NetBSD Supports SEGA's Broadband Adapter

hubertf writes: "NetBSD now supports the SEGA Broadband (i.e. ethernet) Adapter. Check out the screendump of someone telnetting into a Dreamcast running NetBSD!" Considering that this adapter only came out a short while ago, this is pretty fast work. Next stop: electric toothbrushes.

Comments

I bought one of the suckers for this.

[TellarHK]

Dead in production or not, there're supposedly 1.2 million unsold Dreamcast systems that'll still be in the retail pipeline. With the machine at $99 and the broadband adapter for sale through the Sega Store for $59, you can get a really killer new toy, cheap. And I've gotta say, it annoys me sometimes that all the talk here in Slashdot seems to expect that geeks will all be making the Silicon Valley bucks. A lot of us don't, a lot of us -won't-, and we (Well, okay, I) get annoyed that every Cool New Geek Toy(tm) seems to cost an entire month's pay.

I just spent the cash on my Dreamcast (Got it at $149, will get it price-match refunded in a couple weeks, I'm sure) and will be shelling out for the broadband adapter soon. There aren't a lot of Just Because I Can(tm) toys for geeks making $8.50 an hour part-time working the tech support desk at a college.

And there's another rant. Gah! Working for an MCSE in a shop with two mission critical Linux boxen. Fun, usually, to be the only half-clued one, but kinda depressing. :)

PCI? Lummie.

[WasterDave]

The real story's in the dmesg, look how many drivers they've got up:

maple0 at shb0
Dreamcast Controller at maple0 port 0 not configured
mkbd0 at maple0 port 3: US keyboard
wskbd0 at mkbd0: console keyboard
pvr0 at shb0: 640 x 480, 16bpp, NTSC, composite
wsdisplay0 at pvr0: console (80x30, vt100 emulation), using wskbd0
gdrom0 at shb0
g2bus0 at shb0
gapspci0 at g2bus0: SEGA GAPS PCI Bridge
pci0 at gapspci0 bus 0
pci0: memory space enabled
rtk0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0: SEGA Broadband Adapter
rtk0: interrupting at SH4 irq 11
rtk0: Ethernet address 00:d0:f1:02:ab:30
ukphy0 at rtk0 phy 7: Generic IEEE 802.3u media interface
ukphy0: OUI 0x000000, model 0x0000, rev. 0
ukphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto

So: The controller, keyboard, console keyboard, the powervr2 accelerator (!), the gdrom thingy, a PCI bridge that I had no idea was in the dreamcast, the PCI bus, finally what looks like a realtek ethernet chip.

Realtek? Shit, they must've been reckoning on cashing in big time here. Ten brownie points for anyone making a 'make yerself a sega broadband connector for only $5' webpage.

Anyway, immense kudos to the NetBSD team (@shagedelic.org ??). If this is for real, I'm well impressed guys.

Dave :)

Jobs for Dreamcasts

[h2odragon]

Name server. Even with the high possibility of future BIND exploits, who will go to the trouble of creating shellcode for a Dreamcast? "I can't find the mailserver?" ... "Oh, sorry, I was playing games"

Considering that the reliability and durability of these boxes is going to be far better than the average bits of PC hardware, I think they'd be very well suited to be credit card processors. Even if you can't hook up a modem to them directly they could make use of a terminal server and a seperate network segment. In that application the lack of disk will be a plus, "extra security" and all.

The thought of businesses across the nation depending on $99 video game consoles and really cool hacks for their income just appeals, somehow...

MAME!

[jfedor]

We need a Dreamcast port of MAME. This would mean over 1500 new games for the dying console. :)

-jfedor