Nintendo CAT and DMG Universial CheKer

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togemet2
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Nintendo CAT and DMG Universial CheKer

Post by togemet2 »

Has anyone seen another one of these two or have any more information on how it actually works? In 2014 the following unit known as the CAT sold on eBay to a private collector for a total of $100. The cartridges appear to say "WIDE USE" across the middle, but not much more can be seen due to the low quality image. Unfortunately ever since NintendoAge went down the owner doesn't seem to be very active.

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The exact same unit can be seen in news b-roll at Nintendo's Uji Ogura factory during 1990, as seen below:

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Another version of the CAT can also be seen in the "The Stars of Famicom Games - How Video Games are Made" book. It appears to be almost the same except for the obvious lack of an NES cartridge slot. Judging from the monitors I'd assume it would display some sort of prompt to show whether the cartridge's checksum is good or bad.

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Then we have the DMG Universal CheKer (no that's not a spelling mistake on my part). It appears to have a similar function to the CAT (except for Game Boy games), but curiously it still has the Famicom cartridge slot.

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