This folder contains leaked documents relating to the sequel to the Chinese iQue Player which plays N64 games and had the codename BB.

Most of the implementation was completed by the Chinese company BroadOn, in fact it was almost ready for release, however it never made it to market.

The root folder contains an index.html file which can be opened in any web browser and gives links to all the internal sites related to BB2 such as the source code archive.

This folder also contains the following sub-directories:

• ali - Documentation about the Multimedia System on a Chip designed by T-Squares/ALi for use in the BB2 hardware
• dv - Design Validation documentation
• dvd - DVD ROM and the custom Nintendo NROM specification for Discs
• gamecube - Mostly documentation provided by Nintendo (some is from the Gamecube SDK)
• hardware - Documentation for each of the custom chips to be designed for the project by both BroadOn and ALi
• infrastructure - Documentation for how to use the CVS version control system
• licensing - Document outlining the costs of licensing DVD playback functionality for BB2
• marketing - Contains a really interesting Market Analysis by BroadOn and proposal for why BB2 will be a success (Games + DVD + karaoke)
• online - Documentation related to Online Gaming and also GBA connectivity
• schedules - Contains a project schedule spreadsheet that shows all the important dates to get the hardware designed, verified and entered into production
• security - Documentation about how the security system will work, mainly how it will prevent piracy
• system_hw - Documentation about all the hardware requirements like power supply and Bill of Materials, also contains case design
• system_software - Documentation about the software that will run on the Device (ALiRes and GeckoRes)

Each of these sub directories will be covered in the rest of the post.

This folder contains documentation related to the low level hardware for the Multimedia processor designed by T-Square Design (ALi) for use in project BB2.

ALi Corporation bought T-Square Design some time in 2004 and re-branded everything under their brand, so in some files you will see T-Squared and in newer files you will see ALi.

The company T-Square design (Also known as T2Design in the documentation) designed the T630x range of Multimedia System on A chip (SOC) but when they were bought by ALi they renamed this range to the M630x range.

The newer chips in the range were later named as the 335X causing even more confusing, you will find documentation about all the different chips in this folder, but the main thing to remember is that they the resulting BB2 SOC contains features from all of them.

Ali Family of Networked DVD Multimedia Processor chips:

• 6303/6304/6305/6306 - from 2003 and earlier designed by T2-design
• 3355/3357 - from later in 2003, newer versions of 630X range
• 3358 - The BB2 chip requested in 2004

The BB2 project initially choose to base the system on the M3357 clocked as 200MHZ with MPEG 1,2,4 support, a PCI interface and hardware Variable Length Decoding (VLD).

In 2004 they requested the M3358 which is a custom version of the M3357 with a few changes such as a 32bit SDRAM width instead of 16bit width.

The SOC provides functionality for Audio (DSP) and Graphics (Display Engine) along with DVD playback, MP3 playback and Networking. It does this with a in-built MIPS32 RISC-based CPU and a Digital Signal Processor (DSP).

The Display Engine (DE) supports both PAL and NTSC along with both interlaced and progressive scan modes! The Display Engine is split into two main parts the Video Post Processor (VPOST) and the Digital Video Interface (DVI).

This folder contains all the documentation related to automated verification that the System on a Chip behaves as expected.

It mentions that they use the Incisive Coverage Technology (ICT) software produced by Cadence Design which tracks the code coverage for the low level verilog hardware source code.

This folder contains information for how to use the CVS version control system to both checkout and checkin source code to the BB2 project.

It also contains a standard MIPS document explaining how to use the EJTAG debugger but this document can be found online without downloading this leak.

This folder contains a single dvd_licensing.htm document that lists all the different royalties that need to be paid in order to release a device with DVD playback support. This includes Dolby Digital which has a fee per channel used, the DVD CCA fee for playing DVDs that use the Content Scramble system and the different DVD patent pools like DVD 6C.

According to the document it costs on average 13 USD to 15 USB per DVD player! If you thought software patents were bad, hardware patents are even more costly.

This document is worth reading just to see the sheer cost of releasing hardware that requires DVD technology.

More information on DVD 6C is available here: DVD6C PATENT POOL / FAQ

This folder contains the file BB2-MRD.doc which lists the marketing analysis that has been done so far and how that releases to releasing the BB2 product.

They list the main competitors as the Sony PS2 and also the Xbox that is available in Hong Kong, not to mention the problem with the government policy cracking down on console hardware.

They note that due to rampant piracy in the Chinese market it is very hard to make money on per-game releases, especially on the PC platform. So most income made from the Chinese gaming market is from online games such as League of Legends micro-transactions.

This folder contains documentation for both the standard DVD-ROM format along with the Gamecube specific NROM format created by Nintendo. According to the documentation Nintendo confirmed that Gamecube games can tolerate a read speed of up to 250ms, but if you go as high as 300ms it causes major errors.

The plan was to create custom BB2 Discs that are more secure than the original Gamecube NROM format, potentially using the Content Scrambling System (CSS).

BroadOn wanted ALi to modify the System on a Chip (SOC) to allow reading the BB2 format NROM discs along with standard DVDs so it would need to support the custom lead-in Control Data Zone and the scramble initialisation. Not sure if it got far enough for ALi to implement this however.

It also contains brief information about the Content Scrambling System (CSS), so not sure if they were going to apply CSS to the custom NROM discs for the Chinese market.

This folder contains an extensive document called OnlineGaming.doc which uses multiple sources to decide how best to create their own Online Gaming infrastructure. It has details on how the online play in gamecube games is implemented and more general information such as how matchmaking servers work. It is worth a read to get an overview of what 2004 online gaming was like from a game development perspective.

It also contains a link to Arnim Laeuger’s USB to GBA adapter: USB to GBA and a link to GBATEK pages, but not sure what they had planed for the GBA, could it have been something to do with the Gamecube to GBA adapter?

This folder contains the spreadsheet BB2-Schedule.xls that surprisingly contains the schedule for the BB2 Project. The project start date was on the 30th January 2004 and the proposed production build start was to be 31st January 2005.

The spreadsheet was last updated on the 14th May 2004, this could be roughly the date where resources were moved from this project over to the upcoming Wii.

This folder contains the low level hardware documentation for each of the custom chips that would make up the Gamecube Disc Interface (GI) to be designed by BroadOn.

Also contains details about the Digital Video Input Interface (VI) to be designed by ALi as an enhancement to their M3357 Multimedia Chip.

The Audio Input interface (AI) was to receive Audio from GC hardware and Mux it with the M3357 Multimedia Chip, this chip was also to be designed by ALi.

The Audio Interface Streaming (AIS) unit is used to stream data from the drive to the Gamecube Flipper CPU.

To save cost the M3358 SoC was to perform operations that are normally handled by separate components on the Gamecube motherboard these are:

• Disc Interface (DI)
• Servo (controls DVD mechanical hardware)
• TV Encoder
• Clock Generator

The most interesting part is how it all comes together utilising the original Gamecube Flipper and Gekko components with a new Multimedia Chip.

This folder contains documents related to the security of the device and the content that will be played on it. This includes the RSA and ECC algorithms used and general notes for how to write secure code on both the client and network level.

This folder contains details on the System Software that would need to be written for the system called the “Universal Player”.

There were two CPU architectures that software had to be compiled to

• PowerPC (Gekko Gamecube Processor)
• MIPS32 (ALi Multimedia Processor)

The SDK used for developing the BB2 System software was split into 3 parts:

• usr - X86 libraries/binaries and include files for compiling on Windows/Linux
• gc - C/C++ Headers and Libraries to run on the Gamecube Gekko processor
• soc - C/C++ Headers and Libraries to run on the ALi System on a Chip

The files in this folder are described in the table below:

This folder contains…

This folder also contains the following sub-directories:

• dvd_loader - Information about the requirements for the DVD drive
• pwr_supply - Information for the Power supply required for the console
• mechanical - Diagrams and information about how the outer case for the console looks

The files in this folder are described in the table below:

This folder contains a single document called DVD Loader Requirements for BB.doc that contains the basic requirements for the DVD drive that will be included in the BB2 console. It needs to be able to support up to 2.66GB dual layer 8cm disks and up to 8.54GB for dual layer 12cm disks.

The maximum access time should be 250 msec (3-7x) with a maximum spin up time of 5 seconds, and it should have a laser lifetime of 10k hours.

This folder contains details about what the physical console would look like, including the ports on the front and rear of the unit and how it would look from the top.

This folder contains information on sourcing a power supply for the BB2 console, such as all the power requirements for each chip and also the dimensions so it would fit in the case.

This folder contains the official documentation provided by Nintendo for software developers, most of it was provided in the official SDK.

This folder also contains the following sub-directories:

• hardware - Low level hardware documentation provided by Nintendo
• NetworkBase - Tutorial on how to install the Nintendo Gamecube Comminication Hardware for Network play
• SocketLibrary - Html based documentation for the Gamecube Sockets Libraries including DVD Ethernet (dvdeth) and Berkeley Sockets (so)
• Network_SDK - The Official Nintendo Network SDK documentation including the AVE-TCP Module and Head to Head Module (h2h)
• VirtualMemory - Documentation for the Official Gamecube Virtual Memory Library provided by the SDK (November 18th 2003)

The files in this folder are described in the table below, they are all part of the standard Gamecube SDK provided by Nintendo:

This folder contains the Gamecube Communication Hardware Installation Guide (HWInstallation_Guide11.us.pdf) for installing the Official Gamecube Network hardware into the two official Gamecube development kits the DDH and the NPDP-GDEV.

It also has a guide for how to use the Line Emulator which is a development tool that emulates a phone line connection, so that developers don’t need to pay telephone charges during game testing and development.

This folder contains the documentation provided in the Official Gamecube Network SDK, which was provided to all Gamecube developers and is not unique to the BB2 project.

This folder contains the following sub-directories:

• h2h - Head-to-Head Library
• avetcp - AVE-TCP library

It won’t be covered here as we will have a separate post covering the full contents of the Gamecube Network SDK in depth.

This folder contains the documentation provided in the Official Gamecube Socket SDK, which was provided to all Gamecube developers and is not unique to the BB2 project.

It won’t be covered here as we will have a separate post covering the full contents of the Socket Library in depth.

This folder contains the documentation provided in the Official Gamecube Virtual Memory SDK, which was provided to all Gamecube developers and is not unique to the BB2 project.

It won’t be covered here as we will have a separate post covering the full contents of the VM SDK in depth.

This folder contains low level documentation by Nintendo and other hardware providers such as ArtX and IBM for each piece of hardware in the official Gamecube.

This folder also contains the following sub-directories:

• power - Low level information on the Power related hardware
• gekko - Gekko CPU specifications
• video -
• VI - Video Interface Specifications
• DI - Disk Interface Specifications
• dvd - DVD Interface Specifications
• AI - Audio Interface Specifications
• CPU_board - Diagrams of the CPU Board
• clock - Low level information about the clock generator

The files in this folder are described in the table below:

This folder contains the low level specifications for the Audio Interface from Nintendo.

This folder also contains the following sub-directories:

• hw - empty folder
• doc - contains specifications for the Audio Interface

The files in this folder are described in the table below:

This folder contains a single file called ai.xls that contains all the components of the Audio interface such as aiDSP and when they will be verified.

This folder contains low level documentation on the Audio Interface such as the DSP, DAC output and audio streaming capabilities of the Nintendo Gamecube.

This folder contains documentation for the clock chip that was used in the retail Gamecube which seems to be called the SNS-QA0764-1B unit and designed on the 14th February 2003 by Macronix.

This folder contains documents from Nintendo about how the DVD drive works at a hardware level including the low level details of the way a Gamecube game is stored on the DVD (NROM_disc_physical_format.doc).

This folder contains details on the PowerPC based RISC microprocessor developed specifically for the Gamecube. It contains 6.5 million transistors over the 42.7 sq mm die and a 256K L2 cache.

This folder contains very low level details on the power hardware used in the original Gamecube hardware such as the A/C adapter and step down controllers.

This folder contains video specific hardware such as RGB and component cable diagrams.

This folder contains information for the CPU board known internally as the C-DOL-CPU-30 such as the low level circuit diagrams.

This folder contains…

This folder also contains the following sub-directories:

• hw - empty folder tree
• bfm - Bus Functional Model Verilog Source Code
• doc - Documentation for the Flipper I/O subsystem and stress testing of the DI

The files in this folder are described in the table below:

This folder contains documentation related to the Disc Interface and how it connects to the main Flipper chip.

This folder contains the Bus Functional Model source code for the Disc Interface written in Verilog.

This folder also contains the following sub-directories:

• monitors - verilog source code for the two monitors
• tools - Testing tool C code for integrating with the verilog code
• sys - the main verilog source code of the DI

The files in this folder are described in the table below:

This folder contains the verilog source code for the Disc Interface along with a few C source files for interacting with it. All the source code in this folder was created by ArtX (ATI).

This folder contains the C source code for a testing tool created by ArtX called TestPLI, it interacts with the verilog source code using the PLI.

This folder contains documentation related to the Video Interface of the Nintendo Gamecube.