The PlayStation Classic is a $100 retro console that looks like a smaller version of the original PlayStation and which comes with 20 classic games pre-installed. It launched this autumn to mixed, but generally positive reviews… and it didn’t take long for folks to start figuring out what makes the little device tick.
We already know it uses a fork of the PCSX ReARMed emulator to run old games on new hardware. And now thanks to a teardown from the folks at HDBlog.it, we know more about that hardware too.
The retro console features a MediaTek MT8167 processor, which is a 1.5 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A35 chip with PowerVR GE8300 graphics.
It also has 1GB of DDR3-1866 memory, 16GB of eMMC 5.1 flash storage, and a MediaTek MT6392A audio codec.
The system uses 2 watts of power or less and features a fanless design for silent operation.
At this point it’s unclear whether the PlayStation Classic will be as hackable as Nintendo’s NES Classic Edition which first launched a few years ago. But I suspect there are at least a few folks looking into the possibility of sideloading games onto this tiny PS one replica.
It would be interesting to know what linux distro the emulator is running on.
Would you even need or want a full distro?
I’d think that a kernel and a few drivers would be enough to get this running, plus whatever libraries that emulator needs.
Then it would not be using PCSX Rearmed without a major rewrite.