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

The whole thing seems more publicity related than skill related.

 

I got that impression too, when I saw the text at the bottom of the screen near the beginning of the video with contact information for trade shows / events interested in featuring the Nintendo Playstation. Sounds like they're trying to maximize the amount of money and free travel that they can get out of owning the device at this point, since they're essentially telling the same story about that we've heard already.

I find the Ben Heck show to be entertaining to watch though.

Edit: I should mention that I completely agree with the 2 posts below this. Despite the benefits that they're getting out of this, I'm grateful that they're willing to let everyone learn as much about it as possible. I suspect if this were in the hands of certain collectors that we wouldn't have the BIOS dump or even have the system emulated at this point.

 

Oh, I have no problems with the Diebolds trying to maximize the money from the system, as I'd probably be doing the same.

Best of luck to them tbh.

It's only when it gets to Ben Heck levels of shameless self-promotion and corporate adverts that it starts to get a bit tiresome.

Anyway, it's sounding like he probably got the system working again, so that's the main thing.

I hope the CD drive works too, as it will still be cool to see some homebrew running on it. I've heard that at least two homebrew games have been developed / released for it already (using BSNES or similar?)

Also, maybe Dan will make that illusive CD re-appear as well if it works?

 

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not criticising them wanting to milk their 15 minutes. I'd imagine most would (myself included), just saying it how I see it.

 

Yep, and I concur / agree.

 

Of course it is, but that's the whole point. Yes the assistance provided here shouldn't be discounted, but it's Ben's show. I'm sure Ben paid to get father and son up to Wisconsin for the taping. They are NOT game collectors like many of us, so if you're given the option of shipping your device to wherever, sight unseen, or being invited to a popular gaming/tech web show, what would you accept? As for Mr. Heck, he might not be a "prototype" expert, but the man knows what he's doing. He's also embellishing for the viewers of course, but I feel the result is far better for the community at large, it will bring good buzz.

 

I was wondering about the CD also, but I don't remember seeing a photo, and I thought it was explained as a misunderstanding because there were PS1 games in the box with the system. Hopefully I imagined it and there IS a CD, as the presence of one makes this story significantly more exciting...

 

The cringe moment on the video, at least for me, was when he said that it worked before and then it stopped working.

Well they decided to turn the damn thing on (with a generic AC adapter i might add), when everybody with a little bit of common sense said exactly not to do that. They chose the risk, instead of just going the safe way of opening it first to check the board for issues, leaked caps and voltages...

 

Time for mods to clean up the thread again. Can't we talk about SNES CD, not if a modder is worthy of having a show?

 

You mean like the mod directly above your post?

 

Some people are just more lucky than others, or in the right places at the right times. Remember, no matter what you are always luckier than someone else. Hell, I'd love to have even a fraction of the cool shit a lot of people have on here. Yes, there are people who may have been a better option to tackle the NPS, but it's not really a reason to shit all over the person who did. He's obviously competent enough to not fuck it up.

 

*finger guns* This guy.

I think we're passed cleaning up this thread personally. It's not exactly the hotbed of activity it was a year ago. It also hasn't gotten out of hand the way it did a year ago either.

 

Not yet, thankfully.

 

This SNES-CD thing turned out to be better than our expectations to be honest. Who knew they would actually dump the system cart for us?
The thing that amazes me the most, though, is the SNES-CD emulation. It flew under my radar, I mean Nocash just went and did it, no bragging on forums or anything like that. That's quite rare nowadays.

 

The other day, I was reminiscing about the SNES with my Canadian cousin, and got to talking about weird consoles, and this obscure piece came up. I decided to look it up and found this amazing discovery! I’ve been drawing the machine in my sketch book non stop, it looks so much better than these new retro consoles.

I have a feeling this isn’t a “Nintendo Playstation” but actually the earliest Playstation, PERIOD. This is the model that made Nintendo poop itself. If that hit the market, even as is, it would have sank sales of the SNES, including the final redesign. It plays CD music, Sony gets majority royalties on the CDs produced, and no telling what 16-32 bit classics would have seen CD a bit sooner. We can only guess how advanced Sony was in their development of their technology at this time.


I’ve been soaking up everything on this site, and some of the members here are geniuses. I’ve got a few questions though


1. How does the Super Disc run games? Would it be powerful enough to run a powerful port of an arcade game, or something as recent as Shovel Knight? I guess this would all depend if Dan can get the CD drive running again, but do we really need it to run to get an idea of its power? This could open up a whole new level of homebrew development.

2. Is a clone console that runs carts and CDs possible? It seems like work, but what about a Sony Blu-ray player with the ability to play snes games. Looking at the other Playstation prototypes. this thing looks like a simple proof of concept prototype, something to show Nintendo that they can manufacture a product up to their standards. We all might be getting giddy over a glorified Walkman.

3. Is a mash up console of PS1 and SNES/N64 possible? The console wars were at that point in time was like the best soap opera...A fight between two former lovers... Merging them would be a love letter to 90s gaming. I'm curious as to how much that would retail or how much a prototype would cost to make, down to throw cash at that.

I'm asking these questions because I find this all very interesting, emulation and console modding has come along way up until this point. Pretty soon people will be hiring each other or helping each other to make their own games for classic consoles.

 

From what Ben Heck's investigation indicates, the SNES-CD is little more than a CD-player slapped underneath a SNES. It's more like the PC-Engine CD-ROM in that way, rather than the Sega-CD that had extra hardware to make the Mega Drive more powerful. So it would pretty much play SNES-level games that we already have, albeit with FMV and CD-quality sound.

Theoretically possible, although I would imagine lawsuits up the wazzoo for whoever built it, if they tried to sell it!

I am 99% sure it would not work. All three systems have mutually incompatible architecture - 8/16, 32 and 64 bit, different instructions sets and GPUs. Unless you consider a monster-hack with all three system boards present and switchable to be a mash-up!

Oh it's totally fascinating. I'm sorry if my responses burst your bubble!

 

I think this wasn't mentioned here before:
A couple of friends and yours truly have taken the liberty to develop and release a new homebrew game for the system:

(download link in the description)
Super Disc version runs on no$sns 1.6.
The Diebolds are in the know.
In essence, it's a silly joke taken too far,
but with a bit of luck, we might be seeing this run on the real thing sooner or later.

 

I was prepared for the worst answers, no way my dreams would match the reality, the console never even saw the light of day.

However, I still think there is someone out there who can feasibly recreate this shell. I've been looking at all those old clone consoles from the 80s and 90s, even the more recent ones. I don't think a modder would be able to sell said console outright, more like the service of assembling the model from interested parties who would provide the needed hardware. It just looks too damn cool to forget about. My imagination has been sparked.

1.Can the Super Disc play games from a CD? If this is so, can a drive be created? I'm not asking someone to personally make me a drive, I'm asking Can that drive run and Everdrive-esque file with CD quality sound and video updates to our favorite titles, and if so, is it too complicated to recreate?

2. Can this possibly lead to a deeper understanding of SNES programming?


Somebody out there please, make a clone of that case like it's 1994 Brazil. I can't stop seeing a PlayStation that plays N64 carts. Its sounds tough to do, but I have faith

 

@Vulcan Apollo

I've been working on an open-source SNES FPGA core for a while.

So far, I only have the CPU core running, but it's hooked up to a real SNES motherboard (with it's original CPU removed), and is starting to run some games.

There is also an almost-finished PPU core online that "laxer" (which I can't seem to find the link to atm).

I'll be transferring the code to my newer FPGA board soon, as it has far more on-chip RAM that I can use for the VRAM (600KB vs only 29KB on the older board).

There are still a lot of glitches with the graphics, and it will often crash atm because the CPU core timing doesn't give the SNES PPU chance to grab the data properly before it moves on to the next instruction. That will be solved soon as well, hopefully.

What I'm getting at is yes - it would be feasible to at least make a SNES FPGA core with the CD "emulation" tacked on.

Or, make an FPGA version of the Superdisc CD controller chipset / registers, then attach that to a standard SNES.

Trying to get an N64 core working as well is kind of a long way off (well, I've done some work on that too, over many years, and it may take a few more years before we see any games running).

As others on here have said, you could always just stick an N64 motherboard into a new shell, then add a SNES motherboard, then add the FPGA implementation of the Superdisc CD controller. It would be a shit-ton of work though, so you have to wonder if such a hybrid would really be desirable for the majority of people?

Shane (Rerez) recently made a vid asking for a "new" retro console system which would run many of the CD-console games from original disks. That can be done with a simple Raspberry Pi 3 and a USB CD drive tbh., and I'm fairly sure there are already projects out there that can do that.

Or, you could simply run Superdisc games under the "no$sns" emulator on a little Intel Atom dongle or something?
(not sure if no$sns can be compiled to run on the Rasp Pi or an ARM box, but maybe?)

"nocash" already added Superdisc emulation support to no$sns back in March.
I haven't tried it with the few homebrew titles yet, but I will very soon...

http://problemkaputt.de/sns.htm

EDIT: Also, yep - it would in theory be possible to add Superdisc CD emulation support to something like the Everdrive and / or 64drive.

I think some of the guys on IRC (like Marshall) might already be looking into that, since I believe they did the same for the 64DD emulation on the 64drive.

OzOnE.

 

Hmmm. Interesting. Don't know what to think of it.