Description

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System, also known as Super NES or SNES, is a 16-bit video game console released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, and Australia. In Japan it is known as the Super Famicom. In South Korea, it is known as the Super Comboy . That console was licensed and distributed by Hyundai Electronics.

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System was Nintendo's second home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System (often abbreviated to NES, released as the Famicom in Japan). Whereas the earlier system had struggled in Europe and large parts of Asia the SNES proved to be a global success, albeit one that could not match its predecessor's popularity in South East Asia and North America - due in part to increased competition from Sega's Mega Drive console (released in North America as the Genesis). Despite its relatively late start, the SNES became the best selling console of the 16-bit era but only after its competitor Sega had pulled out of the 16-bit market to focus on its 32-bit next generation console.

Technical specifications

• CPU: Nintendo custom '5A22', believed to be produced by Ricoh; based around a 16-bit CMD/GTE 65c816 (a predecessor of the WDC 65C816, used by the Apple IIGS personal computer) with NES sound 2a03 core. The CPU runs the 65c816-alike core with a variable-speed bus, with bus access times determined by addresses accessed, with possible clock speeds of 1.79, 2.68 and 3.58 MHz (the chip usually ran at 2.68 MHz and seemed to drop to 1.79 MHz when loading from ROM.) It worked at 1.5 MIPS with strictly 16bit arithmetic and a theoretical peak of 1.79 million 16bit adds/second. The SNES/SFC provided the CPU with 128 KB of Work RAM. The CPU also contains other support hardware, including:

  • for interfacing with controller ports;
  • for generating NMI interrupts on Vblank;
  • for generating PSG sound with inclued 2a03 core.
  • for generating IRQ interrupts on screen positions;
  • DMA unit, supporting two primary modes, general DMA (for block transfers, at a rate of 2.68 MB/second) and Hblank DMA (for transferring small data sets at the end of each scanline, outside of the active display period);
  • multiplication and division registers.