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Felix happens to find an SNES classic Mini and Ben offers to tear it apart. In this episode, Ben does a teardown of the SNES classic to see what's inside, discusses the components that are inside, and compares the board to the NES classic mini from last year. |
Like the NES classic, it comes with a nostalgic poster to remind you of the original SNES. Ben’s curious to see if they left the data connection on the USB port as that is how people hacked into the previous system. The power and reset buttons move so they are functional , the cover for the controller port is designed to look like the old ports but they flip down to give you the same type of connector found on the Wiimote and NES Classic. In the back there is an HDMI out and a USB port designed to look like a DC in. It comes with two controllers which was common before the PlayStation. Like the NES classic before it, the cord to the controller is way too short which as Ben surmises is common with Japanese consoles. It comes with an HDMI cord, something that is common nowadays.
Ben preferred the Sega Genesis to the SNES back in the day. The original SNES was half the speed of the Sega Genesis and it had an 8-bit data bus even though it was a 16 bit console. While the CPU was weak, the graphics and sound were far more advanced than the Sega Genesis.
Ben unscrews the SNES and finds a little separate board for the power switch and the reset button. So far, the inside is looking a lot like the Mini NES classic. There’s the same RF shielding with a depression in it for the heatsink used for the system-on-on-a-chip. Ben marked the connections for the controller. He looks to see what’s under the shield. This also reminds Ben of the NES classic, which he has on hand if he wants to do a side by side comparison. It’s got an Allwinner R16 processor, positioned as a low-cost solution for IoT applications, with support for Android or Linux based software. Next to it is the RAM, by that is a Macronix NAND flash device that holds the operating system and the games, on the left is an AXP223 highly-integrated power system management IC, and on the back there is a chip that drives the HDMI. Ben rips up the NES Classic mini so he can compare the insides directly. A few traces and pads are different but it’s essentially the same thing. Minor differences aside, it has the same form factor and the same controller plugs. The flash is the same, they went with a different vendor for the RAM, the power control chip is the same, and the HDMI chip is also the same. The original NES mini had 2 GB of RAM whereas the SNES mini has 4GB of RAM.