Sneak peek of the rare system I am restoring...

Any guesses?

Jollyroger

 

N-Gage?

 

Really? No guessing?
I wager most people here have never seen one of these in person, or at all...

 

GS Cube?

 

Good call!
It is in fact not the GSCube, but a prototype system that Sony used to develop what went into the GSCube.
Its name is GSBox.
More to come...

 

I'm good! Hah. Curious to see it all going.

 

Is it that prototype PS2 system from Yahoo Japan?...

 

It is. It is a really fascinating machine...

 

is it a Apple Pippin?

 

Got a link to that listing by chance?

 

This is very cool, can't wait to see what you manage to do with it

 

Wow I thought we would never see any of the early ps2 protypes in the wild. This is really cool.

 

I will write a full report on my findings and the process of restoration I took to make it operate properly, stay tuned.

 

I second that request, it would be nice to see the pics from the auction.
jollyroger, is this is?

 

No, it is a later system, a direct prototype predecessor to the GSCube.

 

That sounds like an amazing find, can't wait to read your piece about it!

 

Does "GSM n" stand for Graphics Synthesizer Module/Memory n, meaning that this has four GS chips (each of which with a separate EE, IOP, PCI bridge)?
I wonder how the images from the GS chips are combined, whether they linked in a chain through their digital video inputs and outputs or that is done by a separate IC.
How close (or different) is the hardware to that of a normal PS2? It would be interesting to know if the GS control registers are any similar to a "normal" GS.
It sounds amazing that it was at all possible to make such a rare device operate properly, knowing how much the lack of documentation about some areas of the PS2 hinders the development of high-performance or even correctly functioning drivers.

EDIT: Based on the post by SP193 below:
Maybe there is a limitation in how multiple GS chips can be linked to form a common image. This may be why the known variants of this hardware (assuming this GSBox is 2x2 GS) are:
GSBox 2x2
GSCube (16) 4x4
GSCube (64) 8x8
So it may be that only powers of two can be the number of images that make-up the sides of the image, which would explain why they needed to jump from 16 GS chips all the way to 64GS chips.

 

Does this demo screen mean that it has multiple GS devices, with each one rendering a different corner of the screen?

We've long wondered why/how the PlayStation 2 GS has high-resolution modes like 1080I, but is apparently poorly-equipped to support such resolutions. So far, Maximus32 has gotten full-resolution 1080I support... through rendering the screen across multiple passes.
I think it was always assumed that the GSCube has much more memory than a the common GS, but maybe not...

Thanks for sharing.

 

Thanks for outbidding me on that.

 

The ones in the GScube had 32MB per chip as opposed to 4MB in the standard GS used in the PS2.

It's hard to know what's in this test system - depending on when it was built it could either have the standard retail GS with 4MB or the one with the expanded memory - it would depend on where they were in the development process and if they had the revised silicon yet.