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The PlayStation is a video game console produced by Sony in the 1990s; it
was launched in Japan on December 3, 1994 and in the USA on September 9,
1995. It was the console that angered Nintendo who subsequently filed a
lawsuit claiming breach of contract and attemped, in federal court, to
obtain an injunction against the release of the PlayStation but the federal
Judge presiding over the case denied the injunction. It was popular and
spawned the so-called "PlayStation Generation". Among other games, the
PlayStation is well known for the Tomb Raider series of games. Sony now make
a compatible console in a smaller (and curvier) case called the PSOne. The
original PlayStation was often been abbreviated as the PSX, until in 2003
when the Playstation Extreme was introduced that will include a DVD burner,
a hard drive, and digital video recorder. It is now abbreviated PS1 or PSOne.
Sony's successor to the PlayStation is the more powerful PlayStation 2
and is largely compatible in the sense that it can play most PlayStation
games unmodified. This is done by embedding the most important parts of the
PSOne inside the PlayStation 2 design, so two systems can be provided for
the price of one. The PlayStation 2 is based on a custom processor Sony
developed known as the Emotion Engine.
A version of the PlayStation called the Net Yaroze was also produced. It
is more expensive than the original PlayStation, coloured black instead of
the usual grey, and most importantly, came with tools and instructions that
allowed a user to be able to program PlayStation games and applications
without the need for a full developers suite (which could cost many times
the amount of a PlayStation). However, the Net Yaroze lacks many of the
features the full developers suite provides.
The installation of a modchip allows PlayStation's capabilities to be
expanded. This allows unauthorised copies of games to be played, but it also
allows the playing of games from other countries.
The next generation of the PlayStation is known as PlayStation 3 and
expected to be launched in 2005. The PlayStation 3 appears to be the first
game console to use grid computing technology.
The PlayStation has historical links to an abortive CD-ROM add on to the
SNES which would be able to include large multimedia. For various reasons
including the failure of the Sega CD, this project was cancelled.
Specifications
Main CPU
R3000A 32bit RISC chip running at 33.8688MHz
This is manufactured by LSI Logic Corp with technology licensed from SGI.
It also contains in the same chip the Geometry Transfer Engine and the Data
Decompression Engine
Features:
- Operating Performance of 30 MIPS
- Bus Bandwidth 132 Mb/sec
- Instruction Cache 4 KB
- Data Cache 1 KB
Geometry Transfer Engine
- Operating Performance of 66 MIPS
- 1.5 Million Flat-Shaded Polygons per second
- 500,000 texture mapped and light-sourced polygons per second
Data Decompression Engine
- Compatible with MPEG1 and H.261 files
- Operating Performance of 80 MIPS
- Directly connected to CPU Bus
Graphics Processing Unit
- Maximum of 16.7 Million Colours
- Can handle resolutions from 256x224 to 740x480
- Has an adjustable frame buffer
- Unlimited Colour Lookup Tables
- Maximum of 4000 8x8 pixel sprites with individual scaling and rotation
- Can handle simultaneous backgrounds (for parallax scrolling)
- Can do Flat or Gouraud shading, and texture mapping
Sound
- Can handle ADPCM sources with up to 24 channels and up to 44.1 kHz
sampling rate
- Could perform digital effects including:
- Pitch Modulation
- Envelope
- Looping
- Digital Reverb
- Could handle up to 512Kb of sampled waveforms
- Supports MIDI instruments
- PC file name format: .PSF
Memory
- Main RAM: 2 Megabytes
- Video RAM: 1 Megabyte
- Sound RAM: 512 Kilobytes
- CD-Rom Buffer: 32 Kilobytes
- Operating System ROM: 512 Kilobytes
- PlayStation Memory Cards had 128 Kilobytes of space in an EEPROM
CD-Rom
- Two Speed, with a maximum data throughput of 300KB/sec
- XA Compliant
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