Possible Prototype 64DD Unit?

Received another development 64DD the other day. I've seen quite a few pictures of the development 64DD throughout the years and have yet to come across one quite like this. Below are some pictures of the differences I am talking about:

1. Notice the difference in the blue plastic. The standard is a textured plastic and the prototype is a smooth plastic. Also the prototype is missing the N logo.

Standard released development 64DD





Prototype Development 64DD





2. Notice the nomenclature is missing from the prototype and the molding to the back is different.

Standard




Prototype






Standard




prototype






standard




prototype





Standard





Prototype





Along with the 64DD I received 2 disks. Again the plastic that these were made of is a different material and missing nomenclature.


Standard





Prototype





Testing the disks shows that the last date the disks had been accessed was December of 96. This date is important because the DD wasn't even announced until mid 97. The earliest online article I could find was this announcement:

http://ign64.ign.com/articles/060/060880p1.html

Another interesting thing about this DD is it and the disks have stickers from the manufacturer mentioned within the article mentioned above.

Testing the drive with Partner N it functions the same as the standard development drive would. So what do you all think, would you all classify this as a prototype 64DD and disks?

 

Look like it, maybe done before they completely finished the plastic mold??

Could you do picture of the PCB? You could see if their any difference between the others 64DD devkit.

 

I havent had it apart yet. I think somewhere on the net is a pic of a standard development 64DD I could compare to......someday I'll take it apart when I have enough free time to

 

Here the pic of both dev and regular 64DD.

Not from me but I don't remember where I got both though, lol

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=3BEJKNG7

 

yeah those are the images I remember. If I take it apart I'll use those as references.

 

x

 

Wow, that must be nice to own. I assume the disks are blank?

 

yeah the 2 disks are blank as far as I know. I havent dumped them yet but they wont boot. They have however been used, they have a date stamp of 12/96 when using partner N to check the disk information. So I wont know for sure till I dump them.

It was a surprise to get this, got two of them at that!

 

Oh the irony a sony watch battery on both 64dd mother boards.

 

Is it my old prototype/beta 64DD dev unit you have gotten ahold of?

http://shiggsy.gbadev.org/unit.php?unit=4

Shiggsy

 

It was announced at Famicom Space World, November 1996. Maybe you have the demo unit

 

Nope, but that one looks the same. This one came straight from the source.


If you look close at the pic above the face is black but is smooth just like mine and missing the N logo. I wonder if this unit was built just for the picture/spaceworld and is just a development unit with a black bezel. To add to that theory I remember an old pic from spaceworld that had a gameboy hooked up to a 64DD unit that had a black bezel but a blue dev disk inserted into it.

here: http://n64media.ign.com/media/news/image/spaceworld99/dt993_640w.jpg

 

let's cross our fingers that there's data on those disks!

 

I'll be careful, I always am. I'll try and get the time to dump it tonight and see whats there.....

well you may be right assembler. the process used to dump the dezaemon disks would not work on these disks. I get an error I've not yet encountered, so I'll have to consult kammedo on it. In case someone else out there has experience with DD disks the error is:

N64DD ERROR : status = 0x2, sense = 0x17

I can even dump blank disks just fine (just checked), but these two disks both get errors.......Also tried on both the beta DD and the common DD, same results.

 

Corrupted disks? Or maybe during the write process it didn't complete.

 

Or maybe some heavy magnets were placed on the carts before Willis82 got his hands on them. I wouldn't know.

 

Most likely a different file format, structure or copy protection before settling on something else. Beta kit and all. Wouldn't the error codes be in the SDK documentation?

 

What is the error code when loading a retail cart in the dev kit?

Shiggsy