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NetBSD/Dreamcast Official Port

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the thats-pretty-sweet dept.

sparcv9 writes: "The NetBSD/sh3 developer Saitoh Masanobu, who was able to boot the NetBSD/sh3 kernel on his Sega Dreamcast last summer, has now officially forked a NetBSD/dreamcast port. The Dreamcast effort will focus specifically on supporting the Dreamcast hardware, rather than just the Super-H processor contained within. Currently, it only boots into single-user mode, and the only function hardware is the serial port, but, hey -- it's a start." This project ranks right up there with all the tivo hacking going on in my eyes. When all is said and done, we could have really inexpensive, but reasonably powerful machines to play with.

6 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Uh... by localroger · · Score: 4
    Previously, everyone stated that Sega was able to make a profit with each unit sold. Then Sony came along, announcing huge losses with each PS2 sold. It makes me wonder which is the truth.

    Both are the truth. Sega makes a profit, though a small one, on each DC. Sony loses a ton on each PS2, partly because of Rambus and partly because it's just plain more expensive to build. This article explains it in some detail, along with a few pokes at the alleged superiority of the PS2.

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  2. DC the most versatile console yet... by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 5

    There's a surprising number of apps being written, by random people, for the dreamcast. MP3 players, emulators for other consoles, it's all good. Try dcemulation.com for a start.

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  3. Shhhhh! by jhines · · Score: 5

    Keep this quiet, otherwise Saddam will snap them all up for his supercomputer cluster, like he did with the PS2.

  4. Linux for Dreamcast by glrotate · · Score: 4

    Don't forget that Linux is at a much further stage of development for the Dreamcast. It's available at http://linuxdc.sourceforge.net/

  5. This is really cool.... by kastaverious · · Score: 4
    but how long is it likely to be before we see something useful come out of this. That said, with QT/embedded rolling along, I think it would be quite easy to have the DC running BSD running QT running whatever.

    The only big show stopper for me is thwe lack of storage. Unlike tyhe ps2, the DC has now usb or firewire ports, which means that adding a hdd ain't going to be easy. In fact, does anyone know if adding a HDD to the DC is doable?

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  6. hmmm... More on this? by GC · · Score: 4

    My understanding was that the Dreamcast had a proprietary "GD-ROM" drive that has a capacity of 1Mb or so I asked Is this being used a the boot device for NetBSD?

    So I dug around, it looks like the DC is actually capable of booting off a standard ISO-9660 CD-ROM.

    Interesting? I thought so... Here are some really interesting links on Dreamcast Software Programming and Hardware programming.

    It's incredible what's going on. What else has been ported to the DC?