View source for CAT-DEV

The '''CAT-DEV''' ('''Cafe Tool for Development; Product Code: WUT-001''') was the main development system for the Wii-U. It can come in black, white, or tan/gold colors in a small rectangular box depending on the version. Most CAT-DEV's will be 'beige' which is most commonly used for the later final revisions. Each CAT-DEV including full Wii-U hardware with 4Gbs of RAM  (the retail system contained only 2Gbs of RAM), as well as a Debugger, Optical Disc Emulation, and Host I/O Hardware. Later revisions also contained an internal HDD.
The CAT-DEV features all the ports and functionality found on a retail system (minus the disk drive), as well as 2 additional USB ports, three additional Wired RF serial ports, an internal hard drive, and in later versions a LAN Port. The CAT-DEV System can be configured to be in one of several boot modes. The boot mode recommended in many of the SDK Docs requires a host system attached, along with a network connection for both the CAT-DEV, and the Host PC running the associated SDK. Each SDK version only has a certain documented list of CAT-DEV's supported.
The typical development flow using a Cat-DEV is to plug it into the network, and run "cafeon", or "caferun" from the Cafe SDK to emulate a full filesystem on the host PC. Developers could add, and remove directories dynamically to add titles and directories. Debug output is usually streamed over the network connection, but can also be gathered over a USB-Serial connection.