Taking apart, exploring and replicating consoles

[Dyno247365]

Just a couple days ago my college friend introduced me to this funny ass web series called Angry Video Game Nerd by cinemassacre.com and Screw Attack. He showcases the games and systems that have been gone but not forgotten. When I saw my 32x expansion system on there I was thinking 2 things, "damn this is old now??" and "damn the graphics were that bad??". I play my friend's PS3 now so I'm very well adapted to every age in gaming. I decided to go home for the weekend and find all my old systems, why? to find out how they tick, to take it apart, put it back together again. Maybe if it's easy enough now in 2007, relicate the system with brand new parts.

I'm no electronics soldiering/circutry expert, but I write computer programs at a university. How hard could this be to learn hardware? It's all for my research to become a useful game programmer.

So here's a list of systems and I want you the readers to select probably the best one to take apart, whether it's been done before or even you did it and could help me understand how. Maybe there's books to doing this but anyway here's the list:

Nintendo
Sega Master System
Sega Genesis 16Bit
Sega 32x
Game Gear
Sega Saturn
Nintendo 64
Sony Playstation
Sega Dreamcast

Traded away super nes and my sister has ps2. These left are all in very good condition.

[Dyno247365]

Is it that you guys think it's too difficult? The way I see it is that with time, graphics got better, gameplay got better, memory use and storage got better. Sound got better too. I want to start with how 8 bit processing became 16 bit processing, how synthesized midi sounds became real sounds, and how the machines of yesterday were built. If it's as old as the very first nintendo, I'm sure I can see how they put it together. It's like taking apart a PS3 in 2027, get my point?

[drunken monkey]

Pointless excercise unless you know what you're looking at, what was available then and why they used particular parts over others. Even if you know what the parts are, what would that tell you?
If you want to learn these things, first point of call would be to get a good book on electronics because from the sounds of things, you aint too hot on this.
I also wouldn't start with a console.
Best bet would be to look at an old BASIC machine (or maybe something newer and better...) and see what it is, how it does it and it's limitations. From that you will learn why and how, consoles were "better". Hint, part of it is down to advantages of ROM catridges over the old tape storage.
Graphics and memory and sound get better as a result of the increase of memory and processing. What's the mystery here?
The question of how is answered by looking at the development of technology in general. Looking at consoles isn't looking for an answer, it's looking at the result of something else's development.
i.e consoles improved because technology did.

Put it this way.
My cousin programmed what was essentially mario land and arkanoid onto his old scientific calculator when he was doing his a-levels. That was 5 years ago.
My other cousin's boyfriend at the time was part of the team that was developing AI for Hasbro for the Xbox which was at the beginning of their work, 3 pcs hooked together before they got a transparent one from Microsoft.

By the way, you mentioned something about rebuilding them using new technology. Short answer, you're sitting in front of it already. Google console emulators.

[Knifeblade]

Meh, find an old Cobol or Fortran, now that would be a challenge!!!!!!!

[Dyno247365]

Originally Posted by Knifeblade_03

Meh, find an old Cobol or Fortran, now that would be a challenge!!!!!!!

Basic, Cobol and Fortran are all languages. Are there physical boxes that I don't know about??

[drunken monkey]

Sorry, for me, BASIC is synonymous with the old BBC machines. I figured that people that know Basic would share that.

[Dyno247365]

Originally Posted by drunken monkey

Sorry, for me, BASIC is synonymous with the old BBC machines. I figured that people that know Basic would share that.

I'm still waiting for the guy that does. And Cobol and Fortran are DEFINITELY languages, not physical machines. Offtopic but I know HTML, Visual Basic, Javascript, C++, while currently learning C, Assembly and Machine Language. Now that that's out of the way, we are solely talking about machines.

Yo Drunken, Where would I find this BBC machine you're talking about? Also, How is this gonna help me learn how game systems work?

[drunken monkey]

no idea where you'd find them these days, especially in the states.
You can write basic games using BASIC.....
As I said before, my cousin used to program things like pong, arkanoid and the oooold mario game onto his scientific calculator when he was 18 (the calculators use a language that is very similar to BASIC). I just gave BASIC as an example because that was what I learnt on waaaaay back. You don't need to learn BASIC but it is a very simple and well, basic language. To program graphics, you have to locate and assign a property to every pixel. To draw a character takes ages and a lot of planning if you want to have detail. To animate him, you have to draw, delete and redraw those pixels for every onscreen movement. All this takes memory and processing power. Which is why I would say this is a pointless question. Consoles got better because technology and manufacturing processess got better. 16bit processors became 32 bit processors. tape got replaced by rom cartridges and later, cds and dvds. At the end of the day, it's all about the memory available, the speed at which you can process and the amount of storage you have on your medium.

For some reason, you seem to think that a console is something other than a computer with a specific task. Which is why I said initially that this is a pointless exercise. Your pc is a games console made using modern parts.

[Gohan Ryu]

Replicating the machines is kind of going backwards since the hardware on a modern PC is much better and faster than those old consoles. And you can use software to emulate the hardware.

These sites used javascript:
http://www.everyvideogame.com/
http://www.1980-games.com/us/