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

The BIOS doesn't see the disc drive at all, and the Eject button doesn't work.

 

That sounds like the sub-CPU on that little PCB on the top of the unit is dead and / or not getting any power.

The photos are not that clear, but it looks like the eject switch harness connects to the socket on the right side of that PCB. A good start would be to look at the drive lines to the LCD on a scope - if the chip is initializing correctly, then it should be at least be generating the correct multiplexed signals for the panel, even if all the segments are off.

The other interesting thing is that if you look at the photos of the PCB next to the CD-ROM interface chip there is a 20 pin SOIC that looks like a bus buffer - and it also looks like the parts (resistors? 0-ohm links?) that connected it to the CD controller and the SNES side of the unit have been removed, because you can see the yellow solder mask between the pads.

This would certainly explain why the debug cart can't talk to the drive, although I would expect it to still work as a CD player if that was the only issue.

 

Just saw this, apparently they have successfully booted it up, the article has a pic of the "boot screen": http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nintendo-playstation-prototype-seen-action-225943865.html

Apologies, if this has already been posted, after a quick "browse", it didn't look like anyone had posted the pic yet.

 

That's a screenshot from the guy's vlog. There's a video of it.

Edit: here it is

 

I really hope these guys know what they are doing or get in touch with an expert before they just start "desoldering stuff".

Not only has this been posted everywhere but it's been posted in this same thread man.

 

Hey man, if you think that they just switched it on by themselves or that they "just start desoldering stuff" i strongly suggest that you
1 watch the very first video where he first shows it off and says that he doesn't have the slightest clue about electronics
2 use your observational abilities before talking. If you did it, you would see that, obviously (although it doesn't seem so obvious after seeing you and Dechief keep saying dumb things, no offence), they aren't doing anything even remotely technical themselves. Everything is being checked and triple checked by professionals.

 

Hey, americandad, while you make some good points, your delivery in your last few posts really leaves a lot to be desired. Surely you can make your case heard without being insulting or taking a condescending tone. In fact, I think you'll find that people will be a lot more receptive to what you have to say if you show a level head and keep things respectful.

Glad that they were able to turn it on. Very cool to see something rather historical like this operating! Here's hoping that they are able to repair the issue with the CD drive without too much difficulty.

 

I do hope that this leads to some nice advances in homebrew affairs.

It's a shame there's still so much debate over this unit (even though there shouldn't be when given footage pictures and hell even the bios proving it) but my hopes are really set on seeing what can be done with what we already have when we get deeper into the console.

Who knows, maybe some games have a small area of programming ready for usage of a CD addon somewhere in the data.
Only time will tell now. Though the CD drive not being detected saddens me a bit.

 

We have MSU1. It's enough really. If we ever emulate SNES CD, it's probably for prototypes of SNES CD games.
I'll definitely reverse-engineer the BIOS. Maybe I'll have a bit of fun just to see what happens when it loads something.

 

Now why would they cut the SOIC off from the CD controller?

 

Normally you only remove bus buffers like that if they are crashing part of the system - but I'm pretty sure that's not the only problem anyway. The basic CD control stuff should still work even with the host interface disconnected, and it appears that it's completely dead. I have had a look through a stack of old Sony service manuals, but I can't find anything that has the same lineup of chips as that unit seems to. The CD DSP is the same one used in the D-515 Discman (although the D-515 seems to have an electronic shock protection buffer that the SuperCD doesn't), and the D-2/D-20 discman uses the CXA1272 servo amp, so I guess they might be useful for reference. I also have a feeling that the CDU-33 CD-Drive uses that CXD-1800 interface chip, but I can't find a copy of the manual to verify it.

 

It would be a crime if the SNES bios cart ROM didn't get dumped and released on the internet at this point. Just look at that Konix guy and all the work he did for a console that was never released, we basically went from zero info to having an emulator and various dumps of games. Having the SuperDisc bios would be a nice first step.

 

He said he would dump it soon and release it.

 

Nevermind--.

 

Yay, SNES BIOS modding ! :'D

 

Im so excited...I had to do some pixeling ^^

 

I had the impression that the background of the bios screen was a light blue brushed metal texture thing - kinda like the saturn.

 

Looks pretty white to me. I can see how one could get that impression though, being a video captured off a screen it gets distorted a little bit.

 

The bg color is definitely white. This is just another case of lighting effecting the image, much like that dress everyone argued about.

 

I dread every part of that whole thing.

But yeah the lighting altered the picture when it was being displayed on, well, the display.