Nice, not sure what MDDL is though. Is it a test program to test all the features of the kit are working or what?
I have no idea, it's such an early machine it doesn't even seem recognizable to me upon looking at the files.
This is actually very.. interesting. First, I don't have much DDH experience. Marlin was powerpc-based, wasn't it? Or was it actually ARM based? The interesting stuff is that there are binaries that apparently support running powerpc and ARM binaries within the same memory space ("Hello World w/ARM binary" . I can't fit this into the gamecube world. Could this be an early Wii prototype instead? There's even a little bit of ARM code in there (cp_test.bin). However, I couldn't find any references to any other Wii-specific items. ASSEMbler, can you give some more details about the hardware? Any photos of the PCBs? Where and how it was found? (without disclosing too many details of course)
AMC is a standard dolphin ORCA board with a powerPC CPU in it. No AMC was ARM based. GBA is ARM based, and there is support between GBA and GC via link cables so it could be embedding ARM images in it and sending them over the link cable. A prototype DDH wouldn't have any relation to a Wii.
The AMC DDH consists of an Orca board (which is a Gamecube with slightly more exposed headers and for example a flash rom and serial port), which is identical to a GDEV. However, the AMC DDH also has this "Marlin" (see http://www.isplash.de/koteshi/gcn/GCN_Newsletter4.PDF), which does the drive emulation and allows ethernet debugging. It has an own firmware. I was asking the question if Marlin is ARM based or not. (I believe to remember that it was powerpc based, though). Note that this is unrelated to the Orca board, which is PowerPC-based of course (since it's a gamecube). The only PPC+ARM combination from Nintendo that I'm aware of is the Wii, however as explained, I can't see any other indications of Wii-specific changes so it could either be something else or a very early prototype.
Marlin is a controller board, it's an IDE controller and a basic command parser, I highly doubt it's ARM at all. But as said, the SDK and samples in the GC SDK and GBA SDK allow GC <---> GBA interoperability, PPC in the GC, ARM7 in the GBA.
I've only peeked at the file structure so far, but it looks very similar to the GC service disc layout scheme. cool find. did you see some of the elfs (actually, the first i looked at) has full symbols? "wait_for_risc_watch", "Hello takos, The PS2 is dogmeat", "Invalid Walrus, rev %d", "exi multi-channel test - requires 3 barnacles.\n", ok...need to go be amused by something else now ;p Any pictures? :'(
