Ceantix

[Ceantix @CeantixDev]

@Rare_DevKits these were for flashing the OS onto the wii u console at the factory but I am curious since that one is with a CAT-I do you have the dev sdboot1 ancast on that card?

[Ceantix @CeantixDev]

@VGPMuseum @Dariusaurus and yea the drive in theory should behave somewhat similarly to a RVT/NR writer drive how its just a panasonic drive with a differently flashed firmware except for the wii u its some kind of non-standard blue ray disc format compared to the wii that used DVD format

[Ceantix @CeantixDev]

@VGPMuseum @Dariusaurus And I agree with you they don't show up as a standard device I tried to emulate them based off the program that ships on the pc side that I have the code to in my emulation using a pi zero they showed up as a cd drive but its possible the real hardware behaves differently.

[Ceantix @CeantixDev]

@VGPMuseum @Dariusaurus Ah I do agree with you that while yes there were caddies that you could have used them with these were sold as separate generic products there wasn't anything special about them, they were just to adapt to use the drive externally. Any adapter to hook it up should work.

[Ceantix @CeantixDev]

@Dariusaurus Also having two is amazing because maybe if both are somehow broken we can maybe piece together at least one working one. (if its not already working and you were just missing the software)

[Ceantix @CeantixDev]

@Dariusaurus But also I should mention too it won't be recognized normally this is actually intentional as it requires specialized software to be used.

[Ceantix @CeantixDev]

@Dariusaurus Just so that you know too because nobody else is known to have this specific writer drive nobody actually knows how to dump its firmware right now. You are the first to even photograph it outside nintendo its literally that rare because ushally it was in a pc.

[Ceantix @CeantixDev]

@Dariusaurus Just be careful about SATA to USB adapters though as you may need one that powers the drive from an external power source rather than drawing power from the PC.

[Ceantix @CeantixDev]

@Dariusaurus All you would need is a free SATA port or SATA to USB adapter if you don't have a pc you can connect it to. Both are listed as supported in the documentation.

[Ceantix @CeantixDev]

@Dariusaurus Yea if you would be willing to hook it up to a computer I believe once we understand how the drive works more I think it is possible to replicate its functionality using an ordinary BD-RW drive but im not sure.

[Ceantix @CeantixDev]

@Dariusaurus The stack of discs you held is actually a stack of blank discs which potentially contains special factory data that has never been archived due to that it gets overwritten in the burning process.

[Ceantix @CeantixDev]

@Dariusaurus This disc writer tool was used to write discs used in Wii U CAT-R units for QA testers and to write kiosk demo discs for CAT-I units its made by Panasonic and contains custom firmware on the drive to interact with pc software over SATA and write to special BD-ROM esque discs.