We first saw it in July last year, and four months later its operation was confirmed. Now it's time to dismantle each of its pieces. The hybrid between Super Nintendo and PlayStation that took the web by storm reached Ben Heck, who, in addition to carrying out a complete teardown of the system, will also try to repair it. Apparently, the hybrid's latest adventure in Hong Kong caused some technical issues that left it out of combat…
The rumors were many—weak, lost whispers that acquired legendary status on enthusiast forums. Sony and Nintendo, enemies from every angle, collaborating on the development of a console. Dan Diebold and his father Terry not only told the story of that console, but also published images of it after it had sat in a box for years. “Fake!” “Photoshop!” “Do you also have Half-Life 3?” were some of the criticisms. But the console exists—it was dismantled, traveled to Hong Kong, and even ran a few Super Nintendo titles. Unfortunately, electronics are more delicate than they appear, especially when we consider capacitors twenty years old, weakening solder joints, and the fact that it is a prototype. That's when Ben Heck appears—a modder and DIYer at heart, with dozens of extreme modifications to his name. What's the plan? First step: dismantle the hybrid...
Inside the Prototype
Once the lower shielding is removed, there is no doubt that the console is a prototype. At first glance, you can see some very large jumper wires over surface-mounted components. This kind of adjustment is made to compensate for errors in the PCB design, and if my eyes don't deceive me, there are five or six of them. Ben Heck guided himself at every step with the technical data of the integrated chips to better understand the function of the components and why those bridges are there. Most of the chips were produced by Sony, which reinforces the theory behind the add-on optical drive intended for the original Super Famicom, but there is another manufacturer present in this prototype: none other than NEC, with small SRAM modules.
The Cartridge and the SFX-100
Another fact to interpret is that the cartridge that comes with the console—apparently labeled 'demo'—actually has 256 kilobytes of RAM. The “Super Nintendo section” of the hybrid has its own memory, and cartridges don't need anything extra because they are stored in ROM and run from it, but when reading data from a CD, they need to be dumped to RAM, so the cartridge becomes a mandatory element in the console's optical system. The cartridge also has a removable ROM chip (probably to be programmed and then reinstalled in its socket) and what appears to be a region lock.
Ben Heck spends the last minutes of the video comparing the SFX-100 (which we could consider the “official name” of the prototype, since it repeats several times inside) with other similar systems of the same era, like the Sega CD. In essence, it is the hardware of a Super Nintendo with an optical reader on top. The entire audio system is a bit more advanced, but the “Play Station section” adds nothing in terms of graphics processing or audio quality. In short, the hybrid wouldn't have been able to surpass the Sega CD. The repair? In part 2.
