As hardware ages, it becomes harder and harder to keep it in service. Whether that’s because of physical aging or lack of support from the company who built it in the first place, time is not generally good for electronics, especially when it comes to our beloved retro gaming systems. The first Playstation, for example, is starting to see some of the deleterious effects of having originally been built in the 90s, and [LorentioB] has a new, third-party motherboard to bring to the table to keep these systems online as well as adding some features in that Sony removed.
The motherboard is known as the nsOne, meaning Not Sony’s One since this is the first motherboard built by a single person outside of Sony. It’s not based on any FPGAs or emulators and is completely compatible with all of the original hardware, chips, and other circuitry of the original Playstation. Based on the PU-23 series, it even revives the removed parallel port, which Sony removed after the first versions of the hardware because of region locking concerns and other pro-consumer issues. Every chip footprint and connector was reverse engineered manually, using optical sanding, scanning, and net-by-net tracing.
For such a complex piece of hardware this is quite the feat, and for anyone who wants to restore old hardware or add the parallel port back on to their system this could be a game changer. [LorentioB] is not quite finished yet but hopes to have a finished version shortly. As far as fully opening up the system goes, there are some software hacks to look at that allow more games to run on the system and some hardware hacks that open the system up as well.
Holy moly, that’s a clean-looking board. Amazing work by [LorentioB]!
I wonder if they have any plans to extend their skills towards the many PlayStation-based arcade platforms, too. One of the really clever things Sony did back in the mid 90’s was to license the console’s chipset to various arcade OEMs to integrate into their own designs, bolting whatever additional hardware they wanted onto it.
Some of the designs, like Namco’s “System 11” board, were pretty close to a standard PlayStation but with a ROM board and copy-protection chip (Namco’s “KEYCUS” ASIC) bolted on. That ran the original Tekken and a handful of other games.
On the more bizarre end, there’s Konami’s one-off “GQ” board which hosted the light-gun game Crypt Killers and tacked on a SCSI hard drive. Konami in particular went wild with the PlayStation chipset with their music/rhythm games, going as far as adding a PCMCIA interface, a CD-ROM interface, and an MP3 decoder chip for a bunch of the Dance Dance Revolution games.
Really nice to see the PS1 getting some love, it’s definitely got a more interesting history than most folks expect.
It’s just a Mockup for now. If you read the post. I did actually wonder about all the caps needed for operation and the other jellybean parts…
LOL because its a picture of a mock up, otherwise it would be a scam like that Alejandro Supersega prototype laughing fest. Didnt you notioce curious lack of bypas capacitors, resistors, regulators transistors vias or tracks ? :)
You know, there are polite ways to respond to someone who didn’t notice a detail like that. Mocking someone for not knowing something only makes you look like an insensitive and arrogant prick (something I’ve noticed about you through the years), and it does nothing to promote positive discourse.
i don’t know, i found rasz’s playful juxtaposition of perceived cleanliness with a lack of universally-essential components triggered my imagination. i began thinking of a future when these components become irrelevant and how much that would change the aesthetic of electronics, just like the smd revolution did a couple decades ago.
i also found your overt personal attack a little thought provoking but after a second’s reflection i realized, there’s not really anything interesting — certainly nothing novel — about the fact that people who ask others to evoke politeness are often the least polite.
Fair point, but if it wasn’t for rasz_pl’s long history of veiled attacks and insults both here and in other forums where they use the same handle, I probably wouldn’t have said anything. I just grow tired of seeing them attack others for their ignorance (not an insult btw, being ignorant is not a bad thing). It’s their pattern of behavior I’m calling out; being an intellectually bully should be frowned upon in my opinion.
If you wish to frame me as the villain here, that’s fine, I can take a hit. I just can’t stand to see bullies do their thing and I’m not going to keep quiet about it.
I wasnt mocking WTF Detector :| I was laughing at the PCB picture posted on reddit because it does look exactly like https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc4/supersega-v09-board-3.jpg
Can you do it for the Korg M1?
This isn’t a functional PCB, it’s just the footprints. There are no traces. People are filling a lot in with their imaginations.
guys… what the heck is optical sanding? and before someone comes with the “go ask google/chatgpt” nah I prefer to ask to the HaD community.
So here is an ELI5 for optical sanding that I can gather and explain in the easiest way: optical sanding is basically very high precision sanding with very high grit sanding paper, compound, or polish to remove material in a very fine manner and in planned motions to remove the desired amount of material to get it to the right specifications needed for the job. I would assume in the case for this project, it would mean removing each PCB layer to map out traces that happen inside the PCB for multilayer PCBs.
WOW! Many thanks Sid! I remember an old video where military where sanding by hand a flat surface by zones using a blue market to spot the irregular “not flat yet zones” because the thing was for a delicate intrument. So yeah thanks.