). Super Mario RPG uses 2 pins (pin 1 and pin 33). The remaining pins just end after the connector, with no wires going anywhere beyond that.

So here, too, if one is too scared to open a cartridge, the next step is an awkward and eye straining, but still nonintrusive way to see which pins are connected. Depending on how far the pins extend on the PCB, sometimes there's JUST enough clearance between the plastic housing and the circuit board to see which wires are populated all the way. At best you've got a 50/50 chance here. Grab a flashlight and magnifying glass. The viewing angle here is difficult indeed. (And don't touch the pins with your fingers or anything that could hold a static charge because you don't want to accidentally ESD zap 'em.) Here's an example of what I mean.

First a good cart. U.S. Super Mario RPG PCB.

Next a difficult cart to check. Australian StarFox glop-top PCB. Here the gap is just so tiny it's hard to see what's connected and what isn't.

Why would anyone do this? The answer is in your own document page. The 16-bit unit (the EGM Express article) only connects to bus A. But the 32-bit unit (as depicted in the EGM volume 44 article) also has that conspicuous arrow connecting to bus B. If you can prove that the 8 pins of bus B ( 3, 28, 29, 30, 33, 59, 60 and 61 ) are all hooked up, then for sure you have a 32-bit system cart.

Most or all of the remaining pins should be wired up regardless. For sure pins 31 and 62 because those are the stereo sound inputs. Pin 1 for the 21 MHz clock, pin 2 to detect the presence of a device. And so on.

 

I was expecting him hugging the console and saying "my precious".

 

Precisely that. It's cheaper to have a whole bunch of prototyping boards around that CAN use those pins, rather than find you're out of those and need to have a whole bunch etched just because you're testing one game. Admittedly, there were all sorts of PCBs used, but the board having the pins doesn't necessarily mean there's anything connected to them. It could, of course, be a completely custom board. It's past the using a huge board uncased stage, certainly. Still, that's just speculation, as he doesn't want to open it - and we have to respect that.

 

have to say he is handling the situation well, as much as everyone just wants to go crazy and test it RIGHT NOW! and pestering him to sell it (which could cause a lot of people to just do a disappearing act) its good that he isnt rushing into anything

anyways i guess this probably falls into the "not allowed" discussion due to speculation XD.....but just from the sounds of it he plans to do something more *public* with it rather than just being a private sale (not that he couldn't if he wanted to it is his after all), i guess if he is planning to "keep us informed" it would be something we would actually be interested in hearing rather than "oh yeah btw, i sold it to mr.x for....one billion dollars mwahah", as for the people whinging that a "gamer" didn't get it, just be bloody grateful a garbage crusher didn't get it instead, this guy and his dad deserve to have it, as his dad is they guy responsible for saving it from the bin truck, granted i don't think there is any/many people here with those kinds of childish opinions but still i think its important that he knows that the people emailing him crap don't speak for the majority, he has nothing to prove to any of us, its still his even if he hated games and had never ever played any games ever in his whole life

 

Haha, this guy seems like a cool dude and knows what he's doing. I'd say it's in good hands