3DS Video Distribution Unit

(Dunno where to put this, since the video files I'm about to show you aren't really 3DS related, so I'll just make it a short and simple blog post instead.)

A few days ago, someone on Discord by the name of Zel ordered a Nintendo 3DS Video Distribution Unit, and it's one of these lil' things:
i-img900x359-1590658281kacxkq367513.jpg

Never have we seen a real full public dump of this, so he ordered the unit and recieved it. Basically, it's just a small setup box - or should I say mini-pc - that plays a bunch of trailers for upcoming games and consoles, mainly for the 3DS lineup. This unit plays the following trailers, and notice how I say play, because there is a lot to uncover on this 320GB hard drive:
  • Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn
  • Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey
  • Luigi's Mansion (remake)
  • WarioWare Gold
  • Animal Crossing: New Leaf (Welcome Amiibo)
  • Famicom Mini (not a 3DS thing but it's not the only out of place thing you will find soon)
These trailers are very recent! So the contents on this hard drive are basically fresh. Upon digging and connecting the hard drive up to Slitaz, we found out that this setup box not only uses Linux, but has seen more than just the insides of this mini-pc. While we yet have to see what is in its entirety on here, here are some thing that were dug up:
  • Unused trailers for Captain Toad 3DS, the Super Famicom Mini and 1-2 Switch (3DS, yeah indeed)
  • Templates for upcoming DS and Wii releases
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  • Screenshots for a "Nintendo 3DS Station" (gonna post one here or else you have to scroll a lot)
unknown.png
  • Promo material for the golden Famicom Mini (haven't found them yet, so I can't comment)
  • A bunch of weird factory videos and images, some of which I've uploaded



  • Unused Wii and DSi trailers that are kind of stuffed away in a folder, which I'm sure I've seen online before, but never so high quality
No real proper research has been done on this yet, except by Zel himself, but I just felt like posting this here, since some of these contents are just so weird and out of place on a 3DS video distribution box. I will definetly post more findings in a few days, so I hope you find this as interesting as I do.

Anyway, I'm tired, and I'm out.
i should make use of blog stuff more often instead of shitting all over eof
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Comments

IC_
Really nice, I wish I had any special and rare nintendo hardware like that
Is that ubuntu screenshot from the distribution unit itself or did you connect the hard drive to another system and the distribution unit is running a different kind of linux system?
 
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FAST6191
Never really seen anything like this from Nintendo, though I don't always follow this side of things that closely.

Cool stuff.
 
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MaxiBash
@Extrasklep No, I wish I owned one. That is just a screenshot that Zel posted. We don't know how to access something like a terminal on the system, so I just told him to use Slitaz or Ubuntu, since the contents couldn't be accessed in any other way.

@PineappleGod Two, actually, I think.
 
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MaxiBash
Small update, here's what else we found in the mess of subfolders and Linux files:
  • More test videos



  • Playable 3DS demo's (some of which probably aren't even eShop demo's)
  • Links, some of which still work, but require verification
  • RVT-H headers, found by Gerbilsoft (WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING HERE)
  • Some other test files & assets that I can't list all at once
At this point, we've turned into Scrooge McDuck and this setup box is our vault, and we're probably still scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
 
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PrincessLillie
This is pretty interesting, nice find! Couldn't hurt to dump all of the files and put 'em online, right? Obviously not here, but somewhere else.
 
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MaxiBash
Just when we thought we found anything we could find, Zel came up with the idea to check for deleted files, and holy SHIT we hit a goldmine!

We found tons and tons of confidential material, such as Wii kiosk parts, some application changelog templates, .c files, FUCKING NINTY JAPAN OFFICE SETUPS, Master Lists (or at least I think), and best of all...

We found a worker's porn folder.
I WISH I WAS MAKING THIS UP.

For obvious reasons, I can't post any of this here, but it goes to show that this hard drive has been in a worker's PC at Nintendo, and it baffles me that they didn't use a seperate hard drive. It's amazing!
 
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pancakee
My mind's still blown from the schematics and diagrams lol, it's been super interesting going through the parts list documents!

Can't wait to see what else we're able to find from the recovery ^^
 
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