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!

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Meet The Optical Data Format You’ve Never Heard Of Before

October 10, 2024 by Lewin Day 80 Comments

You consider yourself a power user. You’ve got lots of files, and damn it, you like to keep them backed up. Around a decade ago, you gave up on burning optical discs, and switched to storing your files on portable hard drives. One local, one off-site, and a cloud backup just to be sure. You’re diligent for a home gamer, and that gets you done.

The above paragraph could describe any number of Hackaday readers, but what of bigger operations? Universities, businesses, and research institutions all have data budgets far in excess of what the individual could even imagine. What might shock you is that some of them are relying on optical media—just not the kind you’ve ever heard of before. Enter Sony’s Optical Disc Archive.

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How Sony Mastered The Transistor

September 4, 2024 by Al Williams 35 Comments

When you think of Sony, you probably think of a technology company that’s been around forever. However, as [Asianometry] points out, it really formed in the tough years after World War II. The two people behind the company’s formation were an interesting pair. One of them was a visionary engineer and one was a consummate businessman.

While it is hard to imagine today, securing a license to produce transistors was difficult in the early days. What’s worse is, even with the license, it was not feasible to use the crude devices in a radio.

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A USA Feature For A Europe-Market Sony Receiver

August 16, 2024 by Jenny List 23 Comments

A feature of many modern network-connected entertainment devices is that they will play streamed music while on standby mode. This so-called “network standby”is very useful if you fancy some gentle music but don’t want the Christmas lights or the TV. It was a feature [Caramelfur] missed on their Sony AV receiver, something especially annoying because it’s present on the US-market equivalent of their European model. Some gentle hackery ensued, and now the rece3iver follows its American cousin.

A first examination of the firmware found the two downloads to be identical, so whatever differences had to be in some form of configuration. Investigating what it exposed to the network led to a web server with device configuration parameters. Some probing behind the scenes and a bit of lucky guesswork identified the endpoint to turn on network standby, and there it was, the same as the US market model. Should you need it, the tooling is in a GitHub repository.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen identical hardware being shipped with different firmwares in Europe from that in the USA, perhaps our most egregious example was a Motorola phone with a much earlier Android version for Europeans. We don’t understand why manufacturers do it, in particular with such an innocuous feature as network standby. If you have a Sony receiver you can now fix it, but you shouldn’t have to.

RJ45, Devcore, CC0.

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.
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Make Your Own Play Station (The Space Is Important)

January 8, 2024 by Jenny List 20 Comments

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. Continue reading “Make Your Own Play Station (The Space Is Important)” →

A Classic Shortwave Radio Restored

November 12, 2023 by Al Williams 20 Comments

Before the Internet, if you wanted to hear news from around the world, you probably bought a shortwave receiver. In the golden age of world band radio, there was a great deal of high-quality programming on the shortwave bands and a large variety of consumer radios with shortwave bands. For example, the Sony CRF-160 that [M Caldeira] is restoring dates from the late 1960s or early 1970s and would have been a cool radio in its day. It retailed for about $250 in 1972, which sounds reasonable, but — don’t forget — in 1972 that would have been a 10% downpayment on a new car or enough to buy a Big Mac every day for a year with change left over.

As you can see in the video below, the radio seemed to work well right out of the gate, but the radio needed some rust removal and other sprucing up. However, it is an excellent teardown, with some tips about general restoration.

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