game processor ram cassette - snes development kit

i have 2 strange super famicom cartridges that seem to have been part of a sfc development kit that was probably meant for amateur use, similar to the yaroze playstation.

however, theres basically no information available on the net, apart from
a patent filed by nintendo:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-...0&s1=5680534.WKU.&OS=PN/5680534&RS=PN/5680534

this is what the system should have looked like:


heres a short outline of the machines features:


pretty cool imho.
i'm in a hurry, but i suggest you read the full patent, its very detailed and interesting, most of the hardware stuff is explained in every detail. my cartridges, for example, are absolutely identical(my carts dont have a led soldered in, but theres a place where a led can be soldered in) to the schematics shown in in the patent:





the carts consist of 4mbit backed up sram to store games plus some glue logic that handles the data upload.

the carts dont look like prototypes, the label is nice and glossy like normal retail carts, so this thing must have been in production, yet i've never seen it anywhere.

the best thing is that one cart contains a game.
it really looks like an amateurs work in every way.
the code accesses uninitialized wram areas(probably depends on the system to initialize those) and the graphics are crappy.
with some hacking here and there, i managed to make it boot to the title screen:



i assume this means asterix no daibouken - big adventure of asterix

anybody seen this thing before or knows anything?
ricky? =)

 

Nintendo has it's own school, might be take school projects.

 

Very nice, thanks for sharing such useful info, and a great little piccy.

 

yeah, you're probably right, that's very well possible.
might explain why there's an id card slot aswell.
i didn't know they had an own school, though.
got any details?

 

Digipen.

 

These carts pop up on Yahoo Japan every now and then and are not too uncommon. However, I don't know what they are from.

 

Yeah, Digipen teaches SNES dev, must be from there.

 

:lol:

 

Thank you very much for the information! Would you mind to provide some information about what was necessary to make the cartridge/game workable?

Thank you very much in advance! =)

( Sorry for my bad english ;_; )

 

digipen was the answer to d4s' question. Whether they still teach SNES dev.. I dont know - i do know they teach n64 though and a lot of low level shit.