What makes a development TOOL so special??

I was just wondering what is it that makes a development TOOL so special??
If all the really cool stuff is done on the development computer?? Then what makes the TOOL such a sort after piece of equipment??

Also what makes a TOOL (I'm talking all development machines)?? If Sony made a TOOl that plays master discs and a TEST console that also plays master discs, then what is the difference??

Would it be hard to make your own development console and what would be involved in making one?? (Software, Hardware e.t.c.)

This is just a question that's been plaguing me for a while now.

 

I thought the TOOL was the development system itself as it was a computer.

 

The PS2-TOOL IS a PC in the same way a PS3 is a PC really.
It's a PC with all the PS2 chips and debugging features and runs red hat 6.2 as the base OS.

You can debug on it and do a lot of things that just aren't possible with the normal PS2 or a TEST.

A TEST machine is just a normal PS2 with no extra debugging with the final hardware in it (PS2-TOOLs will probably have specs similar to the final production unit but might not be fully complete or full speed, etc.) and no region locking, meant for showing off games and testing it to see how it runs at game shows etc. because it's much easier to show off what the game will look like on a small console than carting a huge noisy dev kit around with debugging features that aren't needed and doesn't look exactly the same as the final released game will look.

 

I was meaning TOOL's in general, like Xbox, WII e.t.c.

 

Same description applies.
XBOX has a RAPTOR card to emulate the DVD drive so burning a DVD to run any code isn't needed, and has double the RAM for debugging purposes.
GC has double RAM too and various debugging ports, games can be ran from a hard drive unit (for the GDev/GBox) or via streaming or from the internal hard drive (DDH).
Wii has multiple different kits, NDev was the pre-release and unfinalised hardware and is why it's in a large black box with many extra ports, for hardware debugging/flashing AND software, then there's the red unit with the internal H/D (which is basically the same as the red GC), green which plays the special discs only, etc.

 

Just to add to the ongoing discussion:

An PS2 TOOL has 128MB of memory available for the EE and 8MB of ram for the IOP, which allow you to keep the game in development running on the regular space restricted for retail games while you have the debugging layer stored on the extra memory ... OR on eary development stages, you can load the game software with full debug symbols (these eat a LOT of memory) in place, which allows for better depuration/debugging of code.

As mentioned previously, an PS2 tool is a special PS2 sandwiched with a Linux PC on the same case. The purpose of the PC is run/control the DECI2 protocol, which is what make the system debugging possible. :thumbsup:

For PS consoles, there's the DECI (DECI1) as well.

 

So it technically is not a development kit / system. Just a debugger like the blue PlayStation.

 

PS2TOOL is a development kit, it needs a PC with software and hardware to interface with it, but you can't emulate it's CPUs and try to execute the code on a PC from the time at a very fast speed, so it's development.

 

This ^^

:thumbsup: