Possible Ocarina of Time debug cart on ebay!!

Great! I wonder if your build has new secrets within.

 

Haven't been around for awhile, been extremely busy. The news of this proto rejuvenated my interest and prompted me to study the cart. I've been after a 512M cart for years. The arguments of wether this proto is legit intrigued me. So I've read a lot of good points from both sides on wether this is a legit prototype. So I thought I would give my two cents on what I have researched on the hardware side of the cart and let everyone form their own opinion whether this cart is legit.


First thing to notice is the size of the cart. The 512M carts are extremely elusive. As Nesworld mentioned, very few have surfaced. I myself have been after one for many years just like he has. This alone can not prove the cart is legit but is in favor of it being real.


Second yes having all the necessary tools to write one of these carts is rare as well, but not impossible. This possibility favors the cart being fake. Only way to disprove this is to compare the rom to the released rom. But even if the data is a 100% match to the rom released this doesn't prove the cart is a fake.


All of the above has been debated back and fourth but I would like to add some new information not mentioned yet. You can actually date a dev cart to a date of manufacturing (to the point of manufacturing was not before xxxx date)


First point hardware wise that sticks out is the Altera Max chip. The sticker on it states: F512 V2. This is important. All 256M dev carts using the same board (pn 1997 nus-16f32sb-01) I've personally seen have had F512. There is a reason a revision of the programming code changed for this chip.


From the altera max chip change that leads us to the flash memory. If you compare the flash memory to that of other dev carts the part numbers have changed. According to my research the part number of the chips on the zelda proto are a manufacturing change by sharp. Sharp began to migrate from the part numbers found on all other dev carts I have seen to the part number on this cart. This migration required slight modifications to the altera max programming, explaining the V2 for the altera max chip.


This change in itself doesn't prove the date, sharp started changing in 1998. But, the flash chips themselves do. The chips each have a manufacture date code located at the bottom of the chip. On the zelda cart the latest date code present is 0007, translated year 2000 week 7 or the third week of February 2000.


This date is abnormal, while some late n64 titles were still being released, most development was nearing completion. Not to mention developers at that time would have most likely had the needed hardware at that point. But gamecube development was also underway, so this date falls into the overlap time period of the two systems.


With this information you can form your own opinion. My theory is they went to develop the master quest bonus as a last minute decision. At that time they were deep into gamecube development and most of the n64 equipment had been pushed aside. The decision was made to move forward with the master quest bonus and to modify the game it would be easier to do it/debug it on actual n64 hardware. They needed some 512M carts so they pulled spare parts together and made a few. They probably had the boards but lacked flash chips so they placed an order for some. This would fit the development timeline, if the chips were manufactured February 2000 by the time they made it out the door through FIFO it could have been 6 months later.


One more oddity of the board worth mentioning is the solder process for the expand flash memory area (front of board to left of max chip). All of the contact points were pre soldered even though they weren't used. This is not the normal practice on all other dev carts, and can't even be found on the back side of this cart. This leads me to believe the process installing the front flash chips differed from their standard manufacturing process for whatever reason.

 

anyone any thoughts about this?

 

Well, I know sod all about dev carts, but after reading the above it seems that it is a real dev cart. Whether it was blank, was never used for OOT development and has been loaded up with OOT debug later on in life is a different matter.

As others have pointed out, getting hold of the hardware/software to write to it would be quite hard. But then again, *if* you were a stinking dirty fraudster, with access to a lot of knowhow and hardware, then this would be pretty much the cart you would build. Pick a 512MB cart as not many people have seen them, load it up with a popular franchise and stick it on ebay and wait for someone to bite.

EDIT: Just looked at the auction again:

Yeah, the price was about £99,000 too high!

EDIT2:
Another point is that does this game really need a 512M cart or can it fit onto a smaller (more available) cart?

 

You don't need a 512M cart. o.o.t. is only 256M.
So why is this on a 512M cart ? That is a good question

The dev cart is real ! Nobody thinks that the cart is fake. It is all about the software.

Anyway 2 questions related to this cart.

1. What do you need to compaire 2 n64 roms ? And spot differences

2. What was on the 512M carts that where found ?

 

I'd like to get a better look at the debug map select screen on this cart. If it's genuine and from an earlier point in development than the Master Quest debug rom that's already been released, it may have additional maps on it that the later build does not have. I think that would be pretty strong evidence...

 

Public MQ ROM is 512MBits because it is uncompressed.

 

Yes considering it was destined to be put onto a CD-ROM (or whatever the GC uses) then compression wouldn't be needed and might hinder debugging.

To compare two files, there's loads of software out there that can do that, GNU diff being one but there's many others that may be more suited to this kind of thing.

 

I ended the auction myself, but i think some people reported it.

I tryed to dump it last night with a couple machines but it didnt work out. Going to buy a gameshark 3.3 and try again

 

version 3.2, not 3.3 as most likely it won't work with the last version

 

Thanks for keeping us informed steven78! Fingers crossed you find something interesting =)

 

I have to say that I'm hopeful...but ultimately skeptical. I'd really like this to be 100% genuine, but something keeps telling me that it isn't. Beyond that, I have nothing to point out that others haven't noted before, so I will simply watch and wait.

 

dumping failed this weekend, if all goes good it will be dumped at the end of the week.

then we will know more about it

 

Cool, very interested to hear how this little saga turns out.

 

Its dumped more info will follow soon i hope

 

Good luck steven, hope you didn't get ripped off.

How much did you pay anyway? Because according to the ebay listing it looks like the cart didn't get sold.

 

i pulled it myself because it got bashed to much, so first get this checked and then we will see what happens

 

Fantastic news! Hope everything goes smoothly. I'm looking forward to seeing what you find =D

 

any updates?

 

not so much jet, but it are all the original OOT dungeons.