Playstation 3 development kits explored

THE MOST WORRYING thing at E3 was that Sony did not have prototype PS3 hardware on display, it used dev kits and the same mock-ups from E3 with a new controller on the turntable. Either way, there were some interesting things to be seen for those who don't have a current gen dev kit. Feast your eyes on the new kit.

First off, the display models appeared to be simply boxes painted in pretty colors to wow the throngs of unwashed (if you were at E3, you know I am not kidding) masses. The problem is if you looked at the display models, they had all the fan grates blocked. This either means they had solved the modern problem of semiconductors and drives using electricity, or they were still empty. It is hard to see here, but it was clear on the stand.

The dev kits, described to me as 'second generation' by at least a few people who have dev kits of one stripe or another, had some interesting details. The front panel was full of surprises, the one that caught my eye was the eight dip switches on the upper left. They are labled GP1 and have on/off labels. Above that, there is a set of eight lights labled GP0.

No one could tell me what they do, but someone with an older 'gen 1' dev kit speculated that they might be speed settings. If Sony has not finalized the numbers for Cell, or is having as much trouble at the fabs as I hear, they may have to ramp clocks down. Conversely, if they are doing well, they could go up. Anyone know for sure?

They also had a drive select button above the dips for HDD or BD, no, not Bondage and Domination, but DRM infected Blu-Ray. Below that they had what looks to be a headphone jack labled 'FOOT SW', and six USB ports. Beside those were the memory slots for CF, SD and another, possibly Memory Stick.

The last few bits started with the reset switches at the top center. Speaking as an ex-console dev, this was the most useful feature of the whole kit, hard resets. I do have to wonder what 'system recover' does, it is way to useful to be the obvious thing.

Moving to the back, we have some more interesting bits. First is the three Ethernet ports. Last year, this was all the talk of the show, but around CES time, they got cut. The mock-ups have one, but the dev kits, more recent than the knifings mind you, still have three.

Next to them, there are four video out options. There are two HDMI ports, one VGA, and a single connector cryptically labled 'AV MULTI OUT'. On the left side, there is another Ethernet port, a serial port, and another small thing that I can not make out the label on. Again, anyone know what it does?

The most curious thing is that all the active dev kits have two ethernet ports used, and both are active, or at least both are doing the 'blinkenlights' thing. They are not connected in a daisy chain, but that does not preclude the ability to do so in a virtual fashion through the switch they are connected to. The big speculation last year was a that you could go from PS3 to PS3 without a switch, it may be that you can, but the final version with one Ethernet port makes that almost impossible.

The dev kits were out in force at E3, anything less 6 months from launch would be something worth selling Sony stock over. The fact that they did not have one in a final box should make the XBox marketing team jump for joy. It looks like there is still a lot of work to be done. µ

& A READER writes: "Those aren't GP0 and GP1 - that's GPI and GPO; pretty standard low level terms for 'General Purpose Input' and 'General Purpose Output' - and perfectly normal to have a nice round 8 of them."