Somewhere, a Sony and Nintendo engineer that designed this thing is watching this video and laughing because he knows how it all works and could answer all of these question in about 5 minutes.
probably a stupid suggestion but did you check the laser diode itself? a lot of these old sony drives use ks220 or similar units, i recently powered up an old sonly cd player that worked fine before storage but the laser had died being laid up so long. the laser in this unit is probably a common sony unit that is still available.
I would say, there is enough ideas for an episode 3. Hopefully we see this thing in action one day either on this channel or the owners share progression themselves.
No. I think people are already working on this project that know as much as there is to know about 64DD dev and hardware. And we're still not sure what that "NTSC" 64DD actually is on the inside.
I have to say good sir, I loved watching this. I repair my own electronics because I love gaming and sometimes develop an attachment to my devices. Also it doesn't hurt that I'm dirt poor because like T.V. and radio repair, computer repair is just not a lucrative field nowadays unless you can do specialty work like this. It's gotten so bad that I've begged people just to let me work on their electronics just so I can keep somewhat up to date on the new tech coming out nowadays. I loved the electrical engineering side of this video. Also I have had a nerd on for the Playstation prototype ever since i Heard of it's discovery. It makes me incredibly happy that you got this functional again.
Ben, from a fan of another TH-cam gem known as John's Arcade, I must say this: You got my subscription the moment the dudes with the Nintendo Play Station prototype came to YOU for repairs. Then you not only fix said rare console, but have a just-as-rare Street Fighter II Turbo gaming session, Double K.O. and all! Keep on rocking them MAD electronics skillz! :D
The super nintendo DOES have a region lock. But it was made in between "NTSC" region and "PAL" region. Japanese games can fit inside a european super nintendo, but it's not electrically compatible without modifications. A japanese game can't fit inside an american super nintendo, but as you've seen, they are electrically compatible. They did the same with the nintendo 64 where there are tabs to prevent someone to put a japanese game inside an american n64, but if you remove them, it will work, whereas in europe you can put a japanese game inside the n64, but it won't start up.
This is exactly what is the region lock ^^. Also this technique didn't work for every games (mario RPG is one of them) But the game will be slowed down because our consoles are 50Hz instead of 60Hz.
Hi Ben, are you aware that the BIOS for the Nintendo Playstation was leaked a while ago & there are now games designed to work with the console? Some of them are apparently written to disk awaiting the miracle of a working Nintendo Playstation.. such as the one you repaired. Would love to see a part three where you try some of these games out on the disk drive. :P
Are... Are you ok? If I were to guess from the tone of this comment, I'd say you seem a bit bitter about this... Regardless of how angry at these so-called "chodes" you may be, having a disc that works on this console would be an amazing thing to see!
I'm not saying you're wrong or right, but what exactly makes you think this guy is a pot head, and un-employed? I mean, there's a chance he could be, but I just want to know where this logic came from.
Why is this channel not more popular? This man is an electronics God! I aspire to someday be a good as you are with this stuff, I'm decent but I'm still learning everyday. You have earned yourself this subscriber!
I know that you are awesome at it, but was kinda scary watching you fixing an one of a kind console. Congrats! you are probably the only guy in the world who can say: "I did fix a SNES CD drive..."
I wonder if the CD ROM laser is calibrated for CDR/CDRW discs. I know, on the older consoles, if you modify the laser intensity to read CDRWs, you can lose the ability to read pressed/retail discs. Seeing as how this is a prototype system, there may not be any copy protection scheme in place to prevent it from playing backups. Maybe CDR/CDRW wasn't readily available yet and I'm just blowing smoke. But, if this was an option back then, it would make sense to be able to burn your own prototype discs for testing purposes, rather than requiring special discs to be created. Just a thought.
You're an amazing human being Benjamin... Our community is so INCREDIBLY lucky to have an electronic tech man like you in it. I'm positive that they had the right man for the job work on their one of a kind machine that needed the utmost care while being worked on. Absolutely fantastic job buddy.
There's a reason why most game consoles do something optical drive related on their soundchip. As opposed to PC, the optical drive doesn't run on its own clock, to avoid reclocking the digital audio signal. On PC, currently, audio CD playback is simply implemented in software, and traditionally was implemented using an analog link, so the timing was irrelevant. In the interim, it was implemented with asynchronous S/PDIF that was resampled by the soundcard, with soudchips doing 48 KHz while the S/PDIF was on 44.1 KHz. On a game console, you can expect the soundchip to be programmed for synchronous mixing of CD audio, and they usually run at 44.1 KHz for CD based consoles, so the CD clock may not drift. So i know the Dreamcast design, it reuses a modified PC CD-ROM drive electronics, but the clock of optical drive is diverted to sound synthesis chip! Without CD-ROM, the soundchip cannot power up. Dreamcast hard drive modders use an approx. 33 Mhz CD-ROM dummy board for their units to allow the sound chip to function.
This insane. So glad that Terry and Dan decided to bring it to you guys. Can't wait to see it to [hopefully] play CD media in any shape or form later on. I'm actually quite surprised that it wasn't able to do CD playback right of the bat. Missing software I guess. Also I loved the choice of audio CD to test it with. Let "Undone (The Sweater Song)" be the first song it ever plays if it ever does get that far :P
I don't work on electronics like this; however, I am a big fan of the history behind this console and was totally fascinated by this episode. Thanks for sharing!!!
I seem to recall there was a pretty common problem with Sony laser pickups going out of calibration in the late 80s, through the early 90s, which would lead to a no disc error. I still see it crop up in Sony CD players from time to time.
+Tommy W yeah had the same issue on my old psx 5001 (stealth modded since the day i got it new if course lol) - ended up yankibg the entire head unit from some generic discman type player i had at the time - luckily a direct match :D played that unit for years after
Yeah, I did tracking adjustment on a few SCPH-1001 PlayStations back in the day. Part of it was making sure that the sled was aligned neatly (the tracks had a bad tendency to wear out) and the other part was adjusting some pots while probing the test points to get a good gain on the tracking servos. Fairly simple process and it brought some "dead" drives back to life.
I can't wait to see any Beta-CDs that can be used with the console! Thank you Daniel for letting everybody know about this amazing piece of hardware and you Ben for fixing it! :)
I'm curious... If the NES Classic releases in November, would you be able to hack it into a device that can play different games than the ones listed on Nintendos website?
Probably not. The device runs through HDMI, so it probably features an ARM chip with an NES emulator programmed in. It'd surprise me of there was any way for it to read older cartridges. The only way it might be done is to reprogram the built in ROM, which is not a trivial task
I mean it's probably an emulator on an ARM processor. So you could potentially flash different roms, but that's not very technical, except for the part where you' have to desoder the chip to put it in a programmer.
+GermanAnimeFans He's an excellent problem solver. he fixed it by going through all aspects of electronics and determine the problem which is an easy fix, but credit the man that used the methods and tools to find out rather than doing pointless shit. Respect you fucking Nazi. This is good for analyzing what you have.
Holy cow Ben yelled loud in my ears during that SF2 match :( BUT you guys have a new subscriber, I definitely enjoyed this series of videos, super interesting stuff!
I might have an idea on how to run audio CDs on this unit. Notice on the front of the unit that there is a headphone jack and volume control. My turn-of-the-century CD drive for a PC had the exact same thing for playing audio CDs directly from the drive. Plus, there are CD controls on the top of the unit. You should be able to play an audio CD using the controls and the audio jack. On a related note, the Super CD BIOS does not recognize audio CDs, at least when run on no$sns.
I have an eighties Roland analog synth that was producing a static-like noise after being powered on for about ten minutes. It had leaky electrolytic capacitors everywhere on the voice boards. The substance was an orange powder (through hole capacitors). I replaced all voice board capacitors as well as the PSU capacitors and now works about as good as new. It's bad to have electronics stored away for years as the capacitors can dry up and become damaged.
The only thing I'm kinda thinking about was about the part where "NOT DEFINED" was written. I wonder if you tried to wire it back to what it was with the caps fixed with the CD-ROM?
The wire botch he removed was installed to *disable* the CD-ROM because it didn't work properly and made constant mechanical noises. Why would he reattach this wire to disable it again after fixing the caps? Reattaching the botch would do nothing but disable the CD-ROM again and make the cartridge detect a non-CD SuperFamicom.
> Was it really disabling it though? Yes, Ben Heck explicitly mentions that. > The NOT DEFINED happens without a CD-ROM drive as well. No, without a CD-ROM drive it says "NO CD-ROM SYSTEM". At least from what I have seen with people running the ROM in an emulator. > I would expect it to have "NO CD-ROM SYSTEM" or something? It said exactly that *with* the botch wire attached. The "NOT DEFINED" message came *after* removing the botch but *before* fixing the caps which somewhat makes sense. Because the system is more or less in a state where the CD-ROM is not disabled but also not properly responding.
+genkiadrian probably for historical preservation. if they find an actual disk for the thing they can always have the wire removed. But as is, that wire is still part of that console. Its still part of its historical value.
The wire *is* currently removed and the system *works* with regular Super Famicom cartridges. Again, the botch wire was attached to *disable* the CD-ROM unit so the system would behave like a normal SuperFamicom, that's all and would stop making the mechanical noises. After fixing the issues with the capacitors, there is no need to keep the wire attached. It does nothing but disabling the CD-ROM. Whether the CD-ROM is disabled or not does not have any influence on the compatibility with regular SFC games which makes sense if you look at how the console was designed to be used in the first place: If owners wanted to play a CD-ROM game, they would have to insert the CD-ROM cartridge (which was required because it contained additional RAM). If owners wanted to play a regular SFC game, they could just pop in a normal game cartridge.
+Common_C3nts you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. This is worth millions. It's the reason why Playstation exists, and there's only ONE PROTOTYPE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.
+Common_C3nts - I think millions is being generous, but I also think 150k is a little low. Even if you're right that not many gamers have that kind of cash to burn, there are shrewd collectors out there who know that an item like this will appreciate in value over time. Also, when it comes to prototypes like this,it's not what it IS that makes it special. We're looking at the physical manifestation of a business deal that shaped the gaming world as we know it today. It's a part of history.
Kyle Coulombe - You know, after thinking about it I think you're probably right. The Gold Nintendo World Championship cartridges went for about 10k a number of years ago and they're one of the most sought after collectibles in gaming, so 20-30k sounds reasonable.
+The Ben Heck Show Is there any way you could take a look at MetalJesusRocks US prototype 64DD they have the whole system and a disc that may contain prototype games they just need the test enabling (for lack of a better description) cartridge and they think it will work and we may get to see as yet unseen software titles.
Back in the day everyone in our gang used Commodore C=64 and Amiga 500. We used to jokingly call consoles "NinTaris", a mashup of Nintendo/Atari. Never thought I would actually see one in the wild. Until today. =) Great stuff Ben & co.
Great two part video on the combi model. Wondering can you do a video on how the different region locks were implemented across the world , for different console's over the years.
Well, that's basically what's this unit is, an snes with more sotage and the capacity of playing CD track. So you could throw more stuff in the game, more stuff happening in the system thanks to ram expension, and better sound 'cause you can have CD tracks playing
Thanks Ben Heck and Team! That was so entertaining and informative, I always imagined what that system would have looked like. To see it inside and out was such a neat experience!
I kept cringing at your tweezers lol you should definitely invest in some ceramic tweezers. they're non conductive, so if you have any static in your body, you're not going to short anything on a board. another plus, they'll stay pointed and have a more stable grip.
STOPH3R01991 I'm just saying I find it odd that he has all these iFixit tools but not the tweezers. Also, the iFixit ones are completely ESD safe even though they're not ceramic.
You mentioned they might have a CD, did they try it? Also, what would happen if you played a PlayStation 1 game in it? Just curious because similar chips were used for both
I guessed it was the caps as soon as I saw those SMD electrolytic capacitors in the first episode. =) How? Because I've replaced a ton of those already repairing Turbo Duo's and Game Gears, and given the age of the prototype, it was likely made during the "Capacitor plague" of the early 90's. Should have replaced all of the caps to prevent future failures, but hey, what do I know? I'm just an EET college student that fixes and mods retro gaming consoles.
You most likely need to reverse engineer the CD-Rom cartridge bios to see what it looks for when reading the disc and well, doing the thing it requires.
Man on a whim I said hey I'll take a peak at this video I am not one for tech (repair) but once I noticed what he was working on I said well I have to see this! Very awesome channel I'll defiantly be tuning in to watch more videos !
+DoctLaser so then it isn't actually a resistor. I have a 0 centimeter meter stick if you want $1000 with free delivery since it's so light and doesn't take up much volume
It's a resistor-shaped conductor. But resistors are all actually conductors, except with their conductivity lowered in a predictable way. So there is no principal difference between a 0-Ohm resistor and any other, except this one has lower resistance. But of course any conductor has a positive, non-zero resistance; however, a 0-Ohm resistor has resistance same or lower than a board trace, so it doesn't matter, you can't even measure it because your probes will have a higher contact resistance than the 0-Ohm resistor itself.
Radical Edwards > 0 ohm resistor? that's like a calorie free energy drink Actually, it's more like the physical equivalent of a NOP instruction, which nearly every microprocessor supports -- NOP being short for "No OPeration" or "do nothing". Why have an instruction that literally tells the processor to do nothing? Because it comes in handy if you're writing a program where you know you'll be adding new features and functionality later, and you want to set aside some unused space for future code. (It can also be used for timing-specific issues, since even a NOP instruction uses up a few clock cycles on a processor.)
+a1rh3add there's all sorts of hype around how ESD will destroy CMOS chips, but unless you're shuffling around in wool socks on carpeting it's much ado about nothing. I work on circuits with CMOS IC's all the time with my bare hands and no static strap and never fried anything.
andynshelleyinurface plus how circuit boards are coated. You would need to be directly handling a bare soldered point in order to transfer any charge and even then it's doubtful you could cause any real damage.
So much excitement in this video! This must be what sports fans feel watching a tense match! And I realise how incredibly odd that would probably sound to them! :-)
The XA Test function in the cartridge menu may be able to play music from some Playstation games. Redbook Audio should also be supported, but there's no point in trying games that use that, because they tried an audio CD and it didn't work.
Absolutely beautiful,i wonder if this console could be recreated with the ability to play audio CDs or maybe CD-I games or even a PS1 with an SNES on top,i hope to see something like that in the future,it would definitely be interesting
I wonder if you could rip the cd, replace the status program that starts up with a SNES rom, burn that to a new cd and see if that would then start up the SNES game from the CD rom!
just finding this years later, and holy smokes! THAT'S WHERE THAT THING ENDED UP!!!! I always wondered where that prototype went or what nintendo/sony did with it. what a wild story, I want like a whole documentary about what happened to that thing.
I wonder if that cd rom addon could play audio cd on it,since the snes sound chip outputs a 32khz signal, unless theres a chip inside wich is able to convert the cd sound into into a sound format the snes can understand, eventrough i suppose the cd rom and the snes have it's own but both the same sound chip inside it. So the soundchip in the snes could be used for jigles and digitized bleeps while the other but identical soundchip inside the cd rom can be used for streamed audio at 32khz,or visa versa. Or you can use both for streaming or sytheses sound.
incredible that you got sound working, when they first unveiled the console about a year ago i thought sound was not working due to the obvious fact that this was a prototype unit... price of this thing went through the roof.
@The Ben Heck Show have you ever tried to load a PS1 disc in that drive? I would be interested in a comparison between the disc system and the old first model of the sony playstation. Wonder if here are the same chips and layouts in there and sony saved dev time transforming this baby into the sony playstation disc-only thing.
So damn cool. Be fun to see it completely working one day if someone can figure it out. The only thing cooler then this is the actual time period when this was supposed to come out. Great era that was.
I have to give a factual statement/correction. The SNES did have region locking, but like the NES and the Famicom, the region locking is in the physical design of the cartridge (hence why games in that era didn't have a standard MSRP from the console manufacturer.)
Great work troubleshooting this, hopefully if a disc can't be found, some homebrew CD games could be put together for testing. Two things bugged me though; A) Being ESD safe is always a good idea (regardless of the weather), especially when troubleshooting a non-functional one-of-a-kind console B) It was nice you were able to make a usable power adapter in the shop, but if it's going to shows then buy the right adapter (maybe from Element 14?). Thanks!
I appreciate that Ben is so talented and can repair stuff like this, but some part of me feels like things like this shouldn't be messed with and left in a museum. This is a one of a kind piece of videogame history. I think it might be best to leave it as it was found, even if that means non-functional. Love your show.
That was very interesting, but I was missing some more info on the CD-ROM drive, especially if it is anything like a more modern drive interface-wise and could be replaced easily.
Somewhere, a Sony and Nintendo engineer that designed this thing is watching this video and laughing because he knows how it all works and could answer all of these question in about 5 minutes.
Unless they've forgotten by now lol
That's a good possibility too.
Be cool to see it get working one day though
well... what if he killed himself out of shame because the system didn't make it to production?
Yes they normally forgot, everybody knows it.
this is basically a VET doing surgery on a baby unicorn.
"It has its intestines tied up with zip ties. I wonder if they'll work if I untie them..."
This is bizarrely fitting, bravo
+Jack Witty I always make good analogies the second I woke up
+Ali Abdallah melt my thunder cheese
Nice.
That... was the greatest thing we've ever seen.
Hey ScrewAttack!
May GameTrailers rest in peace in our hearts forever...
I was just about to type the same thing...
sucks to be you
Agreed
That was EPIC! You don't have any experience with the ultra-rare U.S. version of the 64DD add-on to the N64, do ya? ;)
Make this happen please
Shouldn't you be looking for that Partner cartridge? ;)
make this happen!
Really looking forward to this video!
Man it would be so rad to see you on Ben Heck
with that 64DD
probably a stupid suggestion but did you check the laser diode itself? a lot of these old sony drives use ks220 or similar units, i recently powered up an old sonly cd player that worked fine before storage but the laser had died being laid up so long. the laser in this unit is probably a common sony unit that is still available.
Another thing to note is whether the laser is aligned or not. We all remember the first wave of PS2s.
+The Official GMan Great idea! I know lasers in Nintendo units are pretty picky and easily damaged (cough*Gamecube*cough).
That's of course assuming that audio play functionality was ever in this particular revision and not something they hadn't gotten around to yet.
Just turn it upside down, like the PlayStation.
I would say, there is enough ideas for an episode 3. Hopefully we see this thing in action one day either on this channel or the owners share progression themselves.
Great job. Would love to see if any CDs he has works with it.
Crazy to see this thing (somewhat) working now :D
Mr Mario?
hey Ben, metaljesusrocks found a working NTSC Nintendo 64 dd, but can't find what's on a disk for it, is there any potential for a crossover episode?
he needs a developer unit to use the blue disk he has
He needs someone with rom hacking experience that know how to copy data off the cartridge and analyze what it is
doesn't hard4games have a developer DD unit? mind you it's Japanese. That would make the episode a three way cross over, lol.
No. I think people are already working on this project that know as much as there is to know about 64DD dev and hardware. And we're still not sure what that "NTSC" 64DD actually is on the inside.
+Jake “Zebular” F a little more complicated than that.
I have to say good sir, I loved watching this. I repair my own electronics because I love gaming and sometimes develop an attachment to my devices. Also it doesn't hurt that I'm dirt poor because like T.V. and radio repair, computer repair is just not a lucrative field nowadays unless you can do specialty work like this. It's gotten so bad that I've begged people just to let me work on their electronics just so I can keep somewhat up to date on the new tech coming out nowadays.
I loved the electrical engineering side of this video. Also I have had a nerd on for the Playstation prototype ever since i Heard of it's discovery. It makes me incredibly happy that you got this functional again.
Ben, from a fan of another TH-cam gem known as John's Arcade, I must say this:
You got my subscription the moment the dudes with the Nintendo Play Station prototype came to YOU for repairs.
Then you not only fix said rare console, but have a just-as-rare Street Fighter II Turbo gaming session, Double K.O. and all!
Keep on rocking them MAD electronics skillz! :D
The super nintendo DOES have a region lock. But it was made in between "NTSC" region and "PAL" region. Japanese games can fit inside a european super nintendo, but it's not electrically compatible without modifications. A japanese game can't fit inside an american super nintendo, but as you've seen, they are electrically compatible.
They did the same with the nintendo 64 where there are tabs to prevent someone to put a japanese game inside an american n64, but if you remove them, it will work, whereas in europe you can put a japanese game inside the n64, but it won't start up.
Yeah but you got adapters where you put the USA game in slot one and a uk game into slot 2 to use USA games on a uk console.
This is exactly what is the region lock ^^. Also this technique didn't work for every games (mario RPG is one of them)
But the game will be slowed down because our consoles are 50Hz instead of 60Hz.
Unbelievable analysis and professional repair. Kudos
Hi Ben, are you aware that the BIOS for the Nintendo Playstation was leaked a while ago & there are now games designed to work with the console? Some of them are apparently written to disk awaiting the miracle of a working Nintendo Playstation.. such as the one you repaired.
Would love to see a part three where you try some of these games out on the disk drive. :P
Are... Are you ok? If I were to guess from the tone of this comment, I'd say you seem a bit bitter about this... Regardless of how angry at these so-called "chodes" you may be, having a disc that works on this console would be an amazing thing to see!
I'm not saying you're wrong or right, but what exactly makes you think this guy is a pot head, and un-employed? I mean, there's a chance he could be, but I just want to know where this logic came from.
No, you're not. You're being judgemental, and assuming everyone else agrees with you.
*looks for the ban hammer*
Not at all. Just saying what everyone is thinking.
Why is this channel not more popular? This man is an electronics God! I aspire to someday be a good as you are with this stuff, I'm decent but I'm still learning everyday. You have earned yourself this subscriber!
I know that you are awesome at it, but was kinda scary watching you fixing an one of a kind console.
Congrats! you are probably the only guy in the world who can say:
"I did fix a SNES CD drive..."
I wonder if the CD ROM laser is calibrated for CDR/CDRW discs. I know, on the older consoles, if you modify the laser intensity to read CDRWs, you can lose the ability to read pressed/retail discs. Seeing as how this is a prototype system, there may not be any copy protection scheme in place to prevent it from playing backups. Maybe CDR/CDRW wasn't readily available yet and I'm just blowing smoke. But, if this was an option back then, it would make sense to be able to burn your own prototype discs for testing purposes, rather than requiring special discs to be created. Just a thought.
It´s like watching someone restoring the actual Ark of the Covenant.
I feel like this was a hug discovery that no one i know even heard about. It was very cool to see it working.
I literally stood up from my chair and applauded. You are amazing, Ben.
You're an amazing human being Benjamin... Our community is so INCREDIBLY lucky to have an electronic tech man like you in it. I'm positive that they had the right man for the job work on their one of a kind machine that needed the utmost care while being worked on. Absolutely fantastic job buddy.
There's a reason why most game consoles do something optical drive related on their soundchip. As opposed to PC, the optical drive doesn't run on its own clock, to avoid reclocking the digital audio signal. On PC, currently, audio CD playback is simply implemented in software, and traditionally was implemented using an analog link, so the timing was irrelevant. In the interim, it was implemented with asynchronous S/PDIF that was resampled by the soundcard, with soudchips doing 48 KHz while the S/PDIF was on 44.1 KHz. On a game console, you can expect the soundchip to be programmed for synchronous mixing of CD audio, and they usually run at 44.1 KHz for CD based consoles, so the CD clock may not drift. So i know the Dreamcast design, it reuses a modified PC CD-ROM drive electronics, but the clock of optical drive is diverted to sound synthesis chip! Without CD-ROM, the soundchip cannot power up. Dreamcast hard drive modders use an approx. 33 Mhz CD-ROM dummy board for their units to allow the sound chip to function.
This insane. So glad that Terry and Dan decided to bring it to you guys. Can't wait to see it to [hopefully] play CD media in any shape or form later on. I'm actually quite surprised that it wasn't able to do CD playback right of the bat. Missing software I guess. Also I loved the choice of audio CD to test it with. Let "Undone (The Sweater Song)" be the first song it ever plays if it ever does get that far :P
That Street Fighter gameplay was hotter than the entirety of EVO
I don't work on electronics like this; however, I am a big fan of the history behind this console and was totally fascinated by this episode. Thanks for sharing!!!
This was amazing to watch. Great show guys! I'm a fan.
Really cool episode. Thank you to all involved to make it happen! It's nice to see you guys playing the console and actually having fun, too.
I seem to recall there was a pretty common problem with Sony laser pickups going out of calibration in the late 80s, through the early 90s, which would lead to a no disc error. I still see it crop up in Sony CD players from time to time.
The early PS2 had the same problem.
And the early PS1. I used to flip mine, either on its side or upside-down, to get games working.
+Tommy W yeah had the same issue on my old psx 5001 (stealth modded since the day i got it new if course lol) - ended up yankibg the entire head unit from some generic discman type player i had at the time - luckily a direct match :D played that unit for years after
Yeah, I did tracking adjustment on a few SCPH-1001 PlayStations back in the day. Part of it was making sure that the sled was aligned neatly (the tracks had a bad tendency to wear out) and the other part was adjusting some pots while probing the test points to get a good gain on the tracking servos. Fairly simple process and it brought some "dead" drives back to life.
That's right! I totally forgot about turning the PSX on it's side!
I can't wait to see any Beta-CDs that can be used with the console!
Thank you Daniel for letting everybody know about this amazing piece of hardware and you Ben for fixing it! :)
maybe nintendo or sony can help for this.
I'm curious... If the NES Classic releases in November, would you be able to hack it into a device that can play different games than the ones listed on Nintendos website?
I'm hoping for a cartridge slot solder points like the recent Atari
wait, recent? what was it
Probably not. The device runs through HDMI, so it probably features an ARM chip with an NES emulator programmed in. It'd surprise me of there was any way for it to read older cartridges.
The only way it might be done is to reprogram the built in ROM, which is not a trivial task
I mean it's probably an emulator on an ARM processor. So you could potentially flash different roms, but that's not very technical, except for the part where you' have to desoder the chip to put it in a programmer.
I bet it's just an emulator running on an ARM cpu.
THANK YOU for releasing such a detailed video, THANK YOU for being so respectful to the antique circuitry.
so the owner might have a cd for this? they didn't check before this video?
This is so unbelievably cool. You have someone repairing the rarest console known to man. And it works.
Man, Ben is a freaking genius!
Man does work beyond your comprehension =\= man is genius
NASA is full of shit.
GermanAnimeFans Think harder.
+GermanAnimeFans He's an excellent problem solver. he fixed it by going through all aspects of electronics and determine the problem which is an easy fix, but credit the man that used the methods and tools to find out rather than doing pointless shit. Respect you fucking Nazi. This is good for analyzing what you have.
+GermanAnimeFans "Your argument is invalid for having to resort to calling me a Nazi" It does not work like that.
Holy cow Ben yelled loud in my ears during that SF2 match :( BUT you guys have a new subscriber, I definitely enjoyed this series of videos, super interesting stuff!
20mins Rip headphone users
It sounded like gay porn
+Ben G Yeah, maybe if some dude was taking it up his tailpipe with a DRILL. lol...
Sounds like a high-performance engine revving up, lol
I might have an idea on how to run audio CDs on this unit. Notice on the front of the unit that there is a headphone jack and volume control. My turn-of-the-century CD drive for a PC had the exact same thing for playing audio CDs directly from the drive. Plus, there are CD controls on the top of the unit. You should be able to play an audio CD using the controls and the audio jack. On a related note, the Super CD BIOS does not recognize audio CDs, at least when run on no$sns.
Awesome stuff! Truly historical! Hopefully there will be a part 3 with some CD software 😃
I have an eighties Roland analog synth that was producing a static-like noise after being powered on for about ten minutes. It had leaky electrolytic capacitors everywhere on the voice boards. The substance was an orange powder (through hole capacitors). I replaced all voice board capacitors as well as the PSU capacitors and now works about as good as new. It's bad to have electronics stored away for years as the capacitors can dry up and become damaged.
laser mech is possibly dirty or failed laser - common for sony products
+Daniël's Tech & Music Channel that's probably normal. Most CD laser diodes are 780nm infrared, which your eye sees as a dpdim red light.
+r100curtaincall
Chances are, Ben has already seen numerous CD pickups at work, so if it appears dim to him, perhaps it's dimmer than it should be.
as a massive PlayStation fanboy, this is one of the coolest things I have ever seen... Ben Heck, you are the freaking man.
The only thing I'm kinda thinking about was about the part where "NOT DEFINED" was written. I wonder if you tried to wire it back to what it was with the caps fixed with the CD-ROM?
The wire botch he removed was installed to *disable* the CD-ROM because it didn't work properly and made constant mechanical noises. Why would he reattach this wire to disable it again after fixing the caps?
Reattaching the botch would do nothing but disable the CD-ROM again and make the cartridge detect a non-CD SuperFamicom.
Was it really disabling it though? The NOT DEFINED happens without a CD-ROM drive as well.
I would expect it to have "NO CD-ROM SYSTEM" or something?
> Was it really disabling it though?
Yes, Ben Heck explicitly mentions that.
> The NOT DEFINED happens without a CD-ROM drive as well.
No, without a CD-ROM drive it says "NO CD-ROM SYSTEM". At least from what I have seen with people running the ROM in an emulator.
> I would expect it to have "NO CD-ROM SYSTEM" or something?
It said exactly that *with* the botch wire attached. The "NOT DEFINED" message came *after* removing the botch but *before* fixing the caps which somewhat makes sense. Because the system is more or less in a state where the CD-ROM is not disabled but also not properly responding.
+genkiadrian probably for historical preservation. if they find an actual disk for the thing they can always have the wire removed. But as is, that wire is still part of that console. Its still part of its historical value.
The wire *is* currently removed and the system *works* with regular Super Famicom cartridges.
Again, the botch wire was attached to *disable* the CD-ROM unit so the system would behave like a normal SuperFamicom, that's all and would stop making the mechanical noises. After fixing the issues with the capacitors, there is no need to keep the wire attached. It does nothing but disabling the CD-ROM.
Whether the CD-ROM is disabled or not does not have any influence on the compatibility with regular SFC games which makes sense if you look at how the console was designed to be used in the first place: If owners wanted to play a CD-ROM game, they would have to insert the CD-ROM cartridge (which was required because it contained additional RAM). If owners wanted to play a regular SFC game, they could just pop in a normal game cartridge.
Simply amazing followup. Love how you got the sound and cdrom drive to work. Hopefully he finds a cd for it in the attic.
SMD caps from the early 90's are the devil.
Yeah. Most of the time when we worked on TVs that was the issue. I was screaming at him for not checking them first.
Fantastic episode! Wow, what a rare treat to work on such a legendary system.
I'm glade to hear they have not sold it yet this thing it priceless. It could be worth millions!
+Common_C3nts you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. This is worth millions. It's the reason why Playstation exists, and there's only ONE PROTOTYPE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.
+Common_C3nts - I think millions is being generous, but I also think 150k is a little low. Even if you're right that not many gamers have that kind of cash to burn, there are shrewd collectors out there who know that an item like this will appreciate in value over time.
Also, when it comes to prototypes like this,it's not what it IS that makes it special. We're looking at the physical manifestation of a business deal that shaped the gaming world as we know it today. It's a part of history.
Rich Geeks that have that kind of money, but you are talking 100,000 or a 150,000. goes to the highest bider!
I'm going to join in here because I have a wide knowledge of video games, I would price it at maybe 20-30k
Kyle Coulombe - You know, after thinking about it I think you're probably right. The Gold Nintendo World Championship cartridges went for about 10k a number of years ago and they're one of the most sought after collectibles in gaming, so 20-30k sounds reasonable.
Absolutely amazing! What a gift to us TH-camrs; we all were able to watch and enjoy this content.
+The Ben Heck Show Is there any way you could take a look at MetalJesusRocks US prototype 64DD they have the whole system and a disc that may contain prototype games they just need the test enabling (for lack of a better description) cartridge and they think it will work and we may get to see as yet unseen software titles.
Back in the day everyone in our gang used Commodore C=64 and Amiga 500.
We used to jokingly call consoles "NinTaris", a mashup of Nintendo/Atari.
Never thought I would actually see one in the wild. Until today. =)
Great stuff Ben & co.
RIP headphone users during the street fighter battle :D
Great two part video on the combi model. Wondering can you do a video on how the different region locks were implemented across the world , for different console's over the years.
is there gonna be a part 3?
I wish! I wanna see them get that CD drive working, and playing one of those homebrew titles.
Here, here. Finish fixing it and remove the yellowing. It ain't a done job until the job is done.
Well, that's basically what's this unit is, an snes with more sotage and the capacity of playing CD track. So you could throw more stuff in the game, more stuff happening in the system thanks to ram expension, and better sound 'cause you can have CD tracks playing
*****
We'd be able to see it running a disc. That's not too shabby as far as I'm concerned.
+Stick_Giraffe They could try to get that hacked version of Road Blasters working, the ROM that's running on the SD2SNES with full motion video.
Very cool 2 part episode, Ben! Thanks for the teardown and repair. Hope some game discs appear sometime.
Check the laser diode that's the likely issue
Thanks Ben Heck and Team! That was so entertaining and informative, I always imagined what that system would have looked like. To see it inside and out was such a neat experience!
what does that guy's I
Hong Kong
I think its Hello Kitty
Heck King.
lol
Or it could simply mean I love Heck & Karen.
awesome job guys! the Ben Heck show is one of the best channels on youtube. Top 2 or 3 for me. And this SNES Playstation was a real gem!
I kept cringing at your tweezers lol you should definitely invest in some ceramic tweezers. they're non conductive, so if you have any static in your body, you're not going to short anything on a board. another plus, they'll stay pointed and have a more stable grip.
STOPH3R01991 it's funny cause he has an iFixit kit and they make good tweezers so he should have/get those
Jason Zak I don't care what brand they are. metal is conductive to even static, ceramic isn't.
STOPH3R01991 I'm just saying I find it odd that he has all these iFixit tools but not the tweezers.
Also, the iFixit ones are completely ESD safe even though they're not ceramic.
You mentioned they might have a CD, did they try it?
Also, what would happen if you played a PlayStation 1 game in it?
Just curious because similar chips were used for both
The BIOS is still different though.
Double Ko on the rarest system on the planet my god
I guessed it was the caps as soon as I saw those SMD electrolytic capacitors in the first episode. =)
How? Because I've replaced a ton of those already repairing Turbo Duo's and Game Gears, and given the age of the prototype, it was likely made during the "Capacitor plague" of the early 90's. Should have replaced all of the caps to prevent future failures, but hey, what do I know? I'm just an EET college student that fixes and mods retro gaming consoles.
You could probably just try to burn a game rom file to a disc as raw data and see if it takes that.
Probably won't as many games are using cartridge hardware directly. Would probably need some kind of special header anyway.
You most likely need to reverse engineer the CD-Rom cartridge bios to see what it looks for when reading the disc and well, doing the thing it requires.
Daniël's Tech & Music Channel
Well, time to roll up some isos then.
I have to assume there is a missing rom cart or at the very least one was planned
ALitleBitSpecial Actually, there is the romcart, it's from where that bios thing comes from.
Man on a whim I said hey I'll take a peak at this video I am not one for tech (repair) but once I noticed what he was working on I said well I have to see this! Very awesome channel I'll defiantly be tuning in to watch more videos !
0 ohm resistor? that's like a calorie free energy drink, unless it means you get free calories but thermodynamics dunt allow that
.. they mainly used for a robots because they 0 ohms are exactly the same size as resistors. So robot can place then on the board.
+DoctLaser so then it isn't actually a resistor. I have a 0 centimeter meter stick if you want $1000 with free delivery since it's so light and doesn't take up much volume
It's a resistor-shaped conductor.
But resistors are all actually conductors, except with their conductivity lowered in a predictable way. So there is no principal difference between a 0-Ohm resistor and any other, except this one has lower resistance.
But of course any conductor has a positive, non-zero resistance; however, a 0-Ohm resistor has resistance same or lower than a board trace, so it doesn't matter, you can't even measure it because your probes will have a higher contact resistance than the 0-Ohm resistor itself.
Ohh en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-ohm_link
Radical Edwards > 0 ohm resistor? that's like a calorie free energy drink
Actually, it's more like the physical equivalent of a NOP instruction, which nearly every microprocessor supports -- NOP being short for "No OPeration" or "do nothing".
Why have an instruction that literally tells the processor to do nothing? Because it comes in handy if you're writing a program where you know you'll be adding new features and functionality later, and you want to set aside some unused space for future code. (It can also be used for timing-specific issues, since even a NOP instruction uses up a few clock cycles on a processor.)
Amazing work Ben! This is awesome! So glad to see the Cd Drive working as expected.
he just wanted to poke around inside that one of a kind system a bit everyone knows caps should be the first thing you check lol
Yep, I was practically screaming this at my TV the entire time.
To be fair, it was pretty much the first thing he did after putting the tombstoned resistor back in place.
Yup. You open a circuit board and see the caps first. Not hard.
I am SOOOO glad you got this working so much better! EXCELLENT!
Jesus Christ, first thing I'd do if I had this was deyellow it, this hurts to look at lol
This is incredible. Super cool to see that thing going again. Great job Ben!
Weezer's blue album! Good choice.
YOU TAKE YOUR CAR TO WORK
I'LL TAKE MY BOARD
AND WHEN YOU'RE OUT OF FUEL
I'M STILL AFLOAT
I'd love to follow the progress of this from now on and see if there are any prototype games?
You didn't think a company would sabotage a prototype before letting it leave the building?
Have never you ever dealt with a business before?
Dear Ben, You are a genius. Just found this channel and it's super interesting. Although I don't understand everything but still amazing journey :D
Omg your aren't using an anti static pad!!!!!!? Oh never mind. Lol.
Those things are mostly a scam anyway.
+a1rh3add Idk. I was just repeating what he said. Lol.
+a1rh3add there's all sorts of hype around how ESD will destroy CMOS chips, but unless you're shuffling around in wool socks on carpeting it's much ado about nothing. I work on circuits with CMOS IC's all the time with my bare hands and no static strap and never fried anything.
andynshelleyinurface plus how circuit boards are coated. You would need to be directly handling a bare soldered point in order to transfer any charge and even then it's doubtful you could cause any real damage.
So much excitement in this video! This must be what sports fans feel watching a tense match! And I realise how incredibly odd that would probably sound to them! :-)
did they try a ps1 game just for fun...
Wouldn't work and you don't even have to try it out.
kind of like putting a Saturn game into a PS1
ive put a saturn game into a ps1 before now as some had the soundtracks you could listen to streight from the game disc :P
gamemaniac85 No kinda like putting a PS1 game into a Sega CD.
The XA Test function in the cartridge menu may be able to play music from some Playstation games. Redbook Audio should also be supported, but there's no point in trying games that use that, because they tried an audio CD and it didn't work.
What a great video! Really cool watching someone, with such expertise in their filed, work on a project like this!
haha Leeeeerooooooooooooooooooooooooooyyy
hah ayyyyyyyyyyyyy lmaoooooooooo
What is the tiny screen and where to pick one up? Would be perfect for the new mini-NES when it's released for a neat little portable system.
AMAZING job, Ben! You are the BEST!
Absolutely beautiful,i wonder if this console could be recreated with the ability to play audio CDs or maybe CD-I games or even a PS1 with an SNES on top,i hope to see something like that in the future,it would definitely be interesting
You sir, are a miracle worker!! Great overview and wonderful video. Thank you for sharing
Any chance of getting in contact with the Super Boss Gaiden guys to try to get the game working on this via disc?
I wonder if you could rip the cd, replace the status program that starts up with a SNES rom, burn that to a new cd and see if that would then start up the SNES game from the CD rom!
just finding this years later, and holy smokes! THAT'S WHERE THAT THING ENDED UP!!!! I always wondered where that prototype went or what nintendo/sony did with it. what a wild story, I want like a whole documentary about what happened to that thing.
I wonder if that cd rom addon could play audio cd on it,since the snes sound chip outputs a 32khz signal, unless theres a chip inside wich is able to convert the cd sound into into a sound format the snes can understand, eventrough i suppose the cd rom and the snes have it's own but both the same sound chip inside it.
So the soundchip in the snes could be used for jigles and digitized bleeps while the other but identical soundchip inside the cd rom can be used for streamed audio at 32khz,or visa versa.
Or you can use both for streaming or sytheses sound.
Awesome work man you brought a dead machine back to life again,you've rejuvenated the old dog
incredible that you got sound working, when they first unveiled the console about a year ago i thought sound was not working due to the obvious fact that this was a prototype unit... price of this thing went through the roof.
@The Ben Heck Show have you ever tried to load a PS1 disc in that drive? I would be interested in a comparison between the disc system and the old first model of the sony playstation. Wonder if here are the same chips and layouts in there and sony saved dev time transforming this baby into the sony playstation disc-only thing.
Awesome!
What exactly is the problem with saying "analog audio" instead of "analog music"?
how did you learn so much about separate components and how they interact within a circuit
So damn cool. Be fun to see it completely working one day if someone can figure it out. The only thing cooler then this is the actual time period when this was supposed to come out. Great era that was.
Subscribed, this is some of the most interesting content on TH-cam.
Awesome job Ben! Glad to see this piece of history will be preserved right for many generations to come. :)
I have to give a factual statement/correction. The SNES did have region locking, but like the NES and the Famicom, the region locking is in the physical design of the cartridge (hence why games in that era didn't have a standard MSRP from the console manufacturer.)
Great work troubleshooting this, hopefully if a disc can't be found, some homebrew CD games could be put together for testing. Two things bugged me though; A) Being ESD safe is always a good idea (regardless of the weather), especially when troubleshooting a non-functional one-of-a-kind console B) It was nice you were able to make a usable power adapter in the shop, but if it's going to shows then buy the right adapter (maybe from Element 14?). Thanks!
I appreciate that Ben is so talented and can repair stuff like this, but some part of me feels like things like this shouldn't be messed with and left in a museum. This is a one of a kind piece of videogame history. I think it might be best to leave it as it was found, even if that means non-functional. Love your show.
That was very interesting, but I was missing some more info on the CD-ROM drive, especially if it is anything like a more modern drive interface-wise and could be replaced easily.
@benheck, is there any pictures of Bad caps in this case? I've seen the other non solid caps bad but never a solid cap.
God, the future is here. Thank you Heckman for showing us the way!
Very cool the company is giving away their hard worked projects (regarding the portable Spectrum)!