We live in the golden age of retro console modding. If you have an old Game Boy Advance lying around, it’s possible to give it new life with aftermarket parts like an IPS display and USB-C charging. But as amazing as those mods are, most still require an original GBA motherboard with a working processor and RAM. That’s what makes YouTuber Secret Hobbyist’s PlayStation hybrid so awesome. For the past few months, they have been working on designing, prototyping, and building the ultimate PlayStation PCB, incorporating the best parts of various model revisions while adding some modern features.
The specific motherboards that Secret Hobbyist’s PCB pulls parts from are the PM-41v2 and PU18, the former being a PSone board while the latter is taken from a “fat” model. The decision to include parts from different PlayStation variants makes a lot of sense if you know anything about the history of the console. Between the release of the PlayStation in 1994 and the smaller PSOne in 2000, Sony made several modifications to the original design to address hardware problems and for cost savings.
One component you can find on older models, but not on the PSOne, is an Asahi Kasi-made digital-to-analog audio converter (DAC). Over the years, this DAC has gained a certain degree of popularity among audiophiles, with some early models such as the SCPH-1000 and SCPH-3000 being particularly sought after as CD players because they also came with RCA outputs, a feature that Sony removed from later revisions. As for the PU18, it has a part that makes it compatible with the X Station, a CD replacement that allows a modified PlayStation to read games from a microSD card.
From the PSOne, Secret Hobbyist derived the console’s GPU and CPU, which are more power efficient than its bigger siblings. Finally, he included an FPGA chip from the Hispeedido mod kit to enable his hybrid PlayStation to output video over HDMI.
The end result is a custom PCB that’s even smaller than the PSOne’s PM-41 v2, draws less than two watts of power, and works with modern displays. That power draw means hybrid PlayStations can be engineered to be handheld. The Secret Hobbyist still hasn’t designed an enclosure for his new Frankenstein console, but judging by the comments on his video, people are excited to see the end result. In the meantime, be sure to check out the full video to learn more about the project and see some incredible soldering work.
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