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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

I look forward to the day when one of these makes an appearance on one of those prototype/collector forums.

It's surprising how frequently restricted computing devices end up in public hands.

Through a relative who worked for a guy who knew a guy and so on, I ended up with the world's most awesome GRiD Compass back in the 80's. It was supposedly formerly used by someone in the Reagan administration, and had big stickers on the bottom listing all the countries where it was never to be used.

I threw it away when I got my first IBM XT. Stupid of me.

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A whole bunch of Sony devkits have gone on auction at one time, because the company went into bankruptcy and appointed administrators just went ahead to sell all company property. Of course Sony protested saying that they can't sell the devkits, but the administrators basically told them to get in the long line of people with some kind of claim. It's company property it's getting sold.

I'm missing some context. Why would Sony devkits be sensitive? What exactly do you mean by "devkit"? I though of those development kits with one specific processor you want to get familiar with, plus auxiliary hardware and software to help access it.

You're on the right track, but they're usually considered rentals not purchased property. The Apple ARM devkit Mac Mini, for example, has to be returned to Apple at the end of the preview.

What's interesting is that some people have the old (Intel) developer transition kits, even though Apple has done extraordinarily well in the intervening time period. One wonders how Apple missed them…

Exactly, and often times extraordinarily valuable because they can be used for reverse engineering, or learning how the key signing or DRM works, or can be bypassed.

Of course, most legitimate indie communities stay away from this, preferring clean-room RE efforts.

If you got your hands on the devkit without signing the NDA with Sony you could release details about how it works.

> Why would Sony devkits be sensitive? What exactly do you mean by "devkit"?

"Devkits" (at least in the context used here) are hardware for developing console videogames. Console manufacturers work quite hard to control who gets to develop for their platform and how. The devkits are often quite expensive and you won't (usually) get your hands on one unless you work for a company that has signed a very detailed contract with the console manufacturer.

"devkit" in this context means a development version of a Sony gaming console, like the PlayStation. They are different from a regular retail model in that they can run unsigned code so you can develop games for them. The reason why they are sensitive is that you could use a devkit to learn how the console works internally and potentially find some exploits that could be used in the retail models. Any company using them has to sign a very restrictive NDA that basically requires the kits to be locked up, you can't talk about their development environment or precise technical details. Sony would never sell you a devkit until you pass their security assesment, and you are only allowed to have them on the condition that they are returned to Sony when no longer needed.

Obviously, the severity of the problem depends on what gets auctioned. PS4 kits? Probably not much, pretty much everything about the console and its capabilities has been leaked a long time ago. But if some PS5 devkits were to go missing right now it would be a huge deal as the console isn't even out yet.

It's interesting to see Apple prototypes with serial numbers on them crop up all over the place…

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