PlayStation (1995)
The PlayStation was Sony’s first venture into the console market. It uses CDs as its game format and is a 32-bit system. On the 31st of March 2005 the PlayStation and PSOne sold 102.49 million units making it the first console to pass the 100 million mark. The PlayStation was originally designed to be a CD-ROM add on for the Super Nintendo (SNES) called the SNES-CD. However plans for the SNES-CD were scrapped by Nintendo after Nintendo discovered that the contract signed between the two companies would give Sony complete control over games released on the SNES-CD. Sony was angry when they heard about the deal being cancelled and developed the PlayStation to try and rival Nintendo in the video games market. By 1992 Sony had struck a deal with Nintendo to allow the PlayStation to have a SNES cartridge port. In 1993 Sony reworked the PlayStation and dropped SNES support. The PlayStation was a very successful console and production lasted 11 years when it ceased in 2006. The PlayStation used 1MB Memory cards to store save games and had 2 controller and memory card ports on the front of the system. Certain models of the PlayStation also have a serial port at the back of the system. Some people had problems with overheating on early models of PlayStation hardware. This was caused by poorly placed vents on the system. Later on in the PlayStations life Sony released two new controllers, the Analog controller and the Dual Shock controller. The analog controller added two control sticks and the Dual Shock controller added the analog sticks and a rumble function to the controller. The PlayStation was very successful worldwide and is widely believed to have helped move consoles to the optical disc standard.
Technical Specs
Central processing unit - MIPS R3000A-compatible (R3051) 32bit RISC chip running at 33.8688 MHz
Graphics processing unit
Features:
Maximum of 16.7 million colors (24-bit color depth)
Resolutions from 256×224 to 640×480
Sound processing unit - 24 channels and up to 44.1 kHz sampling rate
Memory - Main RAM: 2 MB Video RAM: 1 MB
CD-ROM drive - 2x, with a maximum data throughput of 300 KB/s
Accessories
Sony Official Memory Card
The Memory card allows you to save your game and replays. The memory card can store up to 1MB of save game data.
Sony Official Multitap
The Multitap allows you to connect up to four controllers and memory cards to your PlayStation at once.
Also compatible with: