In a satisfying blend of classic console restoration and modern modding, [Elliot] from the Retro Future channel has transformed a broken, dirty PlayStation into what they call the “ultimate PS1.”

The first step was to deal with the really grungy case. The shell was soaked in dish soap and given a good brushing before being packed and sent to a collaborator. Upon inspection of the internals, several unknown modifications to the PCB were evident. These were likely to support playing home-burned copies of pirated games, as well as an NTSC region hack (for this PAL version of the console), courtesy of a dodgy-looking crystal oscillator hanging on the end of some wires.

Luckily, the PS1 product design is highly modular, giving excellent repairability, which made reversing this a doddle. The mod wiring was removed by simply desoldering it, but the cut traces needed to be cleaned up and reconnected to return it to stock condition.

After the first round of fixes, [Elliot] plugged into the TV for a test. It was still outputting black-and-white. Something was still amiss. He had simply connected one of the repair wires to the wrong spot on the PCB. After correcting that error (and getting lucky, no damage was done), the correct colour PAL output was seen.

Next, a PicoStation ZeroWire was soldered in place. This cleverly-shaped PCB hosts one of the Pico MCU chips and allows launching games from an SD card. Using a combination of large through holes on the PCB and a few castellated edge holes, installation looks very easy. ZeroWire is a bit of an unfortunate name, as it actually requires one jumper wire to be attached, but we’re just nitpicking here. Next, there was some really precarious-looking pin lifting on the CDROM controller chip. Cleanliness is in order here for a successful soldering mod. A special ESD toothbrush (not really) was pressed into service for cleaning with IPA. Proper ESD tools are not expensive, but you can get away without them.

An Amazon-sourced PAL-to-HDMI adapter was tried to perform some 720p “upscaling”. This reduced the obvious jaggies a bit, but it was not really good enough for [Elliot]. So instead, he installed an HDMI mod board sourced from an Aliexpress store (listing now defunct). The metal shielding can was removed to reveal the video ICs. The serial port connector was removed, as this is the location for the new HDMI port. The ‘fun’ part of this particular mod is attaching the custom flex PCB to the video chip. This is quite a daunting task for those not comfortable with SMT soldering techniques. It may look hard, but it’s actually dead easy to drag-solder this, so long as you use plenty of good-quality flux and keep the heat under control. Once that was out of the way and second smaller cable was routed to the audio chip.

Next up was to deal with the old-school wired controllers. The TechnoBit Videojuegos Re-Live BT controller board allows the use of a modern wireless controller. Its installation requires disassembling the original controller connector module. The PCB from the rear of the module is removed along with the ribbon cable connector and a through-hole Zener diode, both of which are reused and soldered to the new controller board. This seems like an unnecessary faff and could have easily been pre-installed or at least included with the PCB. Also, soldering the through-hole beeper to surface-mount pads made us cringe. That looks like someone forgot to make the correct footprint for a part that normal humans can solder.

Finally, a Robot Retro USB-C power supply was dropped in to replace the original AC power supply, bringing this build’s connectivity into the current decade. USB power, HDMI ‘1080p’ output, SD card game loading, and a BT controller. Nice! The last part of the build features a custom respray of the enclosure, a nod to the original ‘dev kit blue’ version when the PS1 was first announced all those years ago. Ah, we remember it well!

Retrogamers familiar with PS1 hacks might recall we covered the PicoStation hack some time ago. You might also remember this hack that squeezes a complete PS1 emulator into a DS cartridge. Finally, hacks can be pure software, with nary a soldering iron in sight, like this one.

Fluidstack, a startup that builds specialized data centers for AI companies, is in talks to raise a $1 billion round at an $18 billion valuation, potentially led by Jane Street, Bloomberg reports.

Should this deal come to fruition, it would more than double Fluidstack’s valuation in a matter of months.

In December, the company was reportedly raising around $700 million at a $7.5 billion valuation, sources told Bloomberg at the time, although it didn’t formally announce the close of that round. That round was said to be led by Situational Awareness, an AGI-focused fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, and backed by Stripe’s Collison brothers, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and the AI investor and entrepreneur Daniel Gross.

Talks were apparently still ongoing for this round in February, at least with Google, which was considering kicking in $100 million to the round, The Wall Street Journal reported.

There’s good reason for the hype over Fluidstack. In November, Anthropic announced that it had signed a $50 billion deal with the startup to build data centers custom-designed for its needs in Texas and New York. Unlike hyperscalers like AWS, which serve all kinds of computing needs, Fluidstack’s infrastructure is built specifically for AI.

The deal was a huge vote of confidence for Fluidstack, a company that was relatively unknown in the U.S. Anthropic primarily uses AWS and Google Cloud to serve Claude (though it also has a partnership with Microsoft to supply Claude to that software giant’s customers). But just like rival OpenAI, Anthropic is growing so fast that it needs more capacity, and this deal gives Anthropic more control over its own cloud infrastructure.

This partnership is so significant to the startup that Fluidstack — which was spun out of Oxford and had been a rising star in Europe’s AI scene — relocated its headquarters from the U.K. to New York. Last month, it also pulled out of a key €10 billion AI project in France, Bloomberg reported, to focus on U.S. opportunities.

In addition to Anthropic, it counts Meta, Poolside, Black Forest Labs, and others as customers. Prior to the deal with Anthropic, Fluidstack was probably best known for providing infrastructure to Mistral.

Fluidstack did not respond to a request for comment.

Have you ever deleted a game you were not finished with simply because your Xbox Series X|S had run out of room, only to face a lengthy re-download the next time you wanted to play?

That frustration is exactly what the WD_BLACK C50 2TB Storage Expansion Card addresses, and it is currently down from £282.99 to £189.99 on Amazon, making this one of the better moments to fix the problem properly.