Slashdot Mirror
Dreamcast Ethernet Adapter Released (Nearly)
mattbee writes: "Looks like the Dreamcast is going to be the first games console to have ethernet access; both ebworld and Lik-Sang are taking pre-orders for the long-awaited modem replacement at $60 a pop, and they'll ship with new versions of the Internet software. But who cares about their dull ol' Web browser? :) This is great news for the people doing the Linux port, and the guerilla DC development community at large (see Jules' page for links galore). At the moment, you have to upload your code over the serial port which is a little... slow."
The zip drive addon for the dreamcast (still possibly forthcoming. is it marketable?) has two usb ports on it.
Good point, I realized my oversight 3.6927 seconds after I hit the submit button. Shh don't tell anyone!
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
If it runs Linux (as it does, we're told), then it should work fine as a IP-masquerading gateway
Might be tough given that you can fit it with either the modem or the ethernet adaptor into its expansion port! And I might be wrong but the `serial' port (not really a serial port, you need a bit of bridge circuitry to connect it to a PC) only goes at 3-4K / second, hardly lightning fast.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
Hey presto! You too can have a 50 workstation lab for $10,000!
Except that the street price of $150 is subsidised by the fact that Sega expect to get money off you buying their licensed games. I'm not sure how much the Dreamcast would cost (much more than double, if you compare it to similar-spec PC hardware) if they weren't trying to account for games purchases.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
Well, I've got the Wega in the bedroom, and there I've got my hacked first Tivo (60 hours; long before it was possible to add anything other than a 30GB drive to the unit). Due to my viewing habits, I bought another Tivo (30 hours; unhacked, waiting for a purchase of an 80GB drive, and now waiting for the gold SA 2.0 rollout, so I can take it to 120+ hours). With two Tivos, I could timeshift everything I cared to watch (except for one show, which conflicts with two others on simultaneously).
:)
Last weekend, I bought a 56", 16:9 HDTV for the living room to replace my aging 32" TV, a new progressive-scan DVD player (Toshiba 6200) to replace my perfectly good but nonprogressive Sony 7700 (moving to the bedroom; the old A120 can't play some discs), and am awaiting delivery of my Panasonic TU-HDS20 HD/OTA/DirecTV STB. I moved the non-hacked Tivo into the living room for use with the new set, but realized that as our viewing shifted from the bedroom to the living room (along with the gaming: DC and PS2), we had the same need for a second Tivo.
Rather than leaving ourselves Tivo-less in the bedroom, we went to Fry's Christmas Eve and picked up a new Sony Tivo (our first; the other two are Philips units) to use as the second living room unit. Both living room units will be getting 80GB drive additions after the 2.0 upgrade.
Just to add insult to injury, I'm expecting FedEx to drop off my Philips Pronto TSU2000 (I bought the H/K Take Control last week, but should have gone with my gut and gotten the Pronto. I guess I'll be using the Take Control in the bedroom) and my Monster Power 3500 power conditioner tomorrow.
Yes, I live and work in Silicon Valley, in the high-tech industry, and I'm in no danger of being laid off.
After 2.0's out, I may take this old Libretto CT70, buy another WaveLAN card for it, and run one of the Tivos into it for net updates. Or my old P3-500 (replaced with a Thunderbird Athlon 900MHz a few months back), so I can run both Tivos into it. I've been meaning to play around with digital convergence a bit, and having the P3 in the living room would give me an excuse to do so.
.@.
I have a PS2 and will probably buy a Dreamcast as well, as they are both great systems.
However, I think the Dreamcast may have a run for its money in the PS2 ethernet adaptor given these facts:
1) PS2 will be broadband only.
2) PS2 ethernet adaptor will come with a HD.
For the first point, I think that developers not hampered by having to support the latency and bandwith of an analog modem might be able to come up with some interesting game features that make use of the improved baseline (though probably more on the bandwith side, as even DSL latency can of course be really bad if you get a remote server!)
For the second point, one of the things I do like about PC games and online access is the ability to download new mods and levels for games. Having a HD means you do noy have to download them every time you want to play! It'll be really interesting to see how Sony manages HD file maangement, though I'm pretty sure it'll be similar to how they handle memory cards now.
And, of course, the PS2 will have the Star Wars MMRP game...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yeah, but what about EA sports games? I own a dreamcast, but am going ot be purchasing a Sony just for the EA games. I enjoy playing soccer or football against my friends in my front room, etc. I will always play the mass-multiplayers on my computer.
.. gota have a PC. ;-) anyway, thats myh opinion. I have been pretty disapointed with the DC. Maybe the PS2 will be just as big of a disapointment.
For the real parties, gotta have a console , etc. For the virtual parties.. (ie. mass multiplayer online)
Cheers
--------------------
Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
There are currently no games on the market that use USB to ethernet adapters for connectivity - the only games that are multi-machine/multiplayer use the firewire ports and firewire hubs. No PSX2 game has any sort of online support today - the driver support for anything but a specific USB device (other than keyboard+mouse) is pretty much of a nightmare - it took quite a while to get that support in the linux kernel, and Sony hasn't been making motions in that directions, so I doubt that developers are going to undertake the task of writing USB drivers for various devices themselves.
Supposedly Unreal Tournament is pretty nice with the above setup, and there are a couple other games that support firewire links coming out soon as well.
I own both a Dreamcast and PSX2, and by far, the better machine now game and connection wise is the Dreamcast. You can surf the internet and download stuff with a dreamcast, and right now the Dreamcast game lineup puts the PSX2 one to shame. Oh well, give the PS2 a year, and we'll see what progress has been made.
BBK
...is how much would it actually cost to put an Ethernet jack into these devices? I mean, if I can buy Ethernet cards for less than five dollars, surely it'll cost the OEMs a fraction of that cost. Throw in some DHCP or something and you got instant Ethernet capability. Maybe only 2% of the population will use it, but what's worse: incurring a $1 (est.) extra cost per unit or the daunting task of trading in all those units when the nation (world) goes Ethernet in a few years?
Being clueless with networking (I'm surprised I actually got my mini-network up and running), I have a question.
Does anyone know if this would work when connected to a box with internet sharing?
The way I have my two computers hooked up now, is I have a win2k box downstairs connected to my cable modem, with internet sharing on. Then I have that computer plugged into a little baby-hub and a cable from the hub running up here to my computer (also running win2k).
Just wondering if I could just plug the cable that's running into this comp into the DC and have it work...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Yu Suzuki
Yu Suzuki
Deamcast. It's thinking.
Recent stories on this got me to wondering if we'll see the fruits of their development efforts? Maybe ethernet adapters, USB, etc.
I vote for USB above all else. This gets you ethernet, ability to connect multi consoles together, conect to your PC, lots of joysticks, mice, keyboards.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
It seems to me that if one of these next generation game consoles had a USB port, it would open up a whole world of possibilities.
Cheapo mice, keyboards, joysticks. Easy ethernet hacks. Modems. Cheapo cables to connect two or more consoles together. Easy to connect to your PC for development. Seems to me this should be an area of focus for the manufacturer or a third party.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Well, if you consider the cost of manufacturing a custom plastic shell for it to fit neatly into the box (nobody's gonna buy it if the circuitry and wiring is exposed), and that it IS a proprietary device, AND that the average pricing on a *good* NIC runs from $30-$40, or a USB NIC running anywhere upwards from $50, then tacking on an extra $10 for a device like this isn't that exhorbitant...
Besides, the $60 is more than likely a MSRP, as opposed to the actual retail... When they make enough to justify lowering the wholesale pricing, then the retailers will inevitably drop their prices as well... More than likely too, the wholesale pricing will be considerably lower...
How often do you see on sega.com's online store, pricing that is lower than retail? Never... The DC is running around the average pricing of $149, but does not reflect sales that some stores hold, out of box specials, or pre-owned system sales...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
An aspect of the PS2 hacking is that it uses a completely new CPU design with little in common with any other processor in major production. The DC on the otherhand uses a slightly modified SH-4 chip which is a line of widely documented processors. There's already been work done porting Linux to the SuperH line.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
True. But we're still a long way off. Both my digital cable boxes, all 3 of my TiVos, and my HDTV converter/DirecTV tuner all need to connect to a phone outlet. Thankfully, most of them are capable of negotiating shared phoneline use correctly.
Unless and until there's a fundamental shift in thinking, and the default connectivity option in the home is wired or wireless Ethernet (or some similar layer 2 protocol, with either TCP/IP or some form of TCP/IP encapsulation), and until those same homes have adequate home-wide network security coupled with "grandmother-simple" plug-and-play configuration, analog phone connections will continue to reign.
In terms of Joe Sixpack acceptance and preparedness for fully-networked appliances, we're standing in a place similar to the early 1940's with the transition from radio to television -- it's coming, but it's a long way off, and there's going to be a lot of growing pains along the path.
Things like this add-on, and recent work replacing the default TiVo modem dial-in with straight Ethernet access (both by subverting the existing PPP config, and by building an ISA slot onto the unit and adding a regular ISA Ethernet card), demonstrate that there's a small segment of society that wants and is capable of taking advantage of such advances. But right now, that segment is EXTREMELY small.
.@.
is here ... for those of you who don't want to go through the linked page (which has some sort of script that makes my machine have a heart attack).
It doesn't have much information, though. I just want to know if I can use it behind an IP masquerading linux box. (Or any other NAT router for that matter.) I ordered one anyway. =)
It would have been nice if Sega had thought about it a little more beforehand. See, the network layer isn't transparent to developers - you have to actually write seperate code and include drivers for both a modem *and* an ethernet card in your game if you want to support both, instead of just making your game TCP/IP capable. So all those Dreamcast modem-capable games you have now aren't going to work with it. Just a little word of caution.
On the other hand, while it makes things nice for the Linux port, it's good for the NetBSD port as well...
-lx