Here we have some photos of a very rare SNK Neo Geo pocket cartridge programming unit. This device has a NGP cartridge socket on one side, as well as an IDC connector on the opposing end to connect to a special ISA programming card for a development PC. The Main board has the part number “SNK NGPE-SO” and the programming card is labeled as “SNK NGPE-ISA” as shown further below:

This unit may have been used to program NGP and NGPC cartridges for development testing.

NGPE-SO Cartridge Programming Unit

NGPE-ISA PC Programming Card

It is also possible that this system was part of an Arcade platform for reading and writing game save data to NGP cartridges. This was something SNK had done with the original Neo Geo system. However, with the fact that it is using an PC ISA card, I believe this is likely part of a PC Development system.

Until more information is found, possibly some documentation all of this is mere speculation. Regardless, this is still a very cool piece of development hardware.