I worked at Sony when these were released, and worked with every one of these devkits. I had been working at Activision, and for various reasons wanted out. I ended up interviewing with Sony in Santa Monica at the time, during the process they never said they were making a console, just that they were going to start working on games. After something like 7 interviews, they finally gave me the job.
On my first day they explained that they were going to release a console. We had one kit at the office that was still marked as a Super Nintendo CD Drive (also built into the NEWS workstation cases). Then we got the NEWS workstation dev-kits, and finally the giant ISA cards.
After a change in management, the head of our division decided we were going to move the office to the Bay Area. There was a weird 3-4 month window where a bunch of people had been laid off, and I was working in a mostly empty office with a Playstation 1 devkit, and the freedom to do whatever I wanted with it. This was months before the Playstation was even announced to the public. This was one of the best experiences that ann 18 year old computer geek like me could have had.
On my first day they explained that they were going to release a console. We had one kit at the office that was still marked as a Super Nintendo CD Drive (also built into the NEWS workstation cases). Then we got the NEWS workstation dev-kits, and finally the giant ISA cards.
After a change in management, the head of our division decided we were going to move the office to the Bay Area. There was a weird 3-4 month window where a bunch of people had been laid off, and I was working in a mostly empty office with a Playstation 1 devkit, and the freedom to do whatever I wanted with it. This was months before the Playstation was even announced to the public. This was one of the best experiences that ann 18 year old computer geek like me could have had.