Ben Heck's Nintendo-Playstation Prototype Pt 1 Teardown 

"Sony Nintendo PlayStation" sounds like something that my mum would call the Wii

Wow, it's a *heck* of a privilege to be allowed to fix the only known Nintendo-Sony PlayStation.

If any of you ever get invited to be on "The Ben Heck Show" I Highly Recommend It! Thanks for everything that you have done Ben so far for us in this Video. Can't wait too see Part 2

GameStop: we'll give you five dollars in store credit

This is quite literally the Holy Grail of video gaming. It's an amazing honor to be able to handle it, and take it apart.

This is simply unbelievable. So rarely do you get to see a tear down and such an in depth and thorough analysis of a video game relic. The guy got it for less than a dollar but it's probably worth thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars to collectors, depending how many more machines are out there in the wild. Most people would be afraid to crack a dev prototype open incase they scratched the screws, but this went the whole nine yards. Thank you graciously for sharing this with us, the Nintendo PlayStation has been such an enigma for decades and now we finally have it and it actually has a BIOS and works! Truly amazing.

10:34 "Don't turn it on, take it apart!" Who else caught that EEVblog reference?

As for the eject button on the SNES. I used it all the time. I wouldn't dare take a SNES cart out of the original SNES hardware without using the eject button and I won't let anyone do it to my console.

This is awesome, when i saw the video title i didn't read it completely and just thought "oh hes gonna combine a snes and ps1 into 1 console or something"

The bottom port of the Super Famicom/SNES was also used for the Satellaview, that might be why there's also a port on this combined system so you could daisychain several addons together.

This is my first time watching this show.. Impeccable is all that I can say! Love the camera angles, seamless editing, easy explanations and Ben's wonderful persona.

Trade you a copy of Super Mario/Duck Hunt AND Bases Loaded for it!

7:25 Something to add to the thoughts of the expansion port: the Super Famicom in Japan eventually had an add-on released called the Satellaview. Perhaps the Ext. port here was planned for the PlayStation to be compatible with it, if one assumes Nintendo was working on the idea during the Playstation's development. (the Satellaview was a very quirky and experimental Sega Channel-esque add-on that provided satellite game, news and magazine downloads as well as streaming satellite radio.)

I’m an electrical engineer, I watched this & I asked my dad _(who’s a long-retired electrical engineer & worked on surface mount electronic troubleshooting all his adult life)_ “he was taking apart a Sony Prototype which is from the very early 1990s, and he’s getting the numbers of the chips & looking them up on the internet or in a database, how would you have done that research without the advantage of the internet?!” And he said “the hallway of the house you grew up in…remember all of those 3-ring binders on the bookcases that lined the entrance hallway? Those were reference books from Texas Instruments, Motorola, NEC, Toshiba, Hitachi, Intel, Panasonic, Samsung, and other Semiconductor Industry Giants of the time…”

Ben, admit it, you had FUN on this one. And I'm in the camp that loves Starfox 2. The most advanced version of it can be played start to finish. Starfox 1 was excellent but 2 was still great. The SNES-PS was not brought to market because of Sony's royalty clause in the contracts which Nintendo was unwilling to tolerate. The SNES-PS was never finished because Sony was going to use the system to enter the game market and destroy Nintendo in the process. And Nintendo knew this. The SNES-PS system itself was a marvel to behold. I'm one of the few people to have seen the prototypes in operation running actual software. The raw specs don't look as impressive as the SegaCD, but we all know that it's not always the parts you use to build something but also HOW they are used. Nintendo is famous for getting more out of less. The load times were still there but less annoying than TG16CD and SegaCD. And FMV looked so much better than anything NEC, Sega or anyone else was doing at the time. Because the SNES video hardware was superior[and going to get better], video quality was comparable to TV broadcast of the time. And one of the programmers working on it showed off a digitized version of a "Real Genius" VHS tape running completely off the CD drive. It was watchable, but the quality was not great. Still it was the first movie I had ever seen running off a standard CD which was a fun novelty. And on the SNES no less! I can also tell you the that the unit you're testing out was not the final incarnation of the proposed system. There were actually two more prototypes after. One further sub-version to this one and the last official[on books] prototype that was intended for game devs. The finished system specs were to include a 4X CD drive, 256K CD buffer, 512K expanded RAM[on firmware cart], a specialized version of the FX chip running at 18Mhz, as well as a newer[and completely backward compatible] update to the base system specs. Those specs were up in the air but at one time included greatly expanded instruction sets for the CPU and both PPU's, increased operating speeds[12Mhz and 6Mhz respectively] and increase in system RAM to 1024K and 512K for the PPU's. The sound processor was to get a massive[for the time] upgrade to 128K and and increase to 16 channels. The expansion port was to be used for possible modem/networking functions which were becoming a thing at the time and Nintendo saw a possibility for market growth in.

Waiting for the "Nintendo Mini classic: Nintendo Playstation" to drop in 2017. With all 0 games included!

2:27 The expansion port is actually for an existing add-on. It's for the Satellaview, which was only sold in Japan. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview

It's great that some legendary stuff is coming to light in the last years like the Atari dig up, the prototype of the 64DD over at Metal Jesus and now this. Thanks and two thumbs up, guys, for publishing this!

I love how detailed this is. Fantastic job!

You have no idea how excited I am to watch this.

I'm gonna see this thing in person in Seattle this weekend at the Seattle Retro Gaming Expo!

I love how thorough Ben does his teardowns; the spec comparison he did near the end was great!

This makes a lot of sense if you know your gaming history. The Famicom disk drive was basically just an add-on that made Famicom games cheaper for the consumers since disks were cheaper to manufacture than cartridges. If the CD-ROM add-on/system for the Super Famicom didn't add any new functionality besides the delivery medium it would essentially have been the same kind of product, but updated for the CD-ROM era.

Cool video, and the production value is really high too. Can't wait to see it working!

"Good to know there are still some mysteries left to discover in this world" Ben knows more than he is willing to share!

Great to have a look at the board.

What a great idea, to give this to Ben Heck! There's few people I would trust with something like this and Ben is definitely one of them! :o)

7:28 While that little port may be planned to use with the CD add-on, it was actually used for the Satellaview in Japan. That was the closest thing to an online function at the time, and it involved St. GIGA's satellites. It's complicated.

I like EEVblog reference. Don't turn it on, tear it apart.

I cannot imagine the stress of fixing something like that...one-of-a-kind hardware.

Yellowing is caused by a fireproofing agent in the plastic. The uneven yellowing is probably due to different levels of that agent.

I was a SNES lever user...

it belongs in a museum

Pretty awesome stuff! It's really great you're fixing it. One little correction though -- the PC Engine CD / TurboGrafx CD has a 2KB capacitor-backed save chip in it, so the PCE should say 2 instead of 0 on your table in the save-memory entry. Also the PCE has two RAM expansion cards, a 256KB card (the Super System Card) and a 4MB + 256KB card (the Arcade Card), which some games support. Otherwise though, good work. It's very interesting that the system would have only 8KB save memory and 256KB added RAM; that's not much on either point. The Sega and PC Engine CD systems both have save-memory addons to help with the limited amount of internal save memory, but with the required addon RAM and such on the cart, you couldn't do that with the SNES... being stuck with only 8KB and that's it would be awful. And for main CD RAM, 256KB is enough, but it's still less than a PCE with Super CD (once you remember also the RAM in the main CD addon is also available), and way less than the Sega CD. Also... no enhancement chip onboard, not even the basic one used by Mario Kart and such? That would limit graphics indeed.

this thing went up for auction really recently and i just got this i my recommended... i was VERY concerned for a second there

I'm so glad i found this show. Where has this been my whole life? c:

"SFX" makes me think this could have had a Super FX chip built in!

I love how he touches the chips and circuitry with his fingers without so much as an ESD wrist strap.

Bummed they didn't get it running and play something on it.

The help explain why the bottom port remained. In Japan they had the Satellaview peripheral which used an internet service for the SNES that had some downloadable games like Radical Dreamers (Chrono Trigger sequel.... kinda), BS Zelda and Mario, and it also used this port. So it was probably to retain the usage of that peripheral.

WHOA WHOA WHOA, BUDDY. I *always* used the lever on the SNES to eject the cartridge.

This video featured on the front page of Yahoo. Man, this channel is getting big. Just wish the videos still had the same feel as the older ones.

SFX? That's probably the Super FX chip. I could be wrong though.

I'm sure you've already been told this by a dozen different people right now, but on the off-chance you haven't; The PAL and JAP models of the SNES actually had the mechanical lockout on the cartridge eject system too. Unlike the US carts, the PAL/JAP ones had little tongue grooves in the front of the cart - when you push the heavy on/off switch into the "on" position, it also pushed a lever into that groove and prevented the cart from being forcibly removed during play. That might explain why the similar method was used on the JAP prototype of the Sony-Nintendo PlayStation :)

i have no damn idea what you are talking about 90% of the time but I really like the show. i subscribed so maybe I'll learn something!

This is just awesome, I just found out there's a Nintendo 64 that never made it officially to America market, this Nintendo use a floppy disk. I keep founding crazy stuff about Nintendo. I think they are doing a big come back.

metal Jesus rocks found a CD add-on for the Nintendo 64. go check it out

Fun fact: The plastic that turns yellow is called ABS and since it is combustible, it has chemical flame retardants added. And those turn it yellow when exposed to UV light. 👍

You should do Metal Jesus Rocks Nintendo 64 DD next, another Nintendo product that almost came to be in the US.

For the chart comparing hardware specs @22:00... The PC Engine/TG-CD had an upgraded System Card (with 4x RAM) for the Super CD format introduced in 1991...this was the new standard and shipped in new hardware (and folks with older hardware could upgrade as well). Then, by the time the time the SNES CD would have been released, NEC released the beefier PCE Arcade Card in 1994 with even more RAM... the stock PCE/TG-CD RAM from 1988 did not remain static... :)

I'd never thought about it before, but I always ejected SNES carts with the eject button. Am I the only one?

This device represents the exact point of the timeline where videogame history could had been changed forever.I'm surprised that no one has yet gone to interview Olaf Olafsson about this prototype origin.

About that thing that companies don't hate each other: Samsung makes the proccessors for iPhones.

I miss this show so much!!! 😩😩

Ben can you make one of these in theory from scratch

It's amazing that you got to do this Ben. I've been hearing about this story all week.

This is so amazing. Thanks for doing this guys, and thanks Ben Heck... the new science messiah.

Ben, the expansion port on the bottom was for the Satellaview, a modem-like peripheral for the Japanese system that used a sort of subscription service to deliver exclusive games and variety content. a few of those were popular enough to receive cartridge releases as well! (I'm sure others have already commented this, but there you go)

I wanna replicate the case and put a SNES and Playstation inside (system on a chip equivalents). Then it can play SNES games or PS1 games.

I admit I'm surprised to see this being worked on. I heard someone found one of these. Holy heck they went to get it fixed by ben heck. XD

To the owners of the Nintendo Playstation: Would you please consider taking the console to a 3D modeling company and allowing them to scan it and provide complete 3D printed models of this console. Since it's your console you could sell the prints and make money from it, and sell copies of the schematics. 100's of people would love to have a replica of this console!

It's a pleasant surprise to see this thing on this show! Been hearing about this mysterious prototype from Pat and Ian on the CU Podcast, and I've been following this channel for a while. And now, suddenly, Ben Heck meets the PlayStation prototype! Great stuff.

Woot! Been waiting for this one!

As I recall back in the day when they were first talking about this thing, reports on the SNES CD drive was supposed to use something called HANDS as a system that would pull data from the disc to off load into the processor while simultaneously loading more data. Presumably this was something they were doing to either speed up load time or allow it to handle more data at one time.

You know if you manage to fix this system, you'll make some sort of gaming history, right? Fingers crossed you'll make it though...

Quite a treat to see a tear down of the proto here. Looking forward to the next part!

It's amazing that the Playstation letters (font) on the controller are the same as the current Playstation. How come Sony could take the Playstation name and font with them? Didn't Nintendo own the name?

I don't really know why the son had to be there for the teardown Heck: "See this? This does something" Son: "Hmyyeah." Over and over again- haha.

That expansion port on the Nintendo PlayStation, maybe it's for connect the Satellaview.

This is an amazing episode! I love how you are fixing prototype electronics from well-known companies. It's very engaging to see if and how you can do it.

I think you have voided the warranty!

Hell ya! I'm glad you got to take this rare piece of gaming history apart and tried to fix it!

Ben! Contact Metal Jesus so you can do the same thing with the Nintendo Ultra 64 aka the US Disk Drive system.

remember reading about this in Nintendo magazine back in the day, with mock ups on how it would look.

Can you do the Coleco Chameleon next?

Great video as usual you guys! Just a note about the chart at the end. The PCEngine had system cards that could increase the amount of ram it had. There was the SCD System Card, and the Arcade card. The SCD System Card added 192KB of ram, and the Arcade Card added 2MB of ram.

What did he say at 3:47. a "mul-timmiter?!" lol. "Multi Meter"? Never heard it pronounced like that before...

That guy is so lucky, I'd kill for one of those prototypes we used to talk about the rumors and all and were obsessed with it but it never came about obviously. To see an actual unit is so bad ass.

Wasn't NEC the people who made the turbo graphx/ pc engine

Great breakdown!! No joke, by far the best breakdown i've seen in years. Great job guys and good job taking car of this piece of history.

"Do you have Half-Life 3 too?" I died

Love that you've gotten a hold of this and are doing a breakdown!

No wonder why Nintendo rejected it, there's sony everywhere on this thing!

The PC Engine CD didn't add much ram, but that's why there were System Cards. The Super-CD card added 256kB and the Arcade Card added 2048kB.

I'm guessing Redditors still don't know about this video yet, cus If they knew, they'd freak out like boyband fans again...

The PC Engine CD + the System 3.0 BIOS card (which the TurboDuo had built in) provided 192KB of additional RAM (on top of the 64KB of the base CDROM system) for a total of 256KB. The Arcade card which was released in Japan added 2MB on top of that.

No more battening down the hatches :(

The Coloring of plastics was a due to Fire Resistant Plastic Compounds they used back then, it will changed under UV light, so even with the Retr0Bright it will yellow again over time.

3:20 yeahhh probably best not to do that if you ever visit the UK...

The PC Engine CD-Rom memory actually varies. Just like this snes-CD solution, it had separate cartridges with the CD-ROM bios and embedded memory, and you got from like 64KB to the insane gigantic Arcade card with whooping 4MB of memory (!). And this last one was used to port neo geo games almost flawlessly for the PC Engine system. Maybe the snes-CD would follow the same route? Also on the part where you said the 8bit bus would slow down the loadings, you're not exactly correct, given the fact the bottleneck on the system would be the CD-ROM read speed by itself rather than the system. The CD-ROM max reading speed is around 300KB/s, which even using just the CPU to copy off, you still go faster, and well, you don't need to do that on SNES, as it has the DMA unit that copies data over 3MB/s easily, which is well more than enough to deal with the drive.

And me and my friend had to build one from scratch. Fuckers...

Great work, it was really interesting to see what this device really could do. Many people assumed it was going to be a Playstation 1, just with a Nintendo label. But you've shown very clearly it's not even close to that. It really looks like it would just have been bigger and better SNES games, and not as big an improvement the SEGA CD did for the Genesis. I can see why Nintendo might not have moved forward with this idea now. I can't wait to see the next part.

The Genesis is capable of pulling off tricks that the SNES can do, giving though if you have the tools and knowledge. There's a homebrew Sonic racing game that is similar to Super Mario Kart, that pulls off Mode 7 without the need of a extra chip. Also some Sonic hackers have made sound drivers capable of playing back PCM audio, which allows other hackers to use actual songs if compressed. Check out Markey Jester's Sonic 1 the Next Level hack, it contains samples of actual songs that are slightly remixed but are high quality samples. Overall though, I'm more of a Genesis fan boy than the SNES. :P Still I like the SNES, but technically the SNES is "better" because it came out a few years after the Genesis did, and you know how fast technology evolves... Still I look forward to the next video, hopefully the console can be brought back to life. This is truly a interesting piece of video game history.

I would've been surprised if the Nintendo Playstatio (still really odd to say and write...) had been this mythical beast of a console. In many regards it was like the Wii, which was originally going to be a Gamecube with the motion controllers added on as an accessory. But then Nintendo decided to make an entire console out of it, even though it was still a Gamecube underneath. The Sony Playstation on the other hand was a completely different console made for 3D gaming, while the SNES was still very much a 2D system.

SFX could also be the super Fx chip, seen in the cartridge of games like Star Fox and Donkey Kong Country. Maby this was planned to be in the console for the disc ports of these games.

I took apart a little Sony FM Radio unit that has an lcd screen and presets and it also had this NEC 4-bit microcontroller. theyre still used today

Gamestop will be like "Best I can do is $15 and a keychain on the house"

Child of the 80's turned computer engineer chiming in. This was awesome to watch. Almost as good as debugging and reprogramming Zelda, but not quite. I remember hearing about this, but never seeing it come to the life. Can't wait to see part 2.

Why does this man have orange fungus growing around his forehead

Really an amazing find that keeps every collector hopeful. Great idea trying to get it working again. I look forward to Part 2! #NintendoSonyPrototype