Sony released the original PlayStation 25 years ago on December 3rd, 1994, and iFixit has marked the occasion by tearing down the very first, Japan-only model that never officially made it to other countries.
To say it’s a throwback to another era would be an understatement. It’s not just the inclusion of now-quaint technology like a CD-only disc drive, a modest 32-bit MIPS CPU the base PS4 is roughly 50 times faster, an S-Video port and slots for 1MB memory cards the post mortem highlights a fundamentally different approach to electronics design.
iFixit notes is far easier to crack open than the glued-together modern hardware it’s also nice to have clean, high-resolution pictures of this hardware, which is a relative rarity given how far digital photography has come in the last two decades.
The timing of the teardown is significant besides the console’s 25th birthday. It’s also a reminder that PlayStation design is about to change again with the release of the PlayStation 5 roughly a year from now, including shifts in focus toward solid-state storage, downloads and streaming. Who’d have thought 25 years ago that optical discs even the PS5’s 100GB Blu-ray discs would feel confining? As good as it is to revisit the PlayStation’s roots, it’s also good to know that technology has advanced by leaps and bounds since then.
