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PlayStation

The PlayStation (Japanese:プレイステーション) 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 attempted, in federal court, to obtain an injunction against the release of the PlayStation. The federal Judge presiding over the case denied the injunction.

It was popular and spawned the so-called "PlayStation Generation". Among many other games, the PlayStation is well known for the Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Tekken, Ridge Racer, wipEout, Gran Turismo and Crash Bandicoot series of games. Sony now makes a compatible console in a smaller (and curvier) case, called the PSOne. It added the capability to play CDs containing music. The original PlayStation was often been abbreviated as the PSX, until in 2003 when the PlayStation Extreme was introduced that includes a DVD burner, a hard drive, and digital video recorder. The PlayStation is now officially abbreviated as the "PS1" or "PSOne," although many people still abbreviate it "PSX".

As of 18 May 2004, Sony has shipped 100 million Playstation and PSOne Consoles throughout the world. As of March 2004, there were 7,300 software titles available with cumulative software shipments of 949 million.

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. Similar to the emulators of today, the PlayStation 2 can emulate PlayStation games and can even alter certain factors to make them run better. The PlayStation 2 is based on a custom processor, known as the Emotion Engine, that Sony developed.

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 unauthorized 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 2006. The PlayStation 3 appears to be the first game console to use grid computing technology.

The PlayStation Portable is a handheld Playstation for on-the-go gaming. The portable device will be available in late 2004.

The PlayStation has historical links to an abortive CD-ROM add-on to the SNES, which would have been able to include large multimedia. For various reasons, including the failure of the Sega CD, that project was cancelled.

Table of contents

1 Specifications 1.1 Main CPU 1.2 Geometry Transfer Engine 1.3 Data Decompression Engine 1.4 Graphics Processing Unit 1.5 Sound 1.6 Memory 1.7 CD-Rom 2 External links

Specifications

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/s
• Instruction Cache 4 KB
• Data Cache 1 KB

• Operating Performance of 66 MIPS
• 1.5 Million Flat-Shaded Polygons per second
• 500,000 texture mapped and light-sourced polygons per second

• Compatible with MPEG1 and H.261 files
• Operating Performance of 80 MIPS
• Directly connected to CPU Bus

• 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

• 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

• Main RAM: 1.5 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

External links

• Console Database - Sony PlayStation info
• Unofficial Sony PlayStation FAQ by James Dunford
• Technical Specification
• PlayStation Codes and Hints
• Game Infowire story on 100 million shipments
• Playstation 3 News and Information
• Playstation 3 News, Rumours and Pictures