[akadewboy]

I was browsing the GameFAQs boards and ran into these two posts:

Nintendo Dolphin post
Playstation 2 Tool post

Apparently this guy and his friend were lucky enough to find a Nintendo Dolphin and a couple PS2 Tool systems at a flea market. Is there any more info on these things?

Pictures they took:
http://img225.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img1364sa5.jpg
http://img225.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img1365nc2.jpg
http://img93.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img1369be3.jpg

[handofg0d]

The quality assurance co. that I worked at has about 50 of those gamecubes/dolphins. They are just dev/test kits that were modified for cart reading as EPROMs can be burned to much faster than DVD (from what I understand) - Also much cheaper as well. A lot of times though this could cause an issue as the game would run fine on cart but then when running on DVD you'd see new bugs, likely due to load times and difference in the speed the data can be read on the different formats.

The PS2 dev/test kits come in so many different models its not funny. They are very easy to come by on ebay as well.

[ProgrammingAce]

Um... no

That red gamecube is not a dolphin, it's an NDPD reader. And the cart that goes in it actually has a laptop hard drive inside. The cart can hold up to 4 images of a gamecube disc. The gamecube itself doesn't know that it's not running off of a disc (aside from the load times). The buttons on the front are used to simulate a door opening and such.

These generally sell for about $600 on ebay.

The ps2 TOOL is not the same as a TEST ps2 that you've all seen on ebay a thousand times. The TOOL is actually a PC with a built in PS2 motherboard. It is the only way to run unsigned ps2 code (without a mod chip anyway). They're dirt common in the industry, but rare as hens teeth on the black market. They generally go for about $2000 on ebay.

Any questons on the units pictured, lmk. I have most of this info on my website.

[Smeg]

Man how come all I ever find at flea markets is dealers who want 20 bucks for a loose copy of Contra?

[Mack_the_Hairbrush]

Burning a DVD doesn't take too long. Why go through the trouble of creating an EPROM when it just creates differences in gameplay.

[kap]

Nobody wants to burn nine million dvds over the course of producing one game, and if a minor bit of code is changed, you don't want to wait minutes for a burn.

[Smeg]

We want them to burn nine million DVDs.

[ProgrammingAce]