I'm in AZ too (although I'm not going to step on your toes, Kaz, if you're planning on buying it) It sounds like it needs a reflash to get out of emulation mode based on what I'm reading? Is getting it out of emulation mode the only way to view the contents of the hard drive?
He's open to hearing an offer. What's a fair price to shoot him? $650 stings a lot, and it seems like they don't sell for that much on eBay.
I was supposed to get my tax refund check today, but there were complications. I am now seriously upset that there were complications.
Worth getting if you can spare the money, but don't release anything you develop on it if you use the official SDK. It says it's booting to the 3D menu, so I'm assuming the region is set to one of the test regions. There's many bios test modes as well as a built in self checker. The 3D menu is enabled by default on one of those test modes. It will not run discs in emulation mode, only a prepared project from the HDD. I'm assuming there isn't one prepared, but as far as I know a project would never boot from a test region. Like trying to play a Japanese game on a US console. You need to set up a PC for this unit to get it out of emulation mode. You can run games from it's HDD and you can even reduce (or increase) the loading times from a "Real-GD" speed to HDD access speed. Though it uses an old SCSI HDD and it's the sort that can be a bit noisy (Though not as noisy as a GD in most cases! Mainly when writing to it). I had one to help with researching games that can't run in emulators presently, and it's also how I found the debug mode in Rez and the TGS mode in Sonic Adventure, since the Codescape Debugger gives you access to the registers. You can also dump games through a serial cable but this is very slow. If you're gonna get it there's threads over on AssemblerGames about setting up the PC side of it, what equipment you'll need, etc. It's also worth maybe making an image of the HDD so you can attempt recovery on it as well as preserve whatever is on there, if anything. That way you can also check for any deleted files from the unit's past assuming it hasn't been formatted.
Not to speak for the OP, but that's my only interest in picking it up. I'd really hate something to be on that hard drive and it isn't preserved properly.
