PlayStation Motherboard Sanded And Scanned, But There’s More To Do

December 9, 2024 by Lewin Day 13 Comments

If you want to reverse engineer the boards in a modern console, you’d better have a lab, a lot of fancy gear, and a good few months to dedicate to the task. The humble PlayStation, on the other hand, is more accessible in this regard. [Lawrence Brode] pulled one apart and started documenting it as part of a grander quest for console understanding.

[Lawrence’s] ultimate goal is to create a portable PlayStation using original hardware. That is, rather than cannibalizing an existing console, he wants to build an original portable from scratch. He needed to understand the PlayStation to recreate it, so he started by analyzing the original hardware.

The first part of [Lawrence’s] quest was to try and reverse engineer the PlayStation motherboard itself. The 1990s console has the benefit of only using a two-layer PCB, meaning it’s far easier to trace out than more modern multi-layer designs. [Lawrence] started with a damaged console, pulled out the motherboard, and stripped off all the components. He then cleaned the board, scanned it, and then sandblasted it to remove the solder mask.

He’s begun the work of tracing out signals, and next on the agenda is to create a new custom PCB that’s compatible with the original PlayStation hardware. You can grab his work via GitHub if you’re interested. [Lawrence] is also excited about the possibilities of grabbing the 24-bit RGB signal heading into the GPU and using it for an HDMI output conversion in the future.

It’s always an exciting time in the PlayStation community; we see lots of great hacks on the regular. If you’re cooking up your own, don’t hesitate to drop us a line!

The Phantom PSP: Crafting The Handheld Sony Never Sold

November 2, 2024 by Heidi Ulrich 7 Comments

In the world of retro gaming, some legends never die – especially the ‘phantom’ PSP, Sony’s mythical handheld that never saw the light of day. While that elusive device remains a dream, hacker and gaming wizard [Kyle Brinkerhoff] built his own – and Macho Nacho made a video about it. His creation, which also goes by the name ‘Playstation Zero’, isn’t just another handheld emulator; it’s a powerful, custom-built system that revives the classics and plays them on a portable device that feels like the future.

Driven by a hunger for the ultimate gaming experience, [Kyle] set out to blend modern tech with retro gaming magic. He started with the Raspberry Pi, loading it up with emulation software for all the iconic systems—from NES and SNES to the Sega Genesis and Game Boy. But [Kyle] didn’t just slap on an off-the-shelf emulator; he dived into the code himself, optimizing and tweaking for lightning-fast responsiveness, so each game plays like it’s running on the original hardware. That’s hacking in true form: pushing the limits of software and hardware until they work exactly the way you want them to. Best of all: he published it all open source for others to use.

In the spirit of the Geneboy—a handheld Sega Genesis built by [Downing] and featured on Hackaday back in 2012—[Kyle]’s device pairs handheld emulation with the consoles all nineties kids wanted for Christmas. To capture the tactile thrill of vintage gaming, [Kyle] went a step further by designing and 3D-printing a custom controller layout that mimics the feel of the original systems. If watching someone neatly soldering a pcb sounds relaxing to you, don’t skip the middle part of his video. Although this little beast is packed with all bells and whistles you’d expect to see on a Raspberry Pi, it does lack one serious thing: battery life. But, [Kyle] is open about that, and hopes to improve on that in a future version.

If you want to see the full build, check out the video below. Or, immediately dive into [Kyle]’s Github, order the cute Takara shell, and get started!

Continue reading “The Phantom PSP: Crafting The Handheld Sony Never Sold” →

Portable PS4 Is Easier To Move Than A Regular One

August 22, 2024 by Lewin Day 5 Comments

The PlayStation 4 was a popular enough console, but it was a home console. If you wanted to play at a friend’s house, you had to unplug all your cables and haul the whole lot over there. Unless, that is, you built something along the lines of [Rudd van Falier]’s Portable GameStation.

It’s not a super-complicated build, but it is a well-executed one. It combines laser cut acrylic with 3D-printed brackets to produce a housing that looks clean, sharp, and of almost commercial quality. That’s the benefit of laser-cutting—it avoids all the ugly problems of layer lines. From there, [Rudd] simply set about stuffing the PS4 motherboard inside, along with placing the relevant ports and vents in the housing where needed. A screen with inbuilt speakers was then attached to complete the build. The one thing it’s missing is a set of batteries for playing it on the bus. This thing needs mains power to run.

We’d love to see [Rudd] take another stab at the concept, making it fully independent from cables. It’s definitely possible. Who wouldn’t want to play some Persona 5 Royal on the train, anyway? Video after the break.

Continue reading “Portable PS4 Is Easier To Move Than A Regular One” →

A Simple Portable PS4 Build

August 12, 2024 by Lewin Day 10 Comments

Building a portable console is hard, right? You have to do lots of wiring, maybe trim a few PCBs, and learn all about the finer points of high-end motherboard design! Or, you could keep it simple. That’s just what [Francesco6n] did when he built this portable PS4.

The aim for this build wasn’t to build the smallest, sleekest, or prettiest portable PS4. It was just to build a functional one that worked. To that end, the guts of the PS4 was installed in a 3D-printed case decorated with the usual square-circle-cross-triangle motif. A 1024×600 Acer Aspire One laptop display was installed in a clamshell configuration to act as the screen for the build. Inside the case is a large GPU-style cooler which helps keep temperatures down. As for power, there’s no need to plug this thing in everywhere you go. Instead, it’s capable of running for up to 90 minutes continuously thanks to a battery pack consisting of eighteen 18650 cells. In a beautiful touch of cross-platform cooperation, an Xbox 360 supply is used to power the thing when mains power is available.

It’s a neat build, and one that doesn’t overcomplicate things. Projects like this are a great way to get your feet wet with portable console hacking, letting you learn the ropes without too much pressure. More pictures after the break.
Continue reading “A Simple Portable PS4 Build” →

How Additional Aerodynamic Drag Helped Make GTA III Work On PS2

April 27, 2024 by Lewin Day 17 Comments

The PlayStation 2 was a revelation when it hit the market in 2000, and yet by modern standards, it’s almost hopelessly weak. In fact, it’s so under-powered, Rockstar developers had to pull every trick in the book to make Grand Theft Auto III even work on the platform.

The story comes to us from developer [Obbe Vermeij]. He explains that the PlayStation 2 couldn’t keep the entire open-world game map in its tiny 32 MB of RAM. Instead, models had to be streamed from the DVD drive as the player moved around the world. However, even the DVD drive wasn’t fast enough. If the player moved too quickly, they would outpace the system’s ability to load new assets, and the world would fall apart. Roads would vanish, buildings simply wouldn’t appear before the player passed by them.

According to [Obbe], getting around this challenge was the job of one [Adam Fowler]. He notes that even optimizing the layout of data on the DVD wasn’t enough to help. Nifty hacks had to be employed to slow the player down. Road networks were changed to stop the player speeding towards areas that needed lots of new models. In other areas, vehicles in the game would experience a nearly-imperceptible 5% increase in air drag to dull their speed. This was chosen as a more invisible solution; cutting engine power directly was audible to players as the audio changed.

It shows you just how hard developers had to work back when resources were far more constrained than they are today!

Closing In On A PC Enabled PSVR2

July 23, 2023 by Donald Papp 25 Comments

When the PlayStation VR2 headset was released, people wondered whether it would be possible to get the headset to work as a PC VR headset. That would mean being able to plug it into a PC and have it work as a VR headset, instead of it only working on a PS5 as Sony intended.

Enthusiasts were initially skeptical and at times despondent about the prospects, but developer [iVRy]’s efforts recently had a breakthrough. A PC-compatible VR2 is looking more likely to happen.

So far [iVRy] is claiming they have 6 DOF SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping), Prox sensor, and stereo camera data.

Most of the juicy bits are paywalled behind [iVRy]’s Patreon. We’re hoping the jailbreak process will eventually be open-sourced.

The PS VR2 headset is quite unlike a PC VR headset in a number of ways, and it has not been historically easy to work with Sony’s products from a reverse-engineering perspective, whether it’s an attempt to improve the user experience of an annoying headset, or an attempt to understand the not-even-remotely-sanely-designed protocols behind the Sony Memory Stick. Getting the PS VR2 headset to work in a way it wasn’t intended was expected to be an uphill battle.

It’s not a finished job, but judging by the progress regularly shared on [iVRy]’s Twitter account, it might only be a matter of time.

Picture of a DualShock 4 controller PCB, with two joysticks on the sides

Challenging A Broken DualShock 4 Controller To A Duel

February 12, 2023 by Arya Voronova 2 Comments

A broken PlayStation controller would normally be a bummer, and if the issue is losing calibration that’s stored in a non-documented format, you might as well bin it. For [Al] of [Al’s blog], however, it’s a challenge, turning into a four-part story – so far. The first installment was published January 1st this year, and seeing the pure enthusiasm [Al] has reverse-engineering the DualShock 4 controller, you might guess that this is a New Year’s gift from someone who knows [Al] very well. The list of problems with the joystick is numerous, to begin with – it’s easier to list all the things that work properly, and it isn’t many of them. Perhaps, the firmware problem is is the most interesting one to start with. Continue reading “Challenging A Broken DualShock 4 Controller To A Duel” →