rmc
(randommeaninglesscharacters.com)
randommeaninglesscharacters.com is my largest documentation project. I use it to collect and research development, factory, and prototype software for the Nintendo DS/DSi. These types of programs would have been from the early planning of the DS/DSi—before the consoles even reached the market—or from internal tests and the assembly line. Every program and piece of hardware should have been destroyed, and was never meant to see the light of day. Typically they only survive through e-waste cartridges (usually broken and unrecoverable) or in poorly documented leaks, so my goal is to make sure that each piece of software is properly backed up, indexed, and preserved for many years to come.
I also use rmc to organize the release of new prototypes. Sometimes prototypes slip into the hands of collectors, so I reach out to these collectors and work towards preserving their hardware. Together we research where the hardware came from, what it was for, and perform data recovery when needed.
There's a lot to check out on rmc, so below are a few of the most interesting pages.
CTR Board Checker
CTR Board Checker is a special factory rig used to test Nintendo 3DS consoles. The hardware would have connected directly to the 3DS motherboard, and a DSi would act as a controller for the machine. Nintendo very commonly used their previous generations of consoles to test the new ones, and it's interesting to take a look at how they made it work.
WRFU Tester
WRFU Tester is part of the DSi factory testing. WRFU by itself is fairly uninteresting software, but shown on this page is a prototype of the WRFU setup. It's hard to say what it was used for, but it seems like a demo unit. It may have been for the FCC.
MangaON
MangaON was a cancelled digital manga service for the Wii and DSi. The project was demoed at Jump Festa 2009 and seemed to have a promising future, but it was never released. A contributor to my site was able to reconstruct a prototype from one of the demo units. MangaON finally gets to see the light of day.