Hey Kyuusaku would you mind posting a pic of the Gamestation....I'd like to see it as I can't recall anything about it.. thanks
if i had that i'd take at least one pic of it piggybacked on a superfamicom, were there any confermed games for cd format? i cant remember that far back. the red stuff was probably from a nintendo exec and thats how the playstation was born, meaning he was shot, not some sorda weird videogame sex joke
Final Fantasy 6 was supposed to be for CD. Makes me wonder if FF7 was intended for SFCD usage, despite the sprites, the entire game should be portable!
Guys, listen. I don't want any flaming in this thread, OK? FH knows more about the SNES than anyone on this board, trust me, I know ! I never once saw him mention that this unit is a Proto back up device only that it possibly could be. Keep an open mind here. The unit pictured has some really stupid print on it such as "not for sale" which makes the whole thing look dodgy to say the least. Until we see the insides of this interesting item it could be anything, a Back up device proto (not having FFE, Bung or what ever not written on it means nothing what so ever), it could be a real SNES CD proto or even just some sad sod's idea of a joke. We just don't know from the outside shots. So play nice and respect others ideas. Yakumo
I understand that but it could be another type of back up unit. I once owned a very odd back up unit for the SFC and it wasn't a Doctor, UFO, Pro Fighter or Wild Card. It was a 24 Meg unit with window style menus in full colour and built in floppy. I have never ever seen this back up unit again. The one I had was the only one I've ever seen. FH may remember this one as the TOWER OF DOOM because we had to stick it on to a converter to get the bloody thing to run even though it was a NTSC machine running on a SFC. So what I'm saying is that there are copiers out there that maybe we don't even know exist and this mystery item could well be one or then again maybe not. Why don't we set up a partition to have the guy open up the machine and show us what's inside? What do you guys think? Yakumo
I think the label can be explained away. One theory could be that it was on display at a game expo and the person was also selling stuff. What I find interesting is the controller. It appears to be for a version of the Playstation that came after Nintendo and Sony parted ways. It has eight buttons yet the pic I showed of the apparent final design shows they used standard Super Famicom controllers. Why would Sony design a different controller unless they had parted from Nintendo anyways? They also don't show the connectors for the controller.
There are about two dozen Taiwanese units which are hardly known to the outside world. Few of these are originals so maybe you got a Alma/Pili unit. Also another half dozen which are modified (and heavily upgraded) clone systems and another half dozen where only like 10 are known to exist.
that's a really cool find, very interesting! bt the thing is, i'm a bit septical about it. to begin, we need to know why this thing is linked to the snes's psx proto and for what. so, two things that link it is the japanese snes cartrige port and the prototype playstation controller. 1- Look at what they say: so, the controller have nothing to do in those picture , if its not for the system nor for the super ninty. ) 2- The concept was a front loader system that underneath the snes , not in the cartrige slot. 3- , why not? it could simply be a thing made without any permission from ninty(we all know asians are good to do things like those (ie, the box fit in a japanese s. ninty) (but the thing look a bit too huge to be simply a thing to do the snes play music disc, it could have something else in it). i mean, if the box have nothing to do with the psx prototype controller , then what else link them to sony? nothing. so why do we name it a snes's psx proto? is there any label marked Sony or something? -did the guy who have it tried to plug it in a snes? -did he tried to insert a music cd in it? -why he don't whant to open it anyway? there's too many strange things/misteries/uncertain info and not enough certain and precise info to clearly say its a snes's proto to me.
Well, it is all speculation here, isn't it? Whilst the unit would most likely have been released as a device that fits under the SNES (as per the artists impressions we have all seen), it is perfectly feasible that the prototype went on top. Have you ever looked internally at what a console's bottom slot is? Quite often, it is just hard wired straight to the cart port, i.e. it is THE SAME THING! It just attaches to the CPU's data busses. In theory, a pirate unit could have fitted under the SNES. They didn't though. Why is this? Probably because it was cheaper and easier to deal with the top slot than a custom connector on the bottom, or maybe because they wanted it to work on a SNES from any country. Also, in theory, any of those backup units could have been CD based instead of floppy disk (some had the addon). Think about it... the SNES reads data from the cart, from ROMs. The backup unit stores those ROMs in a different way, and is an adapter which translates them back into the method with which the SNES interfaces... it fools it into thinking it is reading a cart. This is basically what the SNES CD would have done, and what the Mega CD does, and the PC Engine, and the Jaguar CD...... OK, so they have extra hardware for particular things, but in the end they have to interface with the console. So..... YES this could be genuine and until we get to see exactly how this unit runs (which we won't), YES it could be just a backup device Had CD-R technology been more readily available in the days of the SNES (it was too darned expensive, not many people had access to a writer), then I believe we would have seen a CD backup unit that fitted under the console, very much like the V64 and C64. Oh yeah, there's an example of how either port can be used.... V64 and Z64. One sits on top, one underneath, both in essence do the same thing. I'm not saying I'm offering the ONLY solutions, I'm saying we have to be open to possibilities and not dismiss things so swiftly. That unit looks typical for a development/prototype unit (by certain companies) from Japan. It was either made by one of them on behalf of a client (Nintendo, Sony or otherwise), or it is a (modern) mockup as suggested, made to look authentic. Personally, I doubt this... it would be very foolish. We should hopefully know the answer soon enough.
Well... depending on what this is supposed to be.... If this is supposed to be the "final" unveiled system (i.e. the Phillips partnership NOT Sony, the ND as Nintendo called it), then the only fact we really have is the specs that were unveiled So as not to bandwidth steal too much, please visit this link OK, so we know that this machine was to be CD based, using a CD caddy type system with a backup chip for game saves. So, its simple. If that machine has media with it, and this media has the backup chip, then yes it is what it says it is. Also, if it has the provision to read said chip (without having example media), it is. Therefore, yes it IS a big deal that it has a caddy drive, as it should be a SPECIAL caddy!
Who is starting a flame war with anyone??? I'm sure people can take what me and Kyuusaku said, it wasn't that bad ....was it??
There are reasons why people would be skeptical. I'm not very knowledgable about SNES hardware but I know enough that this isn't a very smart way of designing a console. The SNES's largest configuration (using the entire map!) can ONLY decode in 64M or 8megabytes of data through the cart port. This is entirely enough for any "normal" SNES game (being that its 25% more than any game in existance) But if this were the legendary CDROM addon, the unit would have to bankswitch in data like an original NES memory mapper. That would be so stupid. Those 16 "special" pins on the connector would be for control of the new CPU and memory or something but everything seems wrong about it. Audio is another thing, do you guys see any audio out jacks? I don't know but I'm nearly positive the SNES doesn't route audio through the catridge slot like Famicom does, otherwise there'd be games using this. If anything, it'd go through the expansion connector. I know that the SNES expansion connector does not have 62 pins. (cartridge connector) This means that the system does NOT have CDDA unless its directly outputted through the Playstation itself. Playstation was made with CDXA in mind I believe (the PSX as we know it uses CDROM/XA or "Mode 2" data tracks.) If the original perceived Playstation was going to use CDDA, it wouldn't make sense for the unit to NOT use the expansion port (all sound would thus be generated internally) My guess is that the initial plan was for the unit to have CDDA sound which would be mixed with the SNES's APU because simply the SNES APU was still the best of it's time. This would end up being like Sega CD. I don't know what it takes to decode XA audio but the PSX a little out of the SNES "Playstation"'s league. Some other ideas: the CDROM unit (playstation) NEEDS a cartridge, I don't know how else the SNES would detect the console, the bottom expansion port probably doesn't provide access to the cartridge lines. So thats where the RAM cart theory was created. That RAM/security cart probably also was the unit's bootstrap and initial BIOS routine before it could hand off control to the CDROM unit. The original expansion connection prototype & security/RAM/bios cartridge makes PERFECT sense. I bet the original system took in the SNES's audio, mixed in it's own, put out it's CD quality multiplex.
Presumably there wouldn't be 64M of Work only RAM, thats a little excessive. I'd think that the game would be like Sega CD's 4M of WRAM/emulated ROM in 32M banks or something, so that the rest of the address space could be WRAM/other stuff. I think the best map for the SNES console would be 8M of additional WRAM, 4M of BIOS rom, 32M game buffer or something to prevent frequent loading.
I was talking to a dev guy last night and he reckons the bit at the back is the ram cart, this was just bolted onto the various parts this early prot is made out of, it has an extra cart slot so if any other additons are made like an extra ram cart it can be slotted on top , hence the extra space.There was no time to move the bottom connector as they had based previous prots on a bottom style device(the nintendo add on.)He seemed to know exactly what I was talking about and came up with these answers immediately.This guy used to work at Virgin and says he has seen the bottom nintendo units before in 94. I have no reason to not trust this guy , he has shown me pics of some awesome Nintendo 64 dev stuff that he worked with and shown me several proto n64 carts and 64dd disks, he even sold me a 64dd dev disk.
Maybe this one is a early Snes CD dev unit? I remember reading about some devs getting dev units... PD
the CD addon did not use the normal CD format but MOD format (magnetic optic disc) (the same size as a CD) (and compatible if i remember correctly) with a copy protection, mentioned in the danish nintendo magasinet. And the mini disc is really a mini magnetic optical disc and the DVD ram is basically the same just in a dvd way
Is it just me, after taking a close look at the pics, that this thing could easily be a fake? I mean, take an old optical drive, slap some Famicom/SNES connectors into the case, and *bam* instant SNES CD. Maybe I'm over-simplyfying (sp?) things, but I'm sure you get the idea. Why doesn't the owner show it hooked up to a Super Famicom? Who knows, the damn thing might even do something.
