The early history of the Sony Playstation lies in a stillborn collaboration between Nintendo and Sony to produce an SNES with a CD-ROM drive. So the story goes, Nintendo’s Philips deal angered Sony, who decided to make their own console line, and the rest is history. A very small number of prototypes were made, badged as “Play Station,” and should you find one that escaped today, you’re sitting on a fortune. [James] doesn’t have one, but he did have half a Playstation and an SNES shell, so he could make an ungodly child of the two consoles that you can see in the video below the break.
Those Playstation CD-ROM drives were notorious for melting back in the day, so it’s no surprise they’re still for sale today. Thus, he was able to bring the Sony back to life. What follows is an episode of console cutting worthy of a slasher horror movie, as instead of a bit of fine Dremmeling, he brings out an angle grinder and slices away with abandon. We don’t like the Nintendo switch carrying mains voltage, but we’re fine with the PlayStation expansion connector going away. The Nintendo eject button needs a hack to operate the Playstation door open button when pressed. It’s cool to see the board has a mod chip. We used to fit those as a sideline in a previous life.
Everything goes together with a lot of hot glue and more of that angle grinder, leaving only the drive to fix. A far too large drill comes out, and more hot glue and the drive sits vertically on top of the unit. We like this console, and we like the humour with which a pile of essentially scrap parts have been made into a one-of-a-kind. Remembering Sony’s sensitivity about the use of that space from our days in the industry, though, it wouldn’t surprise us if it attracted the attention of one or another set of notoriously litigious lawyers.
> Those Playstation CD-ROM drives were notorious for melting back in the day, so it’s no surprise they’re still for sale today.
??? Am I missing something or does that ^^ make no sense?
If they were melting ~20 years ago why should the be for sale today? I think common logic would dictate they’d been thrown away sometime in the last 15 years.
replicas are being sold
*aftermarket replacement optical drives are now for sale to replace old tired ps1’s with dead lasers
Since they broke frequently, Sony and other companies made a whole bunch of replacement drives. So many replacements were made that you can still find them today.
What’s this amazing ‘all-in-one’ gear on the left on the bench ? At least multimeter+power supply+amplifier+… frequency counter ?
Found, it’s a “McVan Instruments BWD 604 Mini-Lab”, probably version 2. Made in Australia !
That doesn’t sound/look very recent, 1997 according to the documentation, which even includes schematics.
Thank you for the information! 😃
I was trying to find some information about it, too.
Another source on the internet says it’s from 1991 (radiomuseum).
So it might be from the 80s, actually.
Which still seems to be too recent in my eyes. I would have guessed it’s from the late 70s/early 80s.
If it was from the mid-70s, the 7-segment display would still be a Nixie display or similar tube technology, rather.
I got something similar. It has a dvm, funny story there, a 0-30V 0-3A power supply with voltage and current limiting, a function generator up to I think 9Mhz, and a frequency counter. It also has a fixed 5V and I will not swear to but but it may also have a fixed 12v supply. People had been walking past it all day at a hamfest thinking it was a stereo as that is what it looks a lot like. One thing that sucked when I got it home was the LCD was really dim. I took it apart and it was one of them with zebra strip and they are usually awful so I cleaned that all up and carefully put it back together and no joy. I was committed to having it dim, until I found a manual for it. The voltmeter is floating. How did they get that ground isolation? Heh, the think that looked like it had a fuse of two in the back, under a latch really had a 9V battery. Heh, a new 9V battery and she is good as new. None of the things is does is as good as the loose pieces I have but man, it is handy to have all that in one box on the bench. I think mine is a METEX MS-9170. I am not where it is right now but that looks like it.
It looks like this ? https://www.google.com/search?&q=METEX+MS-9170&tbm=isch
It sure looks cool !
So the 9v battery is there only so that the voltmeter is isolated .. ? How weird.
I don’t know whether I should smile or cry.
For one, the hack is very quirky in a good way. I can see that someone really put the whole heart into building this console.
On the other hand, to me, the release of the Playstation and the rise of FPS games like Doom/Wolf3D marketed an end to the cheerful late 80s/early 90s era of gaming.
The Playstation introduced mediocre 3D graphics, too and became a symbol for an era. In the process it helped to eradicate 2D pixel art and playful games, as such. In short, the very essence for what the SNES had stood for. To be fair, the N64 was guilty, too, though to a lesser extent because of its lower popularity.
Long story short, it’s a bit like with CGI films vs. hand-drawn cartoons, I think.
The SNES (and MegaDrive/Genesis) were the manifestation of the 16-Bit era, an era of high-quality hand drawn games.
Ironically, the SNES also had 3D graphics that didn’t age so badly. Sprites and backgrounds used on Donkey Kong Country were being rendered on high-end graphics workstations that outperformed the original Playstation by several magnitudes.
Cartoons switched to CGI because, at the time the switch was made, the 2D animators were unionized while the 3D animators were not. That’s it.
Gosh, I wish the current AI “industry” would unionize.
Maybe. But there already was an unhealthy 3D fad in general, too.
2D animation was very a tedious work (by late 80s, digital inking was already known, virtual cameras existed), while 3D animation seemed like the next big cash cow at the time.
3D animation went away with layering of cells, background artists and so on.
It’s more like setting up a 3D game engine, rather than drawing.
Just look at Toy Story, that’s the outcome. The PS1 game doesn’t look worse than the movie.
Anyway, what I originally meant was the use of sprites vs 3D models.
A game developer had to draw multiple sprites with their corresponding animations.
And this took some time.
But the outcome also was very charming, very warm.
Not as sterile as PS1 era 3D models.
In my opinion, 3D modeling evolved with cel shading techniques.
It allowed 3D models to look more like traditional animation.
The PS3 had the performance to do this, with its cell processor.
lmao, “unhealthy”
“collaboration between Nintendo and Sony to produce an SNES with a CD-ROM drive. So the story goes, Nintendo’s Philips deal angered Sony, who decided to make their own console line”
That *failed “scribe” guy* crapped the story. Here is an(understandable) article explaining what happened:
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/07/random_rather_than_pay_a_fortune_for_the_legendary_snes_playstation_one_man_built_his_own
Its not fully accurate. Nintendo backing out was not the immediate catalyst for Sony to go it alone. They still were not sold on the idea of making their own solo console, so they approached Sega, and the Sega president basically laughed in their faces which made angered them, pushing Sony to release their own console. All of their console releases were also strategically timed to hurt Sega. Even their advertising strategy was done to belittle Sega. Nintendo I think for them was a disappointment but Sega was the slap in the face.
Sega of America or Sega Japan?
Afaik, Sega of America had trouble with its mother company, as well.
At the time, the Sega Genesis was doing well in America (and Europe to some degree) but Sega Japan wanted to burry the Genesis, nevertheless.
So Sega perhaps wasn’t very open-minded internally, either.
Speaking under correction.
Sega of Japan.
Wow, this really puts the “Hack” back in Hackaday. This is amazing to watch. Clearly the build process took a lot longer and a lot more work than the video purports, but my goodness it’s cool. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in doing things “The right way” that I forget you can just do whatever you want.
Also, kids – if you’re going to cut up PCBs please make sure you’re in a well-ventilated space with proper safety equipment. PCBs are fiberglass, and fiberglass will seriously mess up your lungs.
“Sometimes I get so wrapped up in doing things “The right way” that I forget you can just do whatever you want.”
I like this sentiment a lot. Thank you.
I’ve yet to find a good source of replacement drives. The ones for sale all over ebay and aliexpress are hot garbage, and rarely if ever work at all. If anyone knows better, feel free to chime in. The best option I’ve seen yet is to adapt a ksm213ccm drive, but the form factor isn’t a match so it won’t fit into a console(without a serious amount of cutting)