SNES Emulator SE devkit

Let the bidding begin. http://www.ebay.com/itm/131501334746

Internal photos: http://wellby.dyndns.org/dnl/index.php? ... order=desc

P.S. -- It's most likely Sid Meier selling it. Don't know who he is? GTFO. :D

> $6000 opening, $10000 BIN

Whew, that is one expensive paperweight.

Love the description, "find the software to use it yourself!"
Might as well add, "or just RE all the hardware and write your own" :P

> It's most likely Sid Meier selling it

Sid Meier is Canadian-American. This guy is clearly an ESL speaker. And not a very good one at that.

LOL

Embossing Miyamoto's grin all over it was a nice touch on Nintendo's part.

I'm already guessing the SNES version of Sid Meier's Civilization was Japanese-developed (or at least the sound was... I'm guessing Mint). Could be wrong, but it's much easier for me to tell who may have done the sound based off of the sound samples for the SPC700 in certain cases. What little credits I remember finding doesn't go into fine enough detail (they come from the manual for the US version).

There is at least one game that I can think of that this particular unit may have been used in assisting to develop (I think it was developed and published by Microprose), and that would be Super Strike Eagle. That's the only one that comes off of the top of my head.

ohhhh h h h hh h h h snap

Is there more info on the SE online already? Sorry if maybe I glossed over it in the SNES Programming Manual...

The second link doesn't work for me. I'm curious it's MIDI in right? Was that for the SONY News software that is mentioned in the SNES Programming manual?

Apparently it is is Sid Meier according to this article: http://www.engadget.com/2015/05/04/sid- ... loper-kit/

According to that article... which is according to its author's misreading of the ebay page.

So , what exactly I'm looking at?
I never seen this dev-kit before , how does this works?
Is an early 90's PC that emulates SNES by hardware so you can develop an test the game in the same machine?

Before a console enters mass production, they have to build prototype versions to give to developers so they can get games ready for launch. It's a custom job, very expensive to put together, etc. It wouldn't normally be a software emulator, like you may be used to with the word "emulator", but just a machine that acts the same way as the final version will (i.e. it "emulates" it).

So... I think this is essentially just a "hand made" SNES, probably with a few extra diagnostic and debugging features.

A $10k price tag looks really low to me, actually. I would imagine that it cost at least that much new. (I remember PS3/360 devkits were about $10k new before/at launch, though after a few years they managed to make much cheaper devkits that were more like modded retail units.)

That pic of the guy kneeling before the SNES Emulator was from this page... which inexplicably disappeared last year:

http://www.nintendo-town.fr/mod2/

Archive.org snapshot:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130622232 ... mulator-se

Feel free to explore that site. It was really interesting..... when it had all its pictures.

The pics with embossed Miyamoto face are all from a hardware collector who calls himself Shiggsy:

http://shiggsy.gbadev.org/

In real-world use, here's a SFC-devbox at Enix's studios:
( http://www.chrismcovell.com/secret/week ... QVI_2.html )

(top)

so how would people develop for the Super FX chip? is one of those SCSI ports on the back for expansion?

No, that pic was made by d4s and posted on assemblergames.

Looks like the eBay listing was removed?

Re-listed as a BIN-only sale, though a best offer box exists.

You can see a picture of one in the wild, from back the day, here:
http://www.vgarc.org/vgarc-originals/in ... -gonzalez/

Object #6 in Appendix image #4 (unlabeled version of the image is earlier on the page).

And a brief anecdote from Alberto Gonzalez, not included in the article-

And from the article-


Sorry for the random bump, but I found this topic after some brief googling, and thought I'd add this to the discussion.