A few years back father and son Terry and Dan Diebold discovered the holy grail of game collecting: The Nintendo-Sony Play Station, the prototype for the Sony-made SNES/CD hybrid console that went down in flames in the early 90s, eventually spawning the Nintendo-Sony rivalry and the entire Playstation family and brand as we know it. The Diebolds acquired this unique piece during a blind company auction, basically as part of a box of miscellaneous junk.
The SNES aspect of the machine worked for a time, but eventually failed. What were the Diebolds to do? Well, they contacted Benjamin Heckendorn, better known as Ben Heck. A legend in his own right, Ben Heck is known for his incredible technical skill and the many portable homebrew consoles he's fashioned over the years. If anyone could fix the Play Station, it was him.
Ben proceeds to disassemble this piece of history, painstakingly catalog its various components, compare it to legacy consoles and finally, repair it. He even gets the once-botched CD drive to spin up. It's just a shame an SNES CD game was never developed to play on this console.
If you're a retro enthusiast or electronics hobbyist, I definitely recommend checking out this two-part exploration of obscure gaming history.
