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The CD-i N.I.R.D. is here: A cartridge based debugger that plugs in the DV slot of a CD-i player to help spotting bugs in CD-i software

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Paul Clarke was a CD-i developer at Philips ADS (Advanced Development & Support) within Philips Research based in Redhill, UK. He built and designed the NIRD (Non-Intrusive Real-time Debugger), which was used as a real-time debugger in the form of a cartridge about the size of a DV cart that plugs in the DV slot of a CD-i player, with a through connector and cradle so a DV cart can then be plugged in. There's then some PC software that you use when running it. Below you see Paul working on it (picture taken in 1994):


Paul Clarke: "Found in my loft... the CD-i Non-Intrusive Realtime Debugger (nicknamed the NIRD by my CD-i test colleagues in Hasselt test centre Belgium). I designed and built this at Philip's Research Labs in the mid-90's and really enjoyed designing the hardware, FPGA designs, embedded software, and host PC software. The adaptor board stack is for the pesky 450, as the debugger was designed to slot into DV slot of larger players with through connector and caddy for DV cart. Great fun then using them to debug games like 7th Guest, and then to write Ram:Raid and Atlantis.


It samples the address, data and control bus of the CD-I processor as exposed on the expansion port and saves 16384 bus cycles in a round robin format until it spots a bug. You then download up to 16384 cycles before the bug to the PC where I wrote a bus cycle disassembler that shows you what went wrong, even down to C-source level if you like. I got a patent for it - see link here and you can find out more about my current work here"

The ADS team paid tribute to the power of N.I.R.D in this touching credit screen from Arcade Classics. The definition of N.I.R.D is Non-Intrusive Real-time Debugger:



[Thanks, Paul Clarke, the author of the N.I.R.D.]

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