@Aaron: You were using them as an argument to say that Nintendo does leave useless components in their systems. They clearly do have uses in certain situations. Why does it matter whether they were useful to you? They were all used at some point, and were therefore not "useless".

And the iLink on the PS2 can be used for networking consoles together.

All of the ports on Nintendo systems have uses, most people just aren't aware of some of them.

On the NES, the port attached to the Famicom Disk Drive.

On the SNES, the port attached to the Broadcast Satellaview and the unreleased CD add-on.

On the N64, the port attached to the DD64.

On the GameCube, one port was for the modem, one for the Game Boy Player, and the other is used for development purposes (I believe JTAG is accessible from it as well).

Leaving unused components on a board is different than leaving externally accessible ports for future expansions anyway.

CNN is jumping to conclusions.

It is a generic analog-to-digital converter used to read the gyroscope data. The manufacturer meerly *suggests* that one could use it with a microphone input.

Nintendo doesn't throw in random components that they don't need.

For any who are wondering, this is based on the C64 game "Monty on the Run"

It probably sets the unique identifier of the console for the Virtual Console DRM. I'm sure it would be easier to manufacture 4 million discs including unique IDs to lock consoles to and 4 million identical Wii consoles than it would be to manufacture 4 million Wii consoles with the unique ID set up in the factory.

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml06/06007.html

Name of Product: HP and Compaq Notebook Computer Battery Packs

Units: About 135,000 battery packs worldwide, including about 85,000 in the U.S.

Importer: Hewlett-Packard Company, of Palo Alto, Calif.

Hazard: An internal short can cause the battery cells to overheat and melt or char the plastic case, posing a burn and fire hazard.

Incidents/Injuries: HP has received 16 reports of batteries overheating, including four in the U.S.


Engadget just forgot to list HP/Compaq :p

It would have to be "Wollt ihr das bett in flamen sehen" by Rammstein.

Now people will think that CSI style technology is real...

ZOOM! ENHANCE! ZOOM! ENHANCE!

Excellent, that single pixel is now a clear enough photo of a face to arrest the guy!

We fell for their 'indestructible' marketing claims and bought two of them. But the waterproof seal couldn't save them from exploding battery packs. Yes, both tablet PCs (which were being used in different locations) had their battery packs explode within a few weeks of purchase.