What is this thing?

[TS_Death_Angel]

I bought it on eBay and it was described as a GameShark. Although it looks like one, there's no menu to select codes and it doesn't look like any GameShark I've ever seen. All I see when I turn it on is a screen that says "DDX" and then it starts the game. Hope someone can shed some light on this! Pictures:
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/3926/gs16yz.th.jpg (http://img440.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gs16yz.jpg)
http://img336.imageshack.us/img336/7020/gs28eu.th.jpg (http://img336.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gs28eu.jpg)

[Jibbajaba]

Could you post a few more close up pics of the thing? Googled "Nintendo 64 DDX" but didn't find anything.

Chris

[TS_Death_Angel]

Sure thing:
http://img475.imageshack.us/img475/1449/P5110016.th.jpg (http://img475.imageshack.us/my.php?image=P5110016.jpg) http://img475.imageshack.us/img475/8868/P5110009.th.jpg (http://img475.imageshack.us/my.php?image=P5110009.jpg) http://img475.imageshack.us/img475/2339/P5110008.th.jpg (http://img475.imageshack.us/my.php?image=P5110008.jpg)

[HardcoreGamer]

That might just be a DexDrive-type of device. The parallel port on the cart could be used as a PC-to-N64 interface.

[ig88vsbobafett]

Im gonna go out on a limb and say its a n64 backup cart (for copying games) it looks a little like the Doctor V64Jr but not quite the same

[GrandAmChandler]

Im gonna go out on a limb and say its a n64 backup cart (for copying games) it looks a little like the Doctor V64Jr but not quite the same

I agree, looks like a backup device.

[TS_Death_Angel]

I don't think so, I looked inside, no RAM... But, if it is, god damn I got it cheap ;) I'll try to get a pic of the inside, one sec...

Edit:

Hmm, these pics wouldn't help. You can't really see inside it :/ I tried unscrewing it, but it's sealed together :(

[Kitsune Sniper]

I don't think so, I looked inside, no RAM... But, if it is, god damn I got it cheap ;) I'll try to get a pic of the inside, one sec...

Well, it could be used to dump the data from a cart... or it could also load the ROM itself from that parallel connection over at the top.

[TS_Death_Angel]

I don't think so, I looked inside, no RAM... But, if it is, god damn I got it cheap ;) I'll try to get a pic of the inside, one sec...

Well, it could be used to dump the data from a cart... or it could also load the ROM itself from that parallel connection over at the top.

Hmm... if only we had some information on this thing :( I mean, if there's no information, there's sure as hell no software! D:

Edit: Was thinking about what you said... in theory, would it be possible to make something like that for the GameShark? There would be a slight decrease in the loading time, but overall... it sounds like it could work.

[rbudrick]

If you could give hi res pics of the board, that might help. I'll ask Kyuusaku if he knows....

-Rob

[TS_Death_Angel]

If you could give hi res pics of the board, that might help. I'll ask Kyuusaku if he knows....

-Rob

I would try... but the cart is sealed on the sides, if you can imagine that... if not, I can get a picture :P

[Sweater Fish Deluxe]

My guess would be that it is indeed a GameShark device. It may require a special button combination to be held at startup to get to the menu. No idea what combination that might be however. Or it may not have any actual onscreen interface and may require you to use the GSCC program via a PC connected through the parallel port (which I believe is a real parallel port on devices like this, not a COMMS port).


Edit: Was thinking about what you said... in theory, would it be possible to make something like that for the GameShark? There would be a slight decrease in the loading time, but overall... it sounds like it could work.
It's not possible to simply stream an N64 game over a parallel connection. It's far too slow and cartridge games don't read their data in any predictable manner anyway, so you need (near)instant access the entire ROM at any given time or else the game will crash, which is why you need some sort of RAM or flash memory in any backup device. If this thing you got doesn't have that, it's definitely not a backup unit.

While this fact makes loading actual N64 games impossible through a GameShark, the homebrew NES emulator NEON64 can in fact be played through a GameShark. Vastly simplified, it works by using the GSCC program I mentioned earlier to write the whole emulator directly to the N64's RAM and then a GameShark code to tell the N64 to go to the place in RAM where the emulator was written and then once the emulator is loaded writing the ROM to another location in RAM with GSCC. It's really pretty brilliant. I've never tried it myself since I have an actual backup unit and no GameShark, but someday I want to try it just because it's so unique. (NEON64 is a really great emulator, too, by the way. While it doesn't have support for a huge number of mappers, it does everything else right, making it better in the games that it does support than NesterDC or any NES emulator I've used on my PC).

As for the possibility that this device is just for backing up cartridges to a PC, that's possible I suppose (a GameShark can do it, for instance), but if that was really its only purpose, it wouldn't even need to plug into an N64. There's already stand-alone devices of about the same size that can do the job.

Try some button combinations when powering on the device or try connecting connecting it to your PC and running GSCC.

EDIT: Link to GSCC here:
http://www.goldeneyeforever.com/
(The "XP Version" works with all versions of Windows)

Link to Neon64 here:
http://hcs.freeshell.org/neon64.cgi


...word is bondage...

[rbudrick]

Sealed like melted together, or sealed by clips on the inside like Fami carts?

Pirates often went to great measures to have other pirates not discover how their things were made. Kyuusaku told me once about a device (a fami or fds copy device...I forget)once that had the entire board coated with something (plastic? rubber?)....it was extremely tedious to get off. Oftentimes, chips are scraped so their model numbers are not shown.

-Rob

[Sothy]

it looks somewhat similar to a bootleg hardware device i saw that plays gameboy games on the n64 "albeit without sound"

But obviously it has that port instead.... maybe the same company made it.

[OdSquad64]

Hmm, have you tried pressing that little black button on the front? maybe that does something. the gameshark has a similar black button which would lead me to believe this is a cheat device. Also, this may seem somewhat obvious, but are you sure you're not putting the cart on upside down?

[Darren870]

Maybe its like a freeloader?? did you try using a game from a different region?

[TS_Death_Angel]

Maybe its like a freeloader?? did you try using a game from a different region?

Tried that, didn't work.

[cyberfluxor]

The first thing I'd think is: Can I trust this thing connected to my N64?!

It looks pretty wierd and everyone else's guess is like mine. I think it is either some odd-ball homebrew of a hacking device for cartridges. Maybe the connector is supposed to be connected to the computer and a piece of software should be getting a second stream of the data being fetched from the cart. With the code streams you'd be able to hack the code and manipulate a custom cheat code. Although it's pretty far out there, never know.

Then the other idea is it's some ROM uploaded. Once again you would need some software to create a ROM out of the physical hardware.

A third possible idea is the port is supposed to connect to your computer so you may take screenshots of the video. This of course would take a bit of research and an actual find of who the creator is to figure that out but would be nifty.

Just keep looking through search engines for DDX and N64 mod cartridges. I'm sure there's some bit of information out there someplace, otherwise they decided to spend time making a add-on to an N64 system and give no on-line documentations.

[rbudrick]

I spoke to Kyuusaku and he said:


I've never seen this but it really looks like a Gameshark knockoff. The button in front must do something, my first thought would be to hold the button down while turning on the console and if that didn't work, push it during gameplay. I guess it's possible for it to be controlled entirely by the PC but I wouldn't think so. Maybe it's just broken?

Pushing the button in while turning it on? Hmmm..give that a shot...

-Rob

[dedtech]

I hate to do this.. Imma guess. I hate to guess cause I could be wrong. However, lets ok at what it could be.

1- Some sort of game cheat device. Yea, it is possible. That port on the top of the cart that connects to the PC could be there to upload game codes to the device...... Maybe....

2- I wont get into the argument of, is this a Development or, a Piracy device but, lets look at some interesting things about it. First off is that computer port on the top. Very well could be used to upload code onto the device to then be played on the N64 hardware. That would mean that this is not a "Game Copier" (although it might be able to do that). If its an old style dev cart then, an original game cart is hooked into the red ddx cart to "boot" the code on the device. What would probably be happening is that the code is uploaded to the device. A game cart is hooked onto the red cart. Turn on the device and push the button on the red cart to boot the homebrew code.

Final word. All the above is conjecture. I have based my observations about this device based on other devices I have seen in the past and in some cases specificly Nintendo's pattern for protecting thier code by making it non-bootable to the point that hackers have created sidesteps or other boot methods. An extreme example is a new passme device they are making for the Nintendo DS that uses the boot prom from an actual Nintendo game cart. Pretty clever no?
Like I said though, this is all just a guess, based on what I think Im looking at.

PS- I dont think that cart is "sealed" I think those are just security screws. Im not sur of the type but maybe the old N security cart screws??? They dont look like pop rivets to me. But that may just be photo's.