The SNK Millennium; the cancelled arcade and home console - found

Awbacon said:
lol well I certainly didnt fake it
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are you sure ? ;)
is there any evidences saying it is gaming hardware at all ? it might be some server, data storage, or some kind of network device.

in any case, it is NOT something new, this motherboard info and photos was already posted couple years ago by Brian Hargrove aka NeoTurfMasta (iirc it was at AssemblerGames forum?), together with BIOS ROM dump.
I've disassembled it back then, and... it looked like pretty boring regular PC BIOS - just initialize hardware, PCI, etc, IDE controller, load MBR from HDD and run it.
I'd say it doesn't smell like typical gaming device at all, and I have strong doubts this motherboard was some kind of console or arcade gaming device.

PS: hmm, strange, I cant find this FHM420 BIOS dump anymore, perhaps it was on some of older HDDs?
 
Awbacon said:
lol well I certainly didnt fake it
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This is insanely cool. The other thing that could trump this is the rumoured follow-up to NeoGeo Pocket Color.

In any case, it has to be the world's most difficult console to Google, with Capcom Vs. SNK Millennium Fight being a popular game.
 
MetalliC said:
are you sure ? ;)
is there any evidences saying it is gaming hardware at all ? it might be some server, data storage, or some kind of network device.

in any case, it is NOT something new, this motherboard info and photos was already posted couple years ago by Brian Hargrove aka NeoTurfMasta (iirc it was at AssemblerGames forum?), together with BIOS ROM dump.
I've disassembled it back then, and... it looked like pretty boring regular PC BIOS - just initialize hardware, PCI, etc, IDE controller, load MBR from HDD and run it.
I'd say it doesn't smell like typical gaming device at all, and I have strong doubts this motherboard was some kind of console or arcade gaming device.

PS: hmm, strange, I cant find this FHM420 BIOS dump anymore, perhaps it was on some of older HDDs?
Click to expand...
Yes Brian (Turfmasta) specifically arranged for the board to get to me)

Between the fact Hitachi was shopping the CPU to other vendors, the fact that Matrox was supposed to supply a GPU to SNK (so obv you'd be testing on PC parts) and the fact SNK only had the AES/MVS (def not developed on this board) and the Hyper Neo Geo 64 (which featured an NEC processor) this board stands out from anything else they had going on.

SNK says they are making a new system in 1998 for 2000 and you have a motherboard with custom prototype chips marked "proto" on them as well as s spot for an ICE rom and headers for code stepping...they were clearly developing SOMETHING here

edit: plus if the "Pentium" rumors held any water either then no surprise they were testing on PC looking form factors. Whether the system eventually shipped with an Intel chip or a Hitachi chip it was clearly intended to be "PC parts in a box", just like the arcade and eventually home console scene would end up turning into.

I mean before this you have Konami, Midway and others strapping PC GPU's onto arcade boards and shipping them. Not that odd
 
Arcadia said:
This is insanely cool. The other thing that could trump this is the rumoured follow-up to NeoGeo Pocket Color.

In any case, it has to be the world's most difficult console to Google, with Capcom Vs. SNK Millennium Fight being a popular game.
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haha clearly SNK liked the term Millennium
 
refreshing some memories (sorry, it was back in 2016, when we REd this board a bit, so I cant clearly remember all the details), and it looks like this board not any related to Matrox (as some persons assumed).
BIOS of this thing have number mentions of "Map1000" PCI video, which is high probable was Equator Technologies and Hitachi project from 1999

EQUATOR/HITACHI PLATFORM SPEEDS DEVELOPMENT OF DTV PRODUCTS. - Free Online Library

Free Online Library: EQUATOR/HITACHI PLATFORM SPEEDS DEVELOPMENT OF DTV PRODUCTS. by "Worldwide Videotex Update"; Business Telecommunications industry Diversified companies Electrical engineering software
www.thefreelibrary.com
Equator Technologies, Inc. and Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT) have introduced the MAP1000(TM), a new programmable media processor platform for building a variety of digital media and imaging products, including set-top boxes (STBs), image processors, high-definition digital televisions (HDTVs), digital televisions (DTVs), video editors, and printers/copiers.
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The MAP1000 integrates an extensive multimedia I/O system including dual PCI, digital video, audio, analog video, and network interfaces on a chip. Equator's architecture is designed to make extending I/O capabilities simple and efficient. The MAP1000 also supports up to 64 megabytes of external SDRAM/SGRAM at speeds over 130MHz.
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At the heart of the MAP1000 is a powerful data transfer engine alongside a powerful 200MHz VLIW CPU that can perform 3.2 billion MAC 16-bit multiply/add operations, 1.6 billion 32-bit floating-point operations, and 20 billion pixel-level operations per second. In general-purpose computation, the CPU issues 800 million instructions per second with on-chip instruction and data caches.
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looks like a CPU/DSP mainly designed for MPEG video decode, no ideas what SNK wanted to do with it...
 
Awbacon said:
Yes Brian (Turfmasta) specifically arranged for the board to get to me)

Between the fact Hitachi was shopping the CPU to other vendors, the fact that Matrox was supposed to supply a GPU to SNK (so obv you'd be testing on PC parts) and the fact SNK only had the AES/MVS (def not developed on this board) and the Hyper Neo Geo 64 (which featured an NEC processor) this board stands out from anything else they had going on.

SNK says they are making a new system in 1998 for 2000 and you have a motherboard with custom prototype chips marked "proto" on them as well as s spot for an ICE rom and headers for code stepping...they were clearly developing SOMETHING here

edit: plus if the "Pentium" rumors held any water either then no surprise they were testing on PC looking form factors. Whether the system eventually shipped with an Intel chip or a Hitachi chip it was clearly intended to be "PC parts in a box", just like the arcade and eventually home console scene would end up turning into.

I mean before this you have Konami, Midway and others strapping PC GPU's onto arcade boards and shipping them. Not that odd
Click to expand...
Ah yes, like how, for example, Atari Games was using 3Dfx hardware for games like San Francisco RUSH, Wayne Gretzsky's 3D Hockey, California Speed, Vapor TRX, and War: Final Assault, to name a few.
 
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