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Dreamcast (Finally) Goes Broadband
Thornburg writes: "The Dreamcast Broadband adapter is finally available for sale directly from Sega's online store. I got the story from Console Wire, here." So the next time you hear someone complain about how the Internet isn't how it used to be and Why Back In The Day Sonny We Didn't Have "Keyboards," you can tell him how you "use your existing Ethernet network, DSL or Cable modem services for smooth, low-ping gameplay."
From webopedia.com-- Broadband A type of data transmission in which a single medium (wire) can carry several channels at once. Cable TV, for example, uses broadband transmission. In contrast, baseband transmission allows only one signal at a time. Most communications between computers, including the majority of local-area networks, use baseband communications. An exception is B-ISDN networks, which employ broadband transmission.
Don't worry - you'll still need ping to verify your routing, test your interfaces, that kind of thing. You can leave your 'Story about Ping' on your O'Reilly shelf...
--
If you haven't played it online, you haven't played it at all. I was starting to get a little disappointed with it until I got it online - trust me, it's a whole new kettle of fish.
www.gamefaqs.com have detailed instructions on how to get the Japanese version online (on the PSO messageboard)
I just can't wait to see how it handles lag and dead reckoning
Pretty well. The game is designed to hide it, so it rarely becomes visible and almost never affects gameplay significantly.
I guess the biggest hurdle now is getting the US servers online
They're already there (and rather busy)
Yeah it reminds me of my favorite Steve Vai (the virtuoso guitarist) quote: "If they had Nintendo when I was a kid, I'd probably be a great Nintendo player now instead."
What's funny to me is, people who grew up on PC first-person shooters (Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, etc.) agree resoundingly that the mouse+keyboard combination is the only way to play an FPS. However...
...people that grew up playing console games say that a controller is the only way to play an FPS (GoldenEye, Timesplitters, Perfect Dark).
Case in point: I just recently got a friend of mine into playing PC FPS (Unreal Tournament, Soldier of Fortune). He loves it, and he's (annoyingly) good at it...his only complaint is having to reach all the way over to hell-and-be-gone just to switch weapons, or jump, or crouch. I'd never thought of it that way, because I'd ALWAYS played it that way (anyone remember when Duke Nukem 3D (IIRC) brought 'jump' and 'crouch' to FPS?).
The point is, simply, that it's personal preference. A skilled console player I'm sure would be excellent comp for a skilled PC player. I'll see you guys on the Net.
P.S.-->The only game (other than flight sims) where I've seen keyboard skill REALLY make a difference is Starcraft. It's SCARY watching a skilled keyboardist play....sheesh.
--Just Another Pimp A$$ Perl Hacker
El riesgo vive siempre!
ive had a DC for 3 to 4 months now. ive tried quite a few games online (nba2k, nfl2k, some racing games, etc) and have never had a problem with lag or any of the usual problems associated with PC gaming on a dialup connection. all this and i max at 28800 with the dreamcast. i would definetely hold off on this until there is some need for it. (unless your one of the rare ones who uses the DC for internet access and email) -- im sorry. peace.
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And now, the moment all you Dreamcast owners have been waiting for (me included),
:)
-in a spanish announcer's voice-
El Fasto Brrrrrooooooaaadbaaaand. -roll the r's-
Let's get ready to Rumble.
But honestly, what really good online game that the dreamcast has that this will go good with? Q3A yes, but let's try something a bit more, umm not pc derived, but original game console multiplayer. Sadly I expect few (if any) original multiplayer games for the Dreamcast for awhile anyway.
And if anyone says Chu-Chu Rocket, oooh I'll lose it. How anyone (not from Japan) could like it is beyond my comprehension.
And now for score 1 redundant.
You look like you need a monkey.
--Another quote from No One Lives Forever (game, not movie)
According to both the official site and this ConsoleWire.com site, games need to explicity acknowledge broadband access as opposed to a standard modem so not all games will work.
What were they thinking with this? They've been developing this adapter for long enough (how long has it been since they announced it was in development?) that they should have created all their games with the future in mind. What's the point of creating great games with internet access, if you intentionally leave out any sort of high speed upgradeability.
There's no excuse for not planning for the future, and this is what Sega has done. If this system flops before the XBox and the PS2 and the GameCube, then good. They were slow and they didn't look forward far enough... killer flaws in the video game world.
--
RumorsDaily
The difference is, it hadn't been released for sale yet. Now you can actually go buy it. -- Dr. Eldarion --
Ha! ya I don't acutally listen to him either. Regardless, he is talented and it's better than having the Backstreet Boys (Nintendo generation) in your ears.
Quake III and Diablo II both work really well.
Probably because that's what the Cisco engineers use to debug.
Debug. Yeah, that's it!
Yes, boss, I'm working hard. I'm debugging a feature in our router to direct UDP packets to the right place.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Now Dreamcast owners can experience, first hand, the joy of being told they '4r3 4ll p1ng, n0 skiLlz!!! FuX0ring LPB!@# Eye 0Wn j00 on L4N!!!"
I probably should have been more clear. My firewall allows me to forward both TCP and UDP ports. This is how I got Net2Phone working. I can even forward TCP port X and UDP port X to two different places (which means you don't have to tie up the TCP port that you are using for a UDP game). I'm sure that linux firewalls will allow this too.
-no broken link
Anyone for a highspeed NFL2K1 game? :) Hacking is a lot easier when you put it off with playing games.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Uhh no. They were taking pre-orders then now there selling them for real.
They have an ominous statement in the description saying "not compatible with all games, check the game package". I suspect it doesn't work with NFL2k1 or NBA2k1 (or Chu Chu Rocket), but I can't be sure. Anyone know?
ZandramasX
between this and the netbsd port to dreamcast, we're a hell of a lot closer to having a beowulf cluster of these things...
im sure someone will find a way to use these things as firewalls, and when they do, i absolutely need one...
.brad
Drink more tea
organicgreenteas.com
flesh eating ants records
my guess by the size of the modem (somewhat small) is that it's a soft modem. The software running for the HSP that came with my last premade machine would often crash after 10-20 minutes of use, after which the machine needed to reboot. (needless to say, it wasn't long before I got a real modem and eventually broadband cable)
---
My Cisco 804 does pretty good about figuring out which system to forward UDP packets to, but only in some applications.
Quake III and Diablo II both work really well.
-=-
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Maybe Iraq will start buying them up????
This sig may be reproduced by anyone for any reason.
Well, if that is true, why they hell is Hemos 'queue'ing stories? Aren't we good enough to get the stories straight away? Are we on a diet? I mean, it's pretty obvious that things are often posted without even the slightest bit of checking, ref the 'Apple Sues FreeType' post of a week or so ago... The link referenced in the published story had no relation to it, and even a 1/4 second browse of the title of the article on lwn would have verified it. Perhaps there's an 'idiot check' delay? I don't know.
Another newdot.org suggestion (the domain is available, someone get to it): let people read pending posts. Only let registered people submit stories, but anon accounts can only post, say, 5 a day. If an account trolls the submission queue, disable it from further submissions.
Comics:
Sluggy.com - Poing!
Schlock Mercenary.
Yea, there have already been hacks etc for it. Some of you people are really spoiled. Its sad to think that we b#tch about not having broad band, and some people would DIE for the net PERIOD.
snowulf.com
Well...
It's something to look forward to anyway...
-=-
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
"#1: How does the new broadband modem really change this? Yeah I know now the IP is no longer changing a la dialup, but still dreamcasts are online as before, I don't see why DoS attacks would be different." It seems to me that the NetBSD port makes this(or something like this) a much more likely prospect to be hacked out by somebody. It could be a significant tool to make that possible.
This sig may be reproduced by anyone for any reason.
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only complaint is having to reach all the way over to hell-and-be-gone just to switch weapons, or jump, or crouch.
Huh? First of all, if you play with one hand on the keyboard, one on the mouse, it should be just a simple finger motion to jump or crouch.... Secondly, most newer games have weapon switching bound to the mouse wheel... Which is pretty convienant.
Josh Sisk
So, I'm guessing this thing won't work with the Dreamcast web browser, either. Gee, and I was hoping for my own easy WebTV (tm) solution.
However, perhaps ethernet is better supported by the underlying WinCE?
DCs can run of either WindowsCE or SegaOS. If they run off CE, I believe they have to load the OS off of a disc... it's not, to my knowledge, embedded.
Josh Sisk
I can only think of 3 games with online play (modem or broadband)... NFL2K1, Q3A and Chu Chu Rocket... I believe that many are suppossed to come out this year, though.
Josh Sisk
and now for the totally unnesicery (and misspelled) reply..
Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of these?
How about a beowulf cluster of redundant answers?
How about a beowulf cluster of anonymous cowards posting whatifs about beowulf clusters.
-since when did 'MTV' stand for Real World Television instead of MUSIC television?
Perhaps this is just wishful thinking on my part but shouldn't SEGA have been able to design in some backwards compatibility into the lan adapter? Surely they could have arranged it so that it looked like a normal modem to older games and just piped packets through.
Modem emulation doesn't sound like it should be that hard to me but then I don't know much about the DCs architecture so maybe they just weren't thinking ahead when they designed the expansion port originally.
At anyrate, it isn't as if too many games have net play yet so it could be a moot point.
Is anyone working on a hack that could let the DC act as an internet radio... since it runs CE couldn't some port of winamp be put on it, or is there a linux port out there.... I don't know if it is out there, seems like a good idea though
what with fiber-optic to the home, and things like that. I mean, why bother timing how long it takes light to travel the forty-thousand miles along optic fiber?
40000 mi * 5280 ft/mi * 1.5ns/ft (approx speed of light in fiber) * 1 s/ 1e9ns * 2 = 0.63 s (round trip ping time).
You can't beat the laws of physics. (You may try to change the laws though.)
sorry but i just had to reply to this, have you actually played chuchu rocket with a group of four people? this game is party crack. girls love it. non games people love it. everyone loves it! its the best multiplayer at a single console crack to come along since bomberman. the only negative is the pacing; it can be way too fast for some people.
--- I do not moderate.
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All that aside, go get your NIC here, grab yourself a copy of Quake III: Arena and POD Speedzone. You'll be on your way to blowing up some ass and speeding down the tracks at broadband speeds. Now that is how network play on consoles was supposed to be.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
Sorry if you think I'm being picky, but arn't they called ethernet adaptors? It seems that whoever was in charge of marketing decided to arbitrarily change the label to something that more average users would asociate with broadband internet connections. Just because most broadband connections currently use ethernet doesn't mean you can call a NIC a broadband card. -end rant-
--
--
grep "xercist"
The ping would be good :)
I am sega boy, and I boycott Sony. If ANY console
next I would buy it would be XBox, because it
will probably be hacked to run linux and my
favorite linux games like heretic II and heavy
gear II. I already own dreamcast and dozen games.
Form a design standpoint, it is stupid to require
game programmers to manipulate the ethernet card.
Car should be configured on bootup and user must
enter whatever parameters that will be needed
in then, which will be saved onto VMU for
later retrival. If I am the boss I'd let game
programmers only connect over already setup
and report errors if it does not, but I would
certainly not allow programmers confiure my
ethernet cards.
Imagine this Quake to run on linux must be Setuid
so it can manipulate your NIC configurations
realtime, or provide interface for you to
configure them. NOW thats plain stupid if you ask
me. By actions of SEGA, thats what they did.
Don't get me wrong,I am for more open platforms like dreamcast... but if linux was doing stupid
things and lead by a bunch of pumkin heads,
I wouldn't used it would you?
_Adam Poulos;
Heh, i've got a DC, w/ keyboard/mouse and customer config. I can play q3a on my 27" Sony Wega while laying on my bed and owning your ass.. =) All I need now is broadband.. =(
Then you should download the JSR tag to end all tags.
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Well, the internal IP stack won't change unless it was embedded in the modem (which I kind of doubt.) However, perhaps ethernet is better supported by the underlying WinCE?
On your #2 though, if you're not doing NAT, your dreamcast would be a targetable host though. Sure, it would be going through your [cable/dsl] modem, but that's just effectively a router.
Surely you could use the broadband browser and download the tags to your VMU that way(hold down B,Y or X and press A, I think)? After all, isn't the internet mode of JSR a browser?
Psychos do not explode when the sunlight hits them, I don't care how fucked up they are.
you can tell him how you "use your existing Ethernet network, DSL or Cable modem services for smooth, low-ping gameplay"
Sure the adapter itself is probably faster than a dialup modem.. to the closest router, and there's noone there to play with.
IF the game requires high bandwidth, ping wouldn't be good on a slow modem, then again, the ping wouldn't be the only problem.
My ping was better with ISDN than on my ADSL connection.
Broaband, or correctly spelled Brabant is a province of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In dialect it's pronounced as Broabant or Braobant. :)
That this story was on the front page on over two weeks ago. I think the memory of the average Slashdot reader must be decreasing; or was it just that none of its readership was sad enough to be reading Slashdot on Boxing day? Nah, don't pull my leg, you're all at least as sad as me :-)
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
Maybe you haven't noticed, but game consoles are already "dumbed down" and "restricted" machines, they always have been and likely always will be. They're not marketed as "open platforms" for anyone to hack away at, which is why there's a big novelty factor when someone actually does.
The console industry raked in $9 billion last year; any similarity between console makers and a "creative cottage industry" is purely coincidental. But to those truly interested in hacking these specialized little boxes to do things they were never built for, the booting restriction is only one more small hurdle for the determined hacker to leap.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I suppose you just interpreted that post as an attack on the DC when it was really just a lighthearted poke. Sorry for not being so clear.
From the dc-dev mailing list by one of the TCP/IP stack developers:
Oh, my mistake. I thought that both of the DC and PC versions were compatible. But there will be other games coming out, right? Right.
Assuming you are not playing a DC game against someone on the moon anytime soon, the bandwidth CAN be a significant percentage of latency to the average dialup connection.
While the previous post implied this, I'll spell it out:
* 28.8k modem b/w: 1 byte every 0.3ms
* ping packet ~= 64 bytes (real data packets are probably larger which will make a bigger difference!)
64 byte packet will take 0.3 * 64 ~= 20ms to send. Ping is round trip so that is 40ms.
That is already MUCH higher than my average ping over a cable modem... if 2 users are playing a game w/ 2 modems that's 80ms JUST due to B/W (and even higher in real use w/ say several hundred byte packets). So if a ping to a server on a fast connection is 120ms, then 1/3 of that is due to BANDWIDTH. Not the only factor, but a significant one.
Phantasy Star Online......It has broadband support and as soon as my pre-ordered copy arrives I'll be one happy mofo. :~)
I can't speak for everyone, but I personally don't mind if previous DC titles are not capable of using the broadband adapter. Hell, most of the earlier "online" titles for the platform don't do much anyway (i.e. downloading and uploading high scores, etc.) The only real losses here are NFL2k1 and NBA2k1 (let's hope Sega stays around long enough to get the 2k2 series games out with door _with_ broadband support.)
My phone lines restrict me from anything above 14.4. No broadband for me. No online gaming for me. No fun for me =(
Well those are reasonable assumptions to make, but they are wrong. The most skilled gamepad player in an FPS will have a difficult time beating mid-level mouse/keyboarders.
I know all of you gamepad types have a hard time beleiving this, but it's extremely true.
You wont believe me without seeing it for yourself, so download some demos from one of the many online FPS fan sites and watch them. You will wonder how doing those things is possible with a gamepad.
It's not the keybaord that makes the difference, it's the mouse. Being able to instantly move your crosshair over any target on the screen with pinpoint accuracy in a few milliseconds is a huge advantage.
The comparison between a gamepad and mouse is so far gone it's ridiculous. It's like comparing a firecracker to a grenade.
Sigs are awesome huh?
(FLAMEBAIT ALERT!!!!) I have two words for your non-believing ass... Soooooooul Caaaaaaaalibur. If you think that Sega can't design things properly, then you need to go get yourself a little PS2, run over to your little TV, plug it in, pick up a fresh copy of ANY ONE OF THEIR FUCKING USELESS ASS GAMES, and shut THE HELL up. My brother came in from CALI and bought me a Dreamcast... I now owe him a Wookie life-debt. I can't believe I am hearing someone say that Sega doesn't know what it is doing!!! I actually gave away my N64 to my sister so she could play Bust-a-move, and then someone disses Chu-Chu rocket?!?! Blasphemy!!! String his ass up!!!! BOIL HIM IN OIL!!!
And what would ping have to do with broadband? Not much...
And what exactly has "low-ping gameplay" to do with broadband? We measure in bandwidth, not the speed of one packet. My ping won't get better to a guy in the US just because I have broadband, but I could get better bandwidth.
Haven't seen the ebonics-over-IP RFC yet, is that part of the IP-V6 spec?
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Many games that work with linux now initiate the port on the client side first (send through it and start to recieve) so that the masq server knows where to send the packets, so I don't think you will have any problems..
Carmack said they actually rewrote a custom stack for Quake III Arena for Dreamcast. Apparently the one that shipped with the machine wasn't up to his standards.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
So why only 3 games support it?
I'm pretty sure there are more than 3 games
that take advantage of SEGAnet...
Isn't it Broadband? (the topic of the article isn't right) FIX IT!!
Connectionless doesn't mean that your network address translating can't find out the origin and destination for the packets. NAT is just the forwarder, it can also forward UDP packets. It can only become a problem when you want to put firewalling rules on that traffic. But if you put a simple rule that for your Dreamcast all packets should freely move theres no game per game configuration needed. Except your paranoiac your dreamcast gets hacked ;-)
Aside: I dislike the use of the term "broadband" to apply to fast Net access. Broadband basically means analog, while baseband basically means digital. Cable Modems *are* broadband, but DSL is not. A 56K modem, on the other *is* broadband.
For Quake (PC-based) over NAT, or RealPlayer, both of which use UDP, you need a special kernel module to support it. I'm guessing that for some games, this will be the case...
My journal has hot
The whole "lameness filter" is pretty ironic considering how taco and crew like to scream about any hint of "censorship."
/. , the web's first stop for hypocracy.
Apparently, just like the Slashdotters who believe others work shoudl be free but not theirs, Slashdot managemetn believs that other media should be censorship free, but not theirs.
Welcome to
broadband, huh?
i guess that means we can SYN flood them a lot more...
at last we get to see exactly how fast Dreamcasts are... <evil grin/>
-----
free the mallocs!
http://www.sega.com/pc/segastore/SegaProduct.jhtml ?PRODID=447&CATID=39
Too bad games need to explicitly support it, so I can't download new tags for Jet Grind Radio without swapping out the NIC for a modem
--
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
I fail to see how the Sega broadband has to do with the usual complaints about how the internet is not what it used to be. The ppl who say that don't really care about low ping gaming, for all they care we can go back to 14.4 modems, as long as we can "preserve the old community feeling"
Why would the ip stack be windows98? Its not like the dreamcast runs windows does the ethernet card require windows to be installed or something? last I checked out of my 5 games I own only 1 has windowsCE on it and that one doesnt support even dialup modem much less broadband wheres this windows coming from? ohhhh your one of those people who believe the compatible with windows label on the dreamcast means it runs windows well last I checked I didnt need any windows libraries/stuff to compile/link dc applicaitons just need a sh4-elf and arm-elf compiler.
I wonder how much money the casual DC player is going to spend just so they can play games via broadband, though? You can't really download anything on this right? And I don't THINK the DC has any sort of media player for downloading pr0n, which we ALL know is the main reason for broadband.
There once was a girl from the Netherlands
Who liked wearing dresses with leather bands
She took off her skirt
In the midst of a flirt
And gave herself over to clever hands.
Sure, rag on slashdot, and get moderated up. Damn moderators around here.
Technically, its notta modem...its a multiplexor.
blocks could be put on the memory card
Don't answer me. Moderate. Slashdot is about moderation, not discussion.
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Can someone please nmap one of these babies so we can know which hosts on the Net are DC? My guess is that the IP stack will respond identically to the dinky one in Win98.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Typical ADSL installations that use PPP utilize PPPoe (PPP over Ethernet) which is listed as being supported. They also say that they *do* support DHCP. Now, all I need is for them to make this baby wireless, and I can connect it up to the rest of my 802.11 network! =)
Forget the fact that this is awesome for console gamers for the moment, consider the news about a week ago that someone has released a Dreamcast NetBSD ISO. With Broadband, a whole new bunch of possibilities open up (remote boot, remote X Terms) that would make the dreamcast an EXTRMEELY small, powerful, and usefull device, once the correct modules and drivers have been hacked for it.
Newsflash: languages evolve.
Just like "awful" no longer means "inspiring awe", broadband means whatever the majority of people think it does - in this case a connection that offers high bandwidth.
No 'real person' would consider a 56K modem to be "broadband", and most people would consider both DSL and cable modems to be perfectly reasonable examples of "broadband". They simple take the de facto definition of the term.
Your nit-picking is not only pedantic, but there is a very practical sense in which it is wrong.
I don't have any video game systems, but as soon as I have some free time I'll be all over them :)
My question is how well all of these broadband adapters (I guess this is the first) will deal with NAT (IP Masquerade in Linux). It's becoming increasingly popular, with all those hub-router broadband boxes that people are buying. But games tend to use UDP, which has problems with NAT, being connectionless and all. I can't imagine anyone wanting to unplug their computer from the broadband connection and plug their Dreamcast in instead very often, so NAT seems like the best option. Will it all be painful or smooth? Or will it all be on a game-by-game basis?
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I wonder is we could launch a DoS attack on a DreamCast and bring it down to it's knee's. :-)
Are the plans for extending network SEGAnet have
been canceled? It is quick and smart move,
One question, would they develop a software
upgrade for the console so I can connect
to their SEGAnet via an ethernet.
Also as an oversight, I do not think they have
any extra software upgrades to support ADSL
services that require to you to use PPP.
One thing is clear that console will work only
with cable providers that have almost static IPs,
like Shaw/Rogers in Canada.
What would be smart is to develop as software
upgrade for the ethernet after PPP,DHCP and other
are supported, a SEGAnet API extension that
will detect Ethernet card and start connecting to
SEGAnet over that... who knows.
First they had several major delays, then they scaled back the launch to only include sega.com, now even when it is supposedly out, it is still not shipping.
I ordered one on the 10th, the first day they were actually available for purchase. I selected the more expensive 2-Day Air shipping option. And, as of today, the 16th, it has still not been shipped. I called Sega, and they say that there are shipping problems, and they will begin shipping tomorrow, but it will happen "very slowly", so there is no way to tell when mine will ship.
Also, prior to the adapter becoming available, sega.com (online & via phone) were unable to take pre-orders, so that I didn't have to keep checking back at their site until it was finally made available. According to the representative on the phone, the phone sales people were only able to order via the same WWW site the customers accessed. They had no more ability to do pre-orders or anything. They could not take orders until the WWW people had updated the site... Pretty poor integration/automation for a high tech company.
After seeing this performance by Sega, I have no doubt that they will fail in the console gaming market. Not because the Playstation 2 is so much better, it is not, but because Sega has repeatedly failed to execute, and continuously fails to capitalize on their advantages.
Can you imagine a "Rudundant answer" ?
"Rudundant" indeed, I think Sir you require a spell checker...
Moderators, please moderate this as "Redundant"
By the time my grandkids are my current age(17), 'ping' will probably be close to obsolete, what with fiber-optic to the home, and things like that. I mean, why bother timing how long it takes light to travel the forty-thousand miles along optic fiber?
You guys, I really think that if I were to tell my grandkids, "I had a 15ms ping time to my own ISP" (which I do...ISDN), I don't think they'd know what I meant.
All-optical routers have really done a number on us...It just doesn't seem right to feel obsolete at 17. (No jokes about the ISDN, plz. :)
What's this Submit thingy do?
While I'm nothing resembling 'up-to-date' in regards to video games and consoles, wouldn't it be other companies that developed the games?
Perhaps Sega released the specs, and other companies didn't incorperate the feature for fear of faulty, untested code. (I have doubts as to whether other developers had access to prototypes)
Perhaps Sega, or its developer, simply forgot to release the specs ahead of time...
Perhaps the game developers have been designing with this component in mind, but haven't released their game yet...
What's this Submit thingy do?
While I think the DC ethernet adapter is a step in the nice direction, I'm still not in a rush to go out and order one. For one thing, it only works with a small, select group of games. And while some people are going to be excited at the prospect of being able to play low-ping 4-player games of Quake III Arena (that's all the DC version supports) at 640x480 resolution, that's going to strike a lot of people as old news. Of course, one can expect there to be more broadband-enabled games in the future.
Up until recently, I would have been more excited about the ethernet adapter, what with the fact that progress has been made porting Linux to the DC, as well as lots of emulators and other projects (VCD and MP3 players and like). But alas, the rumors I'm hearing more and more frequently are that Sega is going to start shipping new Dreamcasts that won't boot CD-ROMS (only the proprietary GD-ROM), in an effort to keep people from copying games. That'll work real well for all two weeks until a mod chip comes out, but could really cramp the efforts of people doing independent development on the system, if their project won't work on new Dreamcasts without a hardware modification.
I guess the main reason I won't be investing in new DC gadgetry, though, is that it becomes more and more apparent over time that game companies are by and large not neat, creative cottage industries interested in hacking, exploration, or or neat development products. They are evil consumer electronics corporations who want my money are who are all too eager to restrict, dumb down, and hobble their products if it is in the interest of their bottom line.
My bottom line is that I think I'll use that $90 to buy some art supplies and used CDs, and do something with my spare time other than point and drool for a change.
Seriously, this is great news!
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