this is a Nintendo 3DS or rather
this is yeah you heard me the partner
CTR is a beast unlike anything we've
ever seen before it's a 3DS development
and capture kit that was manufactured by Kyoto micro computer company for
Nintendo and like other console Dev kits
it boasts features that are absent from its retail kin like the ability to
remotely debug software and it also has
extra memory and special controls but what sets this one apart from the
development kits we've looked at before is that it adds back a feature that
nearly every console has had in some manner since the invention of video
games the ability to connect to a TV of
course connecting ah TV wasn't enough for the 3DS so what about second TV this
thing is absolutely wild this DS that I'm holding in my hand this is just a
dummy roller all the brains are actually
in here you can fit so much brains in
here oh and so much Segway to our sponsor you green ugreen's 100 watt
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covering older console Dev kits we've been inundated with emails from people
wanting to send us their precious retro relics to have them featured and when
Twitter users swimming got in touch
his offering really stood out from the crowd of all the best selling consoles
out there only the Nintendo 3DS lacks a
way to Output to a television Super Nintendo and GameCube both had ways to
play games from the Game Boy family the PlayStation Portable hat models with
DirecTV out and the PlayStation TV was essentially just a non-portable PS Vita
even the DS Lite had a built-in method for getting composite video though it
was actually disabled in firmware and went undiscovered until 2020. over the
years then there have been a handful of Homebrew attempts to record video off of
the 3DS some use the Wi-Fi some replaced
the infrared with USB but none were quite successful in getting direct
monitor output in real time as for this dev kit it can not only output directly
to a monitor but it can output to one monitor for each screen and to this day
it is the only official way to get video
out from a 3DS game unfortunately you
can't just take any old 3DS and grab video from it with this box this may
look like a normal 3DS it may have buttons and speakers and joysticks and
even screens like a 3DS but inside it's
actually just a couple of custom boards everything in here is getting wired back
to the main unit through these two big beefy cables and in fact the video
signals for these displays are coming from this guy we'll kick
things off with some stuff we can do without disassembling the unit like wake
our software from sleep and by pressing X and Y at the same time getting some
basic debugging information here we see the build number of this particular game
the mode of the system which seems to be production we're not 100 sure what these
bars are if I had to guess I might say
that it was something to do with like frame times but I am guessing whoa
what's happening oh my God we're not even capturing that one that one let's
get it on camera then some of the stuff is going to be up top
some of the stuff's going to be on the bottom yes they were still believing in
that at the time we spent the last hour figuring out capture for the top because
it's how it puts a weird signal anyway the point is what we're about to show
you is on the bottom
oh and we crashed and we crashed okay
press any button to shut
does it open sometimes no it didn't even open in the uh development mode I just
wanted to see it crash oh you just wanted to see it crash you're just you're just agent of chaos you're just
taking pleasure in my pain at this point oh yeah I see config all right hey this
is looking more interesting we got some menu settings debug settings user info
settings hid settings ooh touch panel
calibration analog stick calibration uh what do we got for menu setup setting oh
I see I can change my language oh I can switch over to Dev mode okay debug
settings latency emulation wow you can
add latency what would it be like with a hundred milliseconds of latency
once it normally take this long to boot up no and it looks like it's boot
cycling oh no I'm in a boot loop into system settings oh that's not a good
sign right up here showing that we're using system 0.0.0 so
that that's the firmware version that we're currently on did we just lose our
firmware yeah we might have we just have no firmware now so we're just going into
system settings and that's it wait hold on other settings wait I got this system
update boom yes there's no way this is
going to work I figured something out if I hold select
while it's booting I can get into the Luma 3DS configuration menu here I don't
know that this is going to help us but what you guys are looking at here is a a
hack for the 3DS because this thing is essentially a 3DS you can hack it to run
Homebrew games or whatever else just like a normal 3DS and this one has had
that done this is a bit of a high risk play but we're going to try a system
update to maybe restore a working firmware onto this thing hopefully that
doesn't break the Luma hacks or whatever else I mean when's the last time the 3DS
got a firmware update anyway an error has occurred unable to update cool so we
bricked it oh firmware version point
34.0 and we're back this thing is a nightmare you know what
happened was we went into the config menu and while I was tooling around
changing stuff one of the settings I changed was under menu setting I set the
menu type test menu
test menu and the test menu is bugged so
we need to leave that on home menu the only way we were able to get it back was
by going into that menu that flashes up for a second and changing it back to
home menu anyone else getting a QA vibe from this user info settings hid
settings and calibration LCD settings flicker top flicker bottom luminance
level like you can I guess change the
out of box experience Eula settings you can oh my God you can edit it agree
version whatever I'll just set my own Eula
nice we can just reset the settings right that seems like a good thing to do
oh God what is this oh I reset the Ubi
okay I guess I'm yep going through this
all right so wait can we try the dev menu again then whatever you get oh it
crashed our suspicion is that to load up the dev menu there's some prerequisite
that we're not meeting like a piece of software that has to be loaded up or an
access code or key or something along those lines unfortunately it means that
we can't access it what we can do though is play video games new Super Mario
Brothers 2 has never looked this big and
blurry let's go oh wow that really does
look like absolute garbage would you like a controller maybe like a
controller wait what yeah here have a controller hold on a second should I
recognize this controller it's from the Wii I I only know the classic controller
on the Wii well it's a development controller so this is a development
controller oh sick so wait wait wait wait
shut up oh shoot it works what the heck it looks
just like the Wii Classic Controller except has actual you know ergonomic
handles on it it's amazing how often you see a development version of a product
you're like oh that's way better how did the stupid atrocity that made it to
retail ever happen what the heck else do we have going on here what is video mode
if I change this am I going to cause problems uh you might but all you need
to do is reboot if it does what vertical
oh oh cool wait why is it why is the top
screen cloned oh this is for 3D projection
that's so cool did they ever actually
demo 3DS content like this because this
is the left and the right view right yep
oh no way what else we got okay so we
see only the side by side and then that's on a separate screen sure fine
okay top bottom 3D sure right because if
you're in like a big you know demo haul or something like that a lot of the time
they would have like vertical you know on the side of the stage or whatever you
got to be ready for that sort of thing even if you never use it this is Wild on
the surface the stuff mostly makes sense here's your SD card slot just like the
3DS had here's your flash card slot where you would put a game you would
think except that this system actually
cannot play standard 3DS games that you
would buy off the shelf it only plays
special Nintendo developer only cartridges which is I mean seems
unnecessary but cool sort of I guess then we've got okay these we can show in
a little bit more detail later but this is handling the inputs coming into the
box which actually doing the compute and then the outputs sending display out to
this and then we've got our external controller and then what the doodad is
this oh this is just an IR emitter
because why would it need to be small when it's not on a handheld system I
without further Ado I'm ready to finally play some big screen new Super Mario
Brothers 2 with a controller this is not
emulated folks this is an actual 3DS
this just feels wrong doesn't it like quite wrong indeed it's wrong and I love
it ready to take it apart oh wait we haven't shown the back yet the back is
super trippy you've got capture over USB
that's why we're actually using our DVI to HDMI out into a capture card because
the capture is honestly not great dual DVI outputs that's for your top and
bottom display which seems to be some kind of weird variant of 720p and then
this is kind of weird look at that this is a Wii adapter that goes into a DC
power in and then the same AV output
from the Nintendo Wii so it could actually output via component if you
really wanted to although it's not clear to me ah yes okay it would be in place
of DV output 1 which is I guess the top
screen probably debugging USB port and
there is an external antenna because this is a metal cage which is not great
for RF performance and the easiest way
to get it open seems to be to just take off the side panel lttstore.com
screwdriver finally shipping to early buyers wait should we open up the 3DS
first to show people how not normal this is oh wow
what appears to be more debugging or something over here for the board and
then I mean as advertised tenor it's just it looks like just basic boards in
there to handle the screen and i o where
there should be a DS there's just plastic
okay that is super cool what we're
looking at here is an fpga these are
very expensive but very cool because unlike the chip that shipped in your
retail 3DS this chip here can actually be reprogrammed in the field so if
Nintendo during the development of the 3DS Hardware were to go oh gee you know
we found some bugs or we found a way to improve performance and tweak the actual
what will be final silicon they can roll that tweak out to these development
boxes so that they will be essentially the new hardware of course the drawback
is that at Nintendo's scale just millions or tens or hundreds of millions
of units the cost of these would be completely untenable in a retail product
what's a cyclone 3 worth
200 to a thousand dollars well because
this is still lots of performance for lots of things let's say you were
developing uh I don't know a smart door lock or something like that this can be
fully reprogrammed not emulated reprogrammed to behave exactly the same
way that your mass-produced chip would so you can much more easily test things
without doing a full tape out which costs millions of dollars what else are
we looking at here we got two gigs of ddr2 memory that's a lot more than the
3DS had that makes sense because in development builds tend to be buggier
and especially more bloated double a batteries trying to think why could we
possibly need two double A cells maybe we need three volt power that's a
possibility well why don't you start taking it apart and uh the connections
might tell you something I can take it apart more oh yeah absolutely oh all
right yeah understand which of the chords all right let's do it hey there
we go all right this is definitely our
main brain this is where our power comes wait what the f shut up there's a Wii
sensor wait is this also a Wii why is
there a Wii IR bar here from what I've been told that was just likely to save
money how sure are you that this isn't also a Wii dev kit ah yep we found it
remember we didn't comment on there being a we IR sensor bar Port that's
because this doesn't seem to be actually hooked up to anything if you look it was
likely a cost saving measure where they just used the same assembly for the AV
multi-out and sensor bar and then just
didn't hook this part up just only
hooked up the AV and does the Wii U this
is the Wii U so it uses that same configuration then
what please be a plain English
silkscreen explanation of what you are because as far as I can tell this is the
actual 3DS not that one we've got our
nand flash we've got another Cyclone no but there's no RAM here we've got some
Nintendo laser etched ARM processor which makes a lot more sense to be the
actual 3DS processor maybe it includes
both whatever revision they were shipping and then also an fpga so they
have the ability to change it up if they need to I'm just guessing at this point
to be honest with you guys do you know the answers to any of this I have a
pretty good guess okay what's your guess go down another layer go down a layer
okay I'll go down there still no RAM on
the sport which is a little confusing but it is host to some of the primary
functions of the device wireless connectivity power in the SD card slot
as well as the video output and input
input here I thought this was getting kind of boring this is the farthest
thing from boring remember what I said about fpgas being field reprogrammable
what that means is that they can fulfill all sorts of different functions that
means this board in spite of its size is probably more of a daughter board acting
as just a Bluetooth card and power
supply and SD card slot and video output
board but if I had to guess based on that this is the board with our DVI
output and our capture USB I would say that this one is probably handling video
capture which would mean that this last
one could very well be the actual brains
of our 3DS however my suspicion these
three boards are the actual 3DS what do
you think I think you're close close I think what's actually happening is this
board right here you've got RAM right there you've got your processor I want
to say right there I can't they read it from here but this right here is
handling your developer output so this is actually running whatever debug
interface we have no way of accessing exactly okay and that allows us low
level access to what is probably the
actual 3DS right here in the event that we brick our firmware or something like
that through this debug Port which I if I was smart I would have looked at and
yeah yeah I think you're right through this debug Port I could actually reset
this to a factory state or an upgraded state or whatever the case may be now
this board is still part of the 3dsness
of it because it otherwise doesn't have a game slot but it's not anymore part of
it than say for example this Bluetooth
module it's it's a it's a daughter board okay did we ever figure out what these
bloody Double A's are for I'm gonna confess I don't know is it to simulate a
like battery loss like power loss like I
don't why would you need a battery in there the popular theory is real-time
clock real time clock oh okay so
basically a CMOS battery but like with
enormous Mondo capacity all right fair
enough as cool as it is though the partner CTR capture debugger isn't
exactly unique and this right here the
is Nitro capture is actually the previous generation unit for the
Nintendo DS which swimling also sent us
is stands for intelligent systems the manufacturer and then Nitro was the code
name for the Nintendo DS and then capture of course is what the unit was
made to do capture video many of these were used for various Promotional and
competition events like the Pokemon world championships according to
swimling that's where this unit is suspected to have lived out its days and
likely where it got the uh Dent by the
GBA slot that likes to scratch up cartridge labels there's not a whole lot
to this one though that we didn't already see it uses a GameCube power
adapter rather than a Wii power adapter GameCube AV cables rather than Wii AV
cables and has dip switches to control video settings the controller is a shell
of the system just like the partner CTR and it can play all retail DS and GBA
games and capturing video can be done over USB however its coolest party trick
the capture a video off of the DS requires a working install of Japanese
Windows XP in order to run the software
it also lacks Wireless functionality opting instead for an RJ45 Jack which on
our unit is unfortunately damaged meaning that we have no network
connectivity but I guess for the intended use of this unit it makes a ton
of sense since events like a Pokemon tournament are inevitably going to be
chock full of Wireless interference I mean you can't have your world
championship game delayed because a thousand people in the audience are
trying to trade Snorlax is in ludicolos I
newfangled Pokemon that I don't know or like drawing dirty images and piktochat
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if you guys enjoyed this video you might also enjoy the time we checked out a PS3
dev kit that one was absolutely wild we've gotten Gears of War running on it
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