Slashdot Mirror
PSP Opened up and Exposed
Pascal writes "After delivering some classic first impressions of the PSP last Tuesday, including some interesting loading time tests, the happy thugs at Lik Sang have now respected their tradition by opening up the PlayStation Portable. If you ever wanted to know how Sony puts such a powerful hardware inside such a small casing, there is a huge picture gallery of the guts over at Lik-Sang.com"
"I feel so naked!" -- PSP
fp maybe?
If you view the photos in reverse you can see him put it back together.
1 comment, and their server is down already?
I think we can safely say the PSP sports graphics and games equal or greater than what the Nintendo DS offers.
However, the deciding factor for many would-be buyers (myself included) is still the battery life, and not one article says anything about it.
Bored? Visit my exciting counter page!
How is the battery life in reality? Not any of sony's specs. Is it another GameGear/Nomad or will it be a gba?
It looks like that antenna attached to the wireless chip can be removed, I wonder how long it'll be before we can wardrive with a PSP?
I assumed the DS would tank since most people who like handhelds already own an SP, and the DS just seemed sort of awkward and gimmicky to me. But lo and behold, it's actually selling pretty well. So I'm just going to bite my tongue and let what happens with the PSP happen. I would imagine it would not sell that well since it is high-priced and faces a market that is already heavy in Nintendo handhelds (especially since it will come after the holidays and the new DS entry)...but what do I know?
As per usual with the release of a new console we are going to see a huge price hike in the first few months... who can be that desperate to get there hands on the system they are willing to pay a few multiples of its actual value. It will come out internationally before long so we won't have to wait to long and lets face it the games shipping at lunch will not be the ones remembered on the system.
In one of those pictures, they show a Sharp brand LCD display.. its actually a medium sized display too.. how are they selling these for almost less than just the display costs(I would think anyway..)
The PSP is out now...in Japan. No really - it is actually out now!
I guess he didn't read the warning:
"WARNING: DO NOT OPEN
Contains highly toxic and carcinogenic (>15%) components [...]"
"I tell ya, back in my day, when you linked to a picture gallery from the Slashdot homepage then you went down hard, you stayed down hard, and you damn well liked it. Nowadays, these servers just take it on the chin like it means nothing to them. That's just not proper or respectful. It reminds me of the time when..."
Seriously though, kudos to the guys at lik-sang.com for having not folded like a house of cards in a hurricane as soon as this story was posted here. I always wonder when people take apart these toys if they ever manage to put them back together in anything like working order.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I'm really starting to reconsider buying a PSP now with the support for MP3/MP4 playback as the previous article (there's a link on the website) suggests. Although I don't know much about Sony's Memory stick format, how much data can be held on one stick? I'm guessing there are sizes such as flash drives right?
I'm also considering buying one of these to charge the thing if it'll work properly. Will need to look into this.
I'm f#$king magic!
Looks like Sony is jumping on the iPod's white earbud bandwagon.
I thought someone is publicizing Paint Shop Pro crack ;)
$450-$600 for the value pack? I guess some people have to have the latest and greatest I guess.
This is a pretty cool little device though. MP3 playback and JPEG support should allow for minutes or even hours of quality jackage.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
got some solder anyone?
A format that doesn't travel well, long load times, a giagantic screen (prone to scratching in backpacks?) and short-ass battery life. This isn't aimed at the mobile gaming crowd, it's aimed at the "Gotta have the latest device" crowd. The kind of people that own mobile phones to play java games, music, light up dark alley ways but never actually make any calls on the damn things.
Nice to see other people looking at the portable market, shame Sony got it so very, very wrong.
-Sony has won the adult part of the portables market with its sleek styling and functionality... question is, is there even an adult market for these things to begin with?
-Do we need yet another proprietary media format? When can we burn on it? When can we buy it?
-Are audiences really going to want to buy their media on a proprietary format when a portable DVD player is so cheap these days, and works with your home disks? Saying that smaller is better was important in the 80s... I don't think that holds today. Matter of fact, is anyone going to buy a movie on this thing? Will they be offering anything besides FF:The Spirits Within and Akira for the otaku?
-The interactivity of the DS is well known, the interactivity of the PSP not so much, why?
-It's obvious that Nintendo knows where it is going, but I am not so sure about this. Their primary point is that it is "sleek." I am not sure that being sleek is my main desire to having a portable.
-I am not really excited about a disk drive anything in my carry around equipment. It may be an unfounded fear these days, but still, it is there.
From what I have seen from both Nintendo and Sony, they are trying to make a quantam leap in the portables market, and right now, my money is on Nintendo. Still, they need to do something before I buy either one. They both have side features, but shiny and features is a seriously Japanese thing, and Nintendo has held its own with their focus. So I go with 'Tendo.
After all, who uses their Xbox to play movies? Anyone? Who will use their PSP to play the ten songs that their memory stick can hold or look at digital pictures when the camera already has a screen, and shows them without running it through a PC? Picto-chat? Honestly Nintendo, if you are close enough to picto chat you are close enough to chat for real. That is more fun.
Some of these things on both machines make no sense. Maybe they make sense if you are Japanese. I don't know what some of these things are for.
The Lik Sang crew actually wore chirurgical gloves during the whole
WTF?
For a the low price of $967.18 you can buy it now!
Actually it looks like UMD is a no show so far:Meanwhile Sony has indicated that they will not be releasing a UMD burner, and I've heard it reported that traditional minidiscs are the wrong size for and not usable in the PSP's UMD player, so it looks like memory sticks are your only option if you want to use media on the PSP.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Does anyone know what it is using for a cpu?
Any chance of running something interesting on it (other than games) ?
On eBay, only 2 weeks ago I found a Japanese importer who had several PSP units to sell (pre-releases that would be shipped for 12/12). I guess he figured the demand would be huge and he would make big profit, so he started the bid at $0 to get attention. It turned out, most people had never even heard of PSP selling yet and thought it was a scam (many questions to the seller at the bottom of the auction included, "Are you selling a link?" "Why are you selling this 3-4 months before the release?." Or possibly people saw the retail value of $200-250 and felt if they paid more they would be getting ripped-off.
;)
Long story short, I managed to snag me one for just over $200US (and $25US shipping to Canada, which I find is fairly reasonable). The same unit on eBay as we speak is going for $600-$700US. I guess it pays to find these things out early
Even retailers, such as Lik-Sang are taking advantage of the demand by jacking up prices. They claim it is "out of their control," although Sony still claims to lose $250US on each unit (eep).
A couple weeks ago before I managed to snag the eBay auction, I had going around trying to find short pre-order lines (or finding unethical ways of cutting in line). Everyone has their price, right? After several emails back and forth from goldenshop, I found Ronald's price was $400US for the value pack. I told him I was interested, only because it may have been my only chance to get a unit before Christmas. We agreed upon $29 shipping, and things seemed to be settled. Well, that was until yesterday. I guess Ronald got quite a few of these "deals" once customers found out how limited the supply was. His "Buy-It-Now" price (so to speak), is now US$635 (followed again with the "this price is beyond our control" line). I immediately refused the offer. Only minutes later he responds back, telling me if I wait a bit, he might lower it. It sounds like a reverse-eBay method, starting high, and seeing how low he has to go before he can sell them all. Not a bad idea at all, but why not just auction them on eBay? For a slightly lower price, for around $584, you can get the Standard Pack from success-hk.
If you don't mind waiting a bit, I highly recommend play-asia. Even with all the pre-order hype, they had a very reasonable price (around retail). When they found they were accepting more orders than they could handle, they promptly closed their pre-order lines. They also had the very first review of the PSP, even though it was a bit stingy on many details.
I may get modded offtopic for this, but I noticed that some people who work in toystores and gameshops have been hoarding PSP's to sell on eBay.
I was in a KayBee Toys yesterday at the local mall. The lady in front of me asked about getting a PSP and the guy working the counter said there was a great shortage and that they were going for over $500 on eBay. He said he was glad that he grabbed the 2 he got the moment they came in and is thinking about selling them for big bucks eBay because he knows that people will pay it.
I sooo wanted to knock this guy upside his head for being like that, but what are ya gonna do?
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
Lik-sang was quoting extortion prices. The MSRP is $250 roughly. That what you should expect to pay when there is no longer a blackmarket for these things.
Tell me the gameboy and the new DS don't use proprietary formats... they all look pretty damn proprietary to me. Not that it matters to me, since I only expect to be playing games off that format that I buy...just as one would expect on any other system, proprietary format or not.
The Gameboy use cartridges, which are not a proprietary format, and the DS uses flash cards, which are also not proprietary. The Gamecube on the other hand uses a proprietary game disc of some kind.
While the PSP has better hardware, the Nintendo DS has:
:)
1) Better battery life (10 hours vs 4 hours in game)
2) Game cards (Who wants to spend extra money on a memory card, and who wants to carry a bunch of disks in their pocket? I perfer to be able to save to the game media)
3) Touch screen. Without joysticks, how can you possibly play FPS on the PSP? The DS has the touch screen, which works like a mouse on Metroid Prime: Hunters (near-perfect control- I love the touch screen).
4) Cost. DS is $150, PSP is $200. Add to that the cost of the memory stick ($30 minimum) to the PSP, and the fact that an extra battery costs $50 (to equal the DS's battery life), means you get a much cheaper system with the DS.
5) Stability. That exposed screen must be very easy to damage. The flip-open DS design is a good protection. Plus, the PSP has a CD drive, you know how easy it is for those to skip with a little bump, and break with a good drop.
6) Nintendo games rule
Just my opinion. I've done some research into the topic.
So...which format are these cartridges then ? I never heard of anyone using those cartidges for anything else than gameboys...right ? Sounds pretty proprietary to me....
Cartridges have been used forever, the size of cartridge may have changed, but that's about all. Just because no one else uses them now doesn't mean it's proprietary. For it to be proprietary the company has to own the patent for the format, as Sony does with UMD's and Nintendo does with their Gamecube discs.
Magic smoke is pretty harmless except that it smells very bad to the females of the human species and drives them away. Check your love live to see if you removed the magic smoke screws and forgot to put them back in.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I agree with you on the PSP having equal or better graphics but so far there hasn't been much to impress me in the game division. Demos just don't cut it for me and so far that seems to be the best they have to show.
You have a much more restrictive definition of proprietary than I do. To me, there is still no difference between the gameboy cartridges and the sony UMD disks - both companies are controlling the distribution of that media and what goes on it, and no one else is using it for anything else. So it always makes me wonder why anyone complains about Sonys format being proprietary, when it isn't any more proprietary than most other consoles....
The DS flashcarts are not a media format the way the UMD is.
Meanwhile, since they're just memory, GBA flash memory cartriges can be and are manufactured by third parties, and many of these flashcarts work on the DS. Almost certainly third parties will be making available flash memory versions of the DS thing before too long.
Nintendo has had patents on their cartridge form factor since the NES days, in addition to the connector arrangement, etc. That's how they were successfully able to sue Tengen for making NES-compatible games without paying license fees. Every single format we have today is proprietary, including DVD, Compact Flash, CD, everything. The only difference is who's getting your license fees.
I wish everyone would stop beating around the bush and just say "I'm not going to buy it because I can't pirate games". Given the fact that high-capacity Memory Stick Duo media is already starting to appear and will be gentler on the battery when playing video than using the UMD drive the only reason to want writable media is game piracy.
If people can run Linux on a iPod then a powerfull system like this should be a cakewalk.
It will be more intresting to see what sony will have to say about it. They did put Linux officially on their big console. There is apparently some support for running games from memory sticks. Is sony going to allow or even encourage home grown software?
On the one hand they have a locked in control of the data media. Extra sales of memory sticks couldn't hurt. On the other hand sony is also a content company not exactly desiring to encourage people to have a free reign with their hardware.
With portable video players coming out now it will be intresting to see where peoples money is going to go. Will the PSP be able to play that tv show you recorded? Will the other video players be able to do something more?
Does anyone care? If you want to run stuff on a handheld buy a zaurus!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Well if it isn't proprietary, where is the standard defined then? Where can I find pinouts, electrical specifications, mechanical diagrams, protocol info for Nintendo cartridges?
Nintendo has those really cool usb carts for piracy, that for me, is winning them the war.
:(
And I really wanted to buy those nice Psp games
For god's sake, look at the specs. This is. not. a. P. S. One.
:8MB(eDRAM) :2.6GB/sec I-Cache, D-Cache
:2MB(eDRAM) :5.3GB/sec :664 M pixels/sec /sec(T&L)
/sec
PSP CPU CORE
MIPS R4000 32bit Core 128bit Bus
1 - 333MHz @ 1.2V Main Memory
Bus Bandwidth
FPU, VFPU (Vector Unit) @ 2.6GFlops
3D-CG Extended Instructions
PSP Media Engine
MIPS R4000 32bit Core 128bit Bus
1 - 333MHz @ 1.2V Sub Memory:2MB(eDRAM) @ 2.6GB/sec I-Cache, D-Cache
90nm CMOS
PSP Graphics Core 1
3D Curved Surface + 3D Polygon
Compressed Texture
Hardware Clipping, Morphing, Bone(8)
Hardware Tessellator
Bezier, B-Spline(NURBS)
ex 4x4, 16x16, 64x64 sub-division
PSP Graphics Core 2
'Rendering Engine' + 'Surface Engine'
256bit Bus, 1-166 MHz @ 1.2V
VRAM
Bus Bandwidth
Pixel Fill Rate
max 33 M polygon
24bit Full Color:RGBA
PSP Sound Core: VME
Reconfigurable DSPs
128bit Bus
166MHz @1.2V
5 Giga Operations
CODEC
3D Sound, Multi-Channel
Synthesizer, Effecter, etc
AVC Decoder
AVC(H.264) Decoder
Main Profile
Baseline Profile
@Level1,Level2,Level3
2Hours(High Quality) - DVD movie
4Hours(Standard Quality) - CS Digital
I/O
USB 2.0
Memory Stick
Extension Port(reserved)
Stereo Head phone Out
Communication
Wireless LAN (i802.11)
IrDA
USB 2.0
Actually, for most prospective handheld customers, battery life is not going to be the deciding factor if they're thinking "Should I get a Nintendo DS or a Sony PSP?" For most people, the deciding factor is the fact that the DS is available right now (sort of) with 400,000 more units on the way. It's already been revealed that there will be a shortage of PSP systems at launch, which isn't going to happen in America for another month or so anyway. This gives the DS a nearly 1,000,000 unit head start, with the PSP starting slow anyway.
I can say with strong certainty that the Nintendo DS will outperform the Sony PSP in terms of sales until at least 2nd Quarter 2005, when the second batch of PSPs will hit the market, and probably for a good time after that, simply because there will be more units available.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
They successfully sued Tengen based on some issues having to do with the Nintendo logo on cartridge insertion/startup, IIRC, not on physical and electrical layout of the cartridge.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
where piracy is GOOD and great and companies are evil for enforcing their copyrights...
Unless it's GPL licensed material, then they're GOOD and GREAT and people are evil for violating the GPL.
the answer to that is "by taking out the battery."
I thought it was against JASC's EULA to reverse engineer Paint Shop Pro. ;)
On the other hand, being the first to market is not an indicator of actual success. The last Sega system was out for nearly a year (I think) before PS2 and yet the PS2 basically helped give it an early demise.
Given the fact that high-capacity Memory Stick Duo media is already starting to appear and will be gentler on the battery when playing video than using the UMD drive the only reason to want writable media is game piracy.
Except that a 512 MB Memory Stick Duo costs $130, and a DVD-R costs 40 cents.
The PSP has a perfectly fine analog joystick.
- re lease8.jpg
http://forum.lik-sang.com/other/psp-release/psp
That's not a little extended speaker below the D-pad. That's the analog stick. First handheld to ever have an analog stick (the 8-way DPAD on the NGPC doesn't count), and you shirk it for that!
This thing is going to fail because it goes from 2/3 to 1/3 charge in 2 hours, not because it doesn't have a joystick. Sheesh.
I think you also underestimate the Sony fanbois who don't know what gaming is about. They'll carry the PSP for good couple of years. Sony might have something better by then. They've shown they have no problem pumping and dumping stuff to distract people (PS2 vs. Dreamcast).
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Bingo. For a moment I was considering importing a PSP but then I remembered the shortage and that there wpould be no way in hell I'd get one within the next few months I went with the DS (import as well because I'm European).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Wonder if they'll be hearing from apple about the clickwheelish headphone audio control design.
Most unlicensed game companies made their games by making their cartridges deliver little shocks to the 10NES chip in the NES console; that caused the console's 10NES to reboot, and because the system didn't receive any "locking" command from the 10NES it goes ahead and launches the game.
Tengen instead looked up Nintendo's patents on the 10NES chips and used it to make their own 10NES chips, with illegally-copied copyrighted Nitnendo software to run on their bootleg 10NES chips. (As an aside, it's worth noting that they got this information by lying; they told the clerks at the appropriate government offices that they were in the middle of a lawsuit with Nintendo, and that they needed the hardware schematics and software in order to defend themselves.)
So it's no surprise that Nintendo sued, and won. Tengen were pretty clearly in the wrong. This information is taken from the account in David Sheff's excellent book Game Over, for reference.
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
No way the original PS2 was sold at a profit. Open one of the originals up some time. For a real gas, open up the original Japanese model, with the PC-Card slot on the back.
I also would submit the original GBA was probably sold at a loss too for a while, the screen had to be expensive back then, on the order of $25. By the time the SP came around, it probably was a break even, even with the battery and adapter included.
GameCube has to be close to the edge at $99.
You can also fall back on your GB Advance
(& GB?) game collection with the DS. Can't do that with the PSP
As another poster said, the cartridges are patented, and the consoles that use them have fcc approval. Check the FCC site and the USPTO site for diagrams. The patent numbers and FCC id's are on the units, do a search on them.
The original idea of patents was that you share the info with the public, so that everyone can benefit from it, eventually. In exchange you get exclusive rights for making money off your idea.
ME! I need them. A bit of background. I am an Emergency Medical Technition. I sit in an ambulance for 12 hour shifts waiting for someone to hurt themselves and call 911. This is the perfect opertunity to use a portable gaming system.
I have tried three systems so far.
Ok so maybe getting a laptop to play Go is extreme but I can only handle so much E rated games before I give up. So in short there are many examples (EMS being one of them) where more then just Pokemon is avaliable for entertainment.
Yes, I over-generalized this post. However my point was that there are not enought gameing systems for adults and there is a market for it. (Appologies for tangent thoughts)
> SELECT * FROM brain_cells WHERE synaptic_rate > 0
0 row returned
The DS is far closer to the camera. The camera is only about a foot away from the items.
It's as if someone *wanted* to make the DS appear bulkier.
Yes, it's slightly larger. Very slightly. If they'd put the PSP where the DS is and the DS on the other side, the two would have looked the same size, perspective making up for the slight difference in bulk.
Lik-sang's obsession with extreme perspective shots has always been annoying, but they shouldn't be using it to directly mislead.
And of course, if you're using a PSP, you're definitely going to need a case. The DS doesn't because it has no disc drive to get dirty and it's a clamshell. Those small dimension differences aren't strictly necessary as you can see from the DS' case. It's bent to make it more durable. If the casing were as thing as the PSPs, it would be significantly smaller. Conversely, the clamshell of the DS has to open, so when you're using it the DS is huge.
My feeling is that the problem with the form factor of the DS is holding up that folded out screen... it really does twist the hands a certain amount. I still like it, but your mileage may vary. If you can accept the battery life and the extra weight, maybe you'll prefer the PSP.
A caveat: I'm a Nintendo loyalist.
Remember that the Dreamcast had a good head start over the PS2 (I bought mine on release day and have a bright-orange T-shirt to prove it), and ultimately it was for naught.
But then again, Nintendo has had a long history of supremacy in the portable arena. Their dethroning from the console top-spot isn't as telling as you might think -- the SNES and Genesis had a long-fought, bitter rivalry.
I know who I'm cheering for, but admit that the victory is up in the air. Could it be we might actually have TWO concurrently profitable portable systems? Is this possible?
There's very little point to getting one before the mod chips and formats to get the warez to the unit appear.
I don't think the PSP is fundamentally a bad system, but I think that at the current state of technology, the DS is better.
Here's why:
1. The obvious one, autonomy. Sure, it's easy to look like you've got better tech just because you pack more, greater, bigger features, just because you decided to not care about battery life, thus dramatically lowering the overall quality of the system.
2. The overall manufacturing quality of the device. Sony are well known for making hyped, shiny, classy products with lots of bells and whistles - but the quality (at least regarding gaming consoles) has always been lacking, in particular regarding the cd rom/dvd drives.
It was no biggie to have to put the early models of playstation upside down for the cd drive to work, it might be problematic for a portable console.
3. If you compare the inside shots of the DS and those of the PSP, you'll notice that the PSP looks much more complex, with several PCBs (some of them plugged together), various metallic shieldings, a lot of ribbon cables and connectors.
So, it's probably more complex to assemble, and thus, IMHO, it's more likely that the assembly work is somewhat sloppy.
However, maybe in one year or two, battery and/or electronic components technologies may have evolved enough, and sony may do a new revision of the psp with improved (and hopefully decent) autonomy (as I've read somewhere, don't remember where), and the potential defects that may show up in the earlier models will have been fixed.
In this picture, there is an empty IC socket next to what looks a little like a card slot. Anyone have an idea what this might be for?
Just wait for the PSP or DS emulator to surface so you can alleviate the three banes of portable gaming:
- Limited battery life
- Small, poorly lit screen
- Restricting interface
I do agree that both companies use proprietary formats. However, when Sony announces that the PSP "can play movies", they don't actually go out of their way to specify you'll need those movies in UMD format...
In 2004/2005, if a company tells me his device can "play movies", I'll assume they mean DVDs (or at the very least VCD/SVCD).
I don't care if it's UMD for the games, but for everything else, it's pretty useless.
Reminds me of the DivX format (the commercial failure, not the CODEC).
Nope, the logo thing is for the GameBoy only. The NES/SNES carts had lock-out chips inside them.