N64DD IPL4ROM & V64JR

She is playing doshin on a dev DD unit with NO boot cart.

Which begs the question. Were some Dev DD units made (posibly test units?) that have the DDROM in them?

 

I thought of the exact same questions. It's probably retail hardware (DDROM wise) but with a Dev Drive unit. Hybrid made internaly?

 

mhm i bet there is a free space for the ipl chip in the Dev DD somewhere on the Board

 

That my friend is the last Nintendo 64 development drive made, and was available , as far as I know, only to the Super Mario Club( NCL division, testing department for development games.), Recruit entertainment testing staff (randnet DD corporation), and was also made available for Spaceworld 1999. It was also of course made available to the 64DD programmer's, the most unit's obviously being at Nintendo and it's subsidarie company at the time Marigul Management, which was also under Recruit's control.

You will see this drive in another picture to further provide evidence that it exists in limited numbers, but was made. The other picture I am referring to of course is the 64DD booth at Spaceworld 99 where they showed the picture of an almost complete version of DT DD. Now also in this picture is the GBC link cable, which was extremely rare, along with the cartridge that it plugs into. Just go to IGN64, and look at the DT DD pics to see the picture, or I can scan one for you, if it is no longer on IGN.

It clearly shows a debug DD with a blue development disk inside.

Now the history of these unit's are pretty straightforward. They were produced around June 1999, when the final DDrom, IPL version was decided on, and it was therefore included in all DD development DD tols from that point on.

One interesting point in this long winded story is that there are two version's of this drive available. One that has a blue rim, like the development DD, revision two (revision one, has a black rim, but only accept's blue dev disks, and is missing the nintendo disk logo.), and another that has a black rim. The blue rim version is a fully fledged DD developpment/Debug drive with built in DDrom/IPL, that only accept's blue disks. The black rimmed unit is a bit of a mystery, but it is thought to be a debug ubit for testing only, and is modified to accept both blue disks written in commercial format, and commercial disks, and was only at Spacewrold 99, and inside Nintendo.

Now we know that commercial DD unit's(randnet and store display unit's(commonly regarded as second version DD, or reatil DD, which is wrong.) were limited to ten thousand unit's. The deal between Nintendo and Recruit to release the 64DD could not be renaged on, and nintendo entered into the program, and agreed with recruit that 10000 initial unit's would be sufficient considering the scepticism of releasing an add on so late in the 64's life cycle, and japanese reluctance to enter into subscription based services with a credit card.

As it turned out, 10000 unit's was more than sufficent, and it is thought the all inventory was eventually sold over the course of the randnet DD programme, though it is by no mean's a definite that they managed to sell all ten thousand unit's.

Now I know I am straying off topic now, but considering the limited commercial DD run, and the small hand of developer's involved in the final project, these unit's are extremely, and I mean extremely rare, and the chances of them appearing arevery slim. I know a former Software creations staff member who has one, and I forgot to mention that Software creations were given these unit's too, to finish up work on the first Mario artist title aint studio.

So if these unit's ever appear, it will be from an ex software creation's staff member, or from someone who took one home, from Super mario Club, or marigul or Randnet DD, or Intelligent system's who made the unit. The software creation's guy I know places the number of these unit's at under 200 unit's. Now that is super rare as far as I am concerned. The biggest chance of them appearing are from Param/ marigul ex staff, as they were responsible for leaked prototype dev unit's, leaked Echo Delta cart, leaked Doubutsu banchou cart(n64 version.) and i don't expect it to appear on yahoo japan either, I would expect the unit's to circulate in the 64DD dev community circle which is almost impossible to penetrate, or the undeground japanese auction's that Yakumo know's about.(he doesn't know whhere they are, or maybe he does, but he knows of the underground, of proto games/hardware. The reason there are so few unit's is that most studio's were already in possesion of the earlier development unit's that members of this forum have, and felt no need to spend extra money on one of these unit's.

Sorry for the long post, but I just wanted to clarify the details of this amazing 64DD debug/ dev unit, and it all comes from a completely reliable source who worked on mario Artist : paint studio at software creation's. They made the creator part of the game, and added in a few other peices.

 

:clap: @ Nintendomad: Very informative and interesting, thanks for info m8, glad to see a post from someone who really knows their stuff, excellent to see an authority here on subject of the good 'ole 'DD', well done

 

@nintendomad I can only say one word : wow.

 

Nintendomad > Excellent post :clap:

 

Thanks for the kind word's guy's but I cannot take all credit for this information. Part of it comes from a Randnet DD employee, and part of it another DD devloper.

Here is the picture of the spaceworld version of this drive, in action, with DT DD and the unreleased 64GB cable.

This game was complete, but not published due to the poor sales of the gameboy game coupled with the DD'd poor sales.

http://ascii24.com/news/i/topi/article/1999/08/30/images/images604484.jpg

It's a pity that the developers site for this game is now down, they had more pictures on that page of the game and more explanation of how it worked.

 

Thank you very much for this information! :clap:
Let us know if you know get to know some more new stuff about the 64DD! ;-)