You can't really turn a CEX PlayStation 2 into a TOOL. SCE made the TDB startup card for that, but it has several limitations (and doesn't have the same boot screen anyway). I don't see why it would have strings that seem to indicate multi-platform support, either. If EA managed to make something like that anyway, there should be custom DECI2 modules within it and probably an EE kernel. But if it was meant for debugging, maybe it is a custom debugging tool for EA games.
It seems like its just a network boot tool. That sort of thing is common. Renderware has tools like that, as do quite a few other things.
Yeah "is a tool that can pretty much make a retail PS2 into a Dev Kit." doesn't say it turns it into a TOOL or a TEST, just that you can dev on a retail. You'd need a TEST/modified retail/FMCB/FHDB to run the program in the first place and it can probably only run games compiled to run over it. Being able to use a TEST rather than a TOOL would save them quite a bit of money, this solves the problem of having to burn master DVD's for every change. Preserving stuff like this is great though, someone may be able to figure out the PC side of it.
That screenshot looks kind of similar to what I vaguely remember of those screenshots (similar style of white-on-black text, although pretty sure there was more text).
