Slashdot Mirror
Sega Drops Dreamcast Price To $50
kerskine writes: "Just read this article on CNET that says Sega has just dropped the price of the Dreamcast console to US$49.95. Given past articles on Slashdot on all sorts of fun Dreamcast projects, now's the chance to get one. Why not get two (in case you break one)?" See also this article on getting Linux to run on Dreamcast, and NetBSD is another option to explore. 8ight points out even more interesting Dreamcast information.
I want a dreamcast but it seems everyone has sold out of harddrives.
Does anybody know where you can find the harddrive for it?
...considering the quality of the hardware and the games that are already available. It's a great console.
NOW you can get 4 dreamcasts for the price of 1 gamecube. Incredible!
There's no "I" in Linux.. err..
Now I can get a dreamcast for the same price as a 486 xterminal.... nice sega!
on the other hand, you can get your hands on a working super nintendo for under $20, and while we're considering buying unsupported consoles, why not go with one that has an almost limitless library of games available for it.
although I'd be really impressed if anyone managed to get linux running on a snes.
lysergically yours
Just a small step below the new generation - PS2/X-box/Gamecube, and only $50! I bought one for $90 Canadian a short while ago, and am duly impressed with the graphics. Buy the damn thing, already - it comes with 3 or 4 demos, and costs about as much as a single *game* for other systems out there.
Last post!
it would be cool to get one but last i checked they only had a few games with the best one being that boxing one with the guy with the huge afro.
Are there Dreamcast releases of any newer games, such as Tony Hawk 3 or Grand Theft Auto 3?
Even if the quality wheren't on par with PS2, if it ran GTA3, I would have no choice but to get one, ya gotta feed the need, 'specially good for the poor.
/nutt
Doesn't the dreamcast have a 128-bit processor? Since linux runs on it, does that mean that linux is ready for 128-bit platforms?
The article mentions that there is a "broadband adapter" that you can get for this--it's an ethernet port. Now if you could get it to work with two of them (I have no idea how the hardware works), then you could use this as a firewall/router. Since it's running on a CD, you don't have to worry about someone modifying files on it if they manage to hack in (which is unlikely, as the script kiddies wouldn't be up to modifying the x86-based Linux hacks to deal with the dreamcast, even if you didn't fix the known vulnerabilities). Of course, not having a hard drive also means limited logging.
Anyway, something to think about.
Why can't they just sell some more of the friggin "broadband adapter" ethernet cards. Does anyone know of a way to hack together one without blowing the money on an overpriced ebay auction?
If you need only one reason to buy a DC, this is it. As far as game dynamics go, this game is much better than whats available on XBox/PS/GC today.
Is where can I pick one of these up for $50? Most stores around me (central CT) don't carry them anymore...Anybody out there have a website that carries them?
Thanks!
Juiced? Or Not?
That link points to part 2 of the article.
You might want to start at the beginning. html)
( http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT7466555948
The absolute best part about this is that you can get two Dreamcasts for $100. Anyone who has ever player VOOT for the Dreamcast knows that there's pretty much no console based multiplayer game that has ever gotten within miles of being as good as this game. With game prices falling, now's the chance to put together a head-to-head system that will still be playable and extremely enjoyable 10 years from now when the console is both dead and obsolete.
Don't believe me? The game is THAT good. I still play Lode Runner, and I'll be playing Virtual On ten years from now.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
This the time that I buy consoles. I bought a Virtual Boy for $35 or so, a Genesis3 for $30, and a Playstation (the old boxy one) for $99. A Dreamcast for $50? Sold.
SIGFEH
Here's my project for December: turning my Dreamcast into a sweet arcade cabinet. Build a wooden frame or buy an empty one and use your dreamcast + cheap TV for an excellent combo. I'm estimating the whole project will come in under $300 bucks.
I've seen MAME projects which use PCs and other gear, but this is the best value. You can burn a MAME emulator along with some roms on a bootable disc, you could buy Atari's Greatest Hits for 20... or if you like modern games, there are lots of arcade-straightforward titles like Crazy Taxi, Dead or Alive 2, and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 that make great pickupandplay games for a few minutes.
Just because the system didn't make it in the market, don't write it off; the potential for hacking, modding, or simply playing quality games is high. And by the end of the year I'll have a standup version of Crazy Taxi to play...
....for that price I can buy two. One to use and one to hold up the low end of the couch!
Vote early. Vote often. Vote CowboyNeal.
That Dreamcast Beowulf cluster is finally affordable!
You are not the customer.
On the one side, that's a great plug for the Dreamcast. It's a great little system - the games are fun, interesting, the controller is fairly comfortable, and yes, there's all the other cool (Linux) tricks coming out for it.
;).
But there is a dark side to this. A lot of the good games (Grandia II, Phantasy Star Online, Skies of Arcadia) are being ported to the Playstation 2, GameCube, and the Xbox.
Then we can take the other side and say it's a good thing Sega is porting those games over. Take Resident Evil: Code Veronica - it's around $40-$50 for the Playstation 2 version, while the Dreamcast version can be found (usually used, granted) for around $20. Looks the same, plays the same, and except for those added scenes in the Playstation 2 version, is pretty much the same game.
So you could get a Dreamcast for $50, and the good games for around $20-$30 each, or just wait until the good games (because most of the crappy ones won't be brought thanks to Darwin's Survival of the Funnest, except for Sakura Taisen which will probably never reach an English market).
Me? I'm buying another Dreamcast, just in case the one I have ever blows up
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I started shopping for the DC games I always planned to get, but...
Soul Calibur - Discontinued
House of the Dead 2 - Discontinued
Hydro Thunder - Discontinued
Ready to Rumble - Discontinued
The list goes on and on, and it seems like the only games I can still buy in the original shrink wrap are the ones that nobody really wanted. I guess the only thing left to run is Cheap Linux Console.
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
the dreamcast can also play games. Lots of them in fact. So much has been made of its usage as an internet appliance, a linux box, etc., but it is also an excellent gaming console. Soul Caliber is still one of the best looking titles on any console IMO. And the price of dreamcast titles continues to drop, making it even eaiser to amass a decent collection of games.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball(TM)
I think Sega got a bad rap on their dreamcast. It has decent graphics and it ran fairly well. But it seemed that people just waited untill the PS2 came out. It remidens me of OS2 Warp. It came out a little before Windows 95 but most of the people waited until win 95 was released. It seemed at planed marketing took an other good piece of technology. But with $50 devices we can make some really cool Xterminals.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Fifty dollars is cheaper than my Thanksgiving dinner's going to be. Wonder what the family'd say if they opened the serving tray and saw a Dreamcast?
Hitachi says it's only 32 bits.
look at specs for the SH7750 at
http://semiconductor.hitachi.com/superh.htm
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
they are on there now for 49.95$. amazon has everything i need except penis enlargements...did i say that out loud???...
And I just paid $59.99 for mine on Sunday!!!!
Pax, Ardax
Here you can find information on a new N64 emulator for the DC. The fun is just beginning for this console.
The integer unit of the Hitachi SH-4 used in the dreamcast is 64-bit only. However, there is a "vector" unit slapped on it that does 128-bit floating point ops. All this at 200mhz.
The copper bosses killed you, Joe. 'I never died', said he.
Let me tell you about my Dreamcast: I use it to play games for NES, SNES, Sega Master System, MAME, Colecovision, Gameboy, and other systems, all of which are emulated (some near-perfectly) on the Dreamcast. An N64 emulator is reportedly in the works, too, as is an Apple ][ emulator, and more. I have run Linux on it successfully (although I wish I had a hard drive). I can also use it as an MP3 player, and using the newest VCD player I get full-motion, full-screen playback of VCDs on my TV (some earlier attempts were choppy, but the new player is great). I can use it as a web browser (if I want to see what the web is like on TV for some odd reason), or to send e-mail. Right now, I have it set up for my roommate to use for her e-mail so she doesn't need to "borrow" my computer. All that use out of it, and that's without even looking at the large library of Dreamcast Games. For 50 bucks, this thing is a steal.
With a price this low for a decent console, making portable units is a very economical hack. We might be seeing this very soon over at Ben Heckendorn's Atari 2600 Portables Site, although his next confirmed project is a Gamecube portable.
So the Dreamcast comes with a modem, right? And you can add an Ethernet card of some sort? I was just told that you can't you them both at the same time, but what about when you run it under Linux/NetBSD? If it's possible, I'm thinking of buying one and using it to replace my dialup/NAT box so I can turn off my loud-ass PCs at night and just leave the Dreamcast on. Is this possible? Any pointers on how to do it?
NOW you can get 4 dreamcasts for the price of 1 gamecube. Incredible!
This is getting quite old, but I have to do it...
BEOWOLF CLUSTER!!!
Dear Zarathud:
Thanks for pointing that out; I screwed up when I pasted in that link, now I amended it.
Cheers,
Tim
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Hey, if the XBox fails and is closed out similarly, it will be a better situation since the XBox includes an ethernet interface. And, the XBox includes a disk drive. Sounds interesting.
It sounds like there is a small, limited supply of Dreamcast broadband adapters. I haven't seen mention where they can be purchased for less than the closeout $50 cost of the Dreamcast console itself.
I was just about to ebay mine. Now I have to wait until they get harder to find so I can get a few bucks for it.
When the Xbox was being developed there were rumors that it would play the dreamcast games. Does anyone know if it does?
Furthmore, this doesn't suprise me. Since the thing has been discontinued, and Sega agreeing to write games for the Xbox. It appears that Sega is trying to get out of the console producing business.
What might be even better news, that Sega is in good financial shape, so they will carry on to make more great games(abliet for other consoles, but hey at least people will actually play their games now).
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
Are you being sponsored by Sega?
then it could be used as an X terminal
This is a functionality that Sega took away several months ago, meaning that the newer dreamcasts cannot boot Linux/DC, NetBSD/DC, the Bleem packs, the Utopia bootdisk, or anything else that isn't on a GDROM.
The $50 dreamcasts are a nice cheap game system, but don't buy a new DC expecting to run linux or netbsd just by burning the images on the net to a CDR.
But the Broadband (Ethernet) adaptor is extremely rare. It costs over $100 on ebay. So your DC node is going to cost you around $150 each.
Better uses include playing games (duh!), internet appliance (comes with 56k modem), and the emulators/mp3 stuff.
Just don't count on networking it for a decent price!
The titles in the cutout bins are the ones that nobody wanted to buy anyway.
My local Best Buy has about a dozen titles left, all of them for $40. Bleah. I'll stick with the DC games that I do have, and fortunately they're some of the better ones.
i have to buy two of every system i get anyway due to spilling beer or urine or etc. on them when i am drunk as shit
Sega, please, please, please, open source your DreamCast dev. tools and hardware specs. This could be a very cool machine if others could build clones and create their own 'native platform' games. What have you got to lose?
When you go to the Amazon site, they offer the Used version for $21 extra. Not often you see that.
Help fight continental drift.
Any ideas or news how to get a sound output working to run xmms (mp3's) on it? That would be fun. Any ideas or tips to run this as a fully functional mp3 player I would love to hear.
i am also into "making retarded shirts" thing. i haven't made any in a couple of years but after laughing for five minutes about that post, i think that i will be making some calls this afternoon.
hit google's cache
http://homepages.compuserve.de/bITmASTER32/dc/dc-i de.html
With pictures, etc.
Does MAME run? Can you use the controllers? I've been planning to build a PC that hooks to the TV in my living room to be a more or less dedicated MAME box. The DC sounds like the perfect simple solution (TV interface built in, nice controllers available..) But does it work? I have an old DC, so it should be linux/NetBSDable.
The Dreamcast still is a great system. It has nice graphics, nice sound, and some nice games for it. While you could argue that most systems have these things, the Dreamcast is one of Sega's best achievements. In fact, I would love to see Dreamcast development continued. There are great games like the Crazy Taxi series, the NFL and NBA 2k series..other things like Sega GT and Soul Calibur make the system. Not to mention its nifty-factor. Its based on WindowsCE, which makes it one step closer to being 'nifty' for a console. Add to that a BBA and a hard drive, and you have yourself a cheap terminal.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Seems like boob.uk is slashdotted right now, but also check out dcemulation for news about emulators for the DC. There's a bunch.
There's also quite a few cool proggies to do other things with your dc. MPEG vid players, streaming mp3 players, and demo disks to check out.
And if you're thinking about running linux on the DC, my man Fivemouse has got 119MB Disk Juggler images you can dl and burn up. And check out his GBA webserver while you're there.
"We must be the change we wish to see in the world." -Gandhi
Can you somehow network these things?
Could be useful for a webfarm - remote boot...
Certainly, they could be useful for cheap mass hosting - you just need a cheap NFS device to hold the user data.
Hmm...
It's always interesting see the different reactions to hardware on Slashdot.
Dreamcast: Mostly gushing praise, even though Sega is a huge corporation (and Slashdotters in general seem to be anti-corporate, at least in theory).
Mac: 80% flamingly negative, 20% positive. OS X is changing this somewhat, though it seems most people don't want UNIX being used by people who aren't geeks.
iPod: High praise, though some people hate it because it's from Apple.
iPaq: Generally positive.
PS2: Brings out lots of anti-console rhetoric; negative overall.
Xbox: 60% positive, generally from people who dislike Sony and Nintendo and want a console to be more computer-like. This is even though Microsoft is usually hated otherwise.
Transmeta: 90% negative, though often for no real reason.
Intel: Intel suxors, down with Intel!
AMD: We'll make another exception to the "multi-billion dollar corporations are evil" rule, because we like those inexpensive processors.
Amiga: Misty-eyed nostalgia, including some people who incorrectly think that the Amiga sported the world's first multitasking OS. About 10% of the responders are still fighting the "Amiga is better than ____" battle, like Japanese sailors on small islands in the 1950s who didn't know WWII was over.
I have purchased 4 dreamcast systems, 2 for me and 2 as gifts, all of them have been able to play cdr's and the one i use i've moded to read cdrw's as well.
It includes 1 09/09/99 unit, 2 sportspack units and one unit purchased at bestbuy on latest batch 3 weeks agai.
All play jap imports using the hacked bootdisk by utopia
review on IGN
Username taken, please choose another one.
You're looking for shapes in clouds. The set of slashdot users that happen to post to a given article has much less uniformity of opinion than people seem to expect.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
let's see if THAT works...
Username taken, please choose another one.
The set of slashdot users that happen to post to a given article has much less uniformity of opinion than people seem to expect.
Not true at all. In most cases it is easy to predict what the replies will be before reading them.
Here in Brazil anything bought by mail/internet don't pay taxes if under US$50. Now I can buy my DC and pay only US$50 + shipping :o)
I wonder what will happen to local retailers.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
You could make some really cool low-cost routers or webservers out of that... Does anybody know if there are ethernet adapters for the dreamcast? If yes I might just buy one...
First - this was a rumor - I have a dreamcast that was just purchased in the store the other day - in the black and red box (with the sports scene on it) - boots CDR's just fine. I don't know where it came from, but I have YET TO SEE a DC that can't boot cdr's and I've picked up like 4 of these for friends and family.
Second you can boot a DC off a CD and then bootstrap it off a NFS server (or whatever) - I've got this kind of setup at home - so in essence the cdr is just a bootstrap medium. Of course it helps to have a cross compiler for SH4 - but that seems to be more effort then the average slashdotter is in to.
The reason intel is hated is the same reason m$ is hated -- they illegally abused their monopoly position repeatedly.
If you have examples of AMD violating the law, I'm all ears.
If you're really planning on doing this then test to see if your display can be laid on it's rear for long durations. The displays in a cocktail table are able to display this way but many monitors/TVs will strart to show picture distortion & color bleeding after long periods in this position. Just don't run ahead and throw something in there and think that there's a problem with the display after a while.
"...and generally behaved in a manner one can only describe as despicable." - February 27 2001, Michael Sims
I have never seen a dreamcast in action other than those demo units you see in some stores, so I'm not sure if what i'm about to say will be as wrong as that email from kabul Katz told us about
Can I buy a dreamcast, a keyboard, connect it to the internet and have it run a browser? if this is so, this is the cheapest way to setup an internet cafe, and since I live in a third world country, I can actually see this being an option for inernet access on very poor regions, where telephone service is available, but computers are out of the question.
anyone knows about this? I think I might be willing to donate several if this is viable.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
Any one else remember those old atari 2600 commercials? when the 2600 was $49.99? It was a rap song and it was like "under 50 bucks - 50 bucks ? - now isn't that nice?"
i miss atari.
THERE IS NO DATA. THERE IS O
I might as well buy this console since I also bought:
1. Atari Jaguar
2. Nintendo virtual boy
3. Atari 7800
4. Vectrex.
I'll hook it up to the TV card, and have some fun. Hopefully it won't end up in the closet like the 4 mentioned above reside.
Yeah, because all of the electrons from the beam gun fall down and collect in the bottom of the tube.
Cheap enough to let the kids beat on the thing in the minivan!
Now only if there was a way to copy the disks so that if they become scratched, I would not have to buy a new copy.
I don't know the available ports on these machines... but, if possible, I would assume that these would make nice little firewall/router devices for home networks. No?
Can you run SSH and Emacs on Linux Dreamcast?
I knew you were going to say that.
Or does /. seem to post an awful lot of CNET news ? I get most of my CNET news from CNET (go figure?)... and don't even get me started on the crap about the (fake) email from Afghanistan yesterday !
at least the endless rants about what version of this gamer's box will/won't run Linux are fun to read
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
I was talking to my friend COLMAN about this (Hi COLMAN!) I was skeptical of anything having to do with the Dreamcast, as everybody knows that PS2 is where it's at console-wise right now. But he kept on insisting. He said "Timmy," (that's my name, Timmy. Timmy is my name.) "Timmy," he says, "I know the Dreamcast is a POS at any price, but can you just imagine a beowulf cluster of these babies?"
Anyway, that's what he said.
yea, they were available for about a month on dreamcast.com, and now the only place to find 'em is on ebay, they run +$200 easily every time one goes up...good luck getting one...
How Jaded Are You?
The console is $49.95, but the ARCADE STICK is still $59.95? Come on! Always wanted one, but it's just not worth it for the price.
3 7/ qid=1006373038/br=1-29/ref=br_lf_vg_29/002-7781294 -2395242
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00001ZV
Great console to have, not just for its own nostalgic merit, but for also for emulating other nostalgic systems (handles MAME and Nintendo very well)...It's just crazy to believe that about 1450 nintendo games can all fit on the same self-booting cd...and all under 300MB I believe.
-jc
dude..i'm buying one. that chick from space channel 5 is worth every penny. ;)
Trouble is, you'd also need to fit each one with a broadband adapter. And they're rarer than a Slashdot moderator with common sense.
Most of those titles are getting ports/sequels on the XBOX.
anyone know if beowulf clusters can be done with the DC?
:)(smile)
Disagree that Apple or Mac sucks...They are the first and perhaps the best chance that we have of knocking M$ off its high horse, Linux does not a viable commerical desktop market. Nor will it. Sun is a server market. While OSX has bridge the gap with art and sophisication......it will pleased those who are not geek and satify the geek within us
64-bit datapath but that doesn't do any real difference since the PS2 will never address more than it's 32 megs of RAM
Huh? Umm, if you are correct about the 64 bit datapath, yes it does make a difference! That means you can move 64 bits of data at once out of/or into RAM. Doesn't matter if you have 640k or 64M, you can still move more data. If that's what you mean by datapath...
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." -Homer Simpson
Its nice the Dreamcast is becoming afordable. I doubt the games are as cheap. Still if you think about it, businesses are using the same tatics others did years before. Atari cartridges were about 50$ or more. The actual console itself was around 100$, I believe. Has anyone considered porting NetBSD to the Atari Jaguar. I could probably jury rig a zipdrive to it. What do you say?
that's easy to fix. add an electron drain to the tube. only problem is getting hooked up to the electron sewer which is expensive and time consuming. you are better off not using electron for your display. instead use neutrons brighter color and no draining problems (slight health problems though).
You'll need an external TV tuner (I prefer the external tuners over the internal because it means I never have to worry about Linux drivers). For example, Avermedia makes a pretty decent one. Get the optional svideo cable for the Dreamcast and you'll have a pretty sweet picture.
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
When did these things come out? Two years ago? Three? What's next? One free with every Happy Meal purchase? =)
My
Limekiller
For $50, I'm interested. Can anyone recommend a good ice hockey game? (is there EA Sports series?)
Since it's running on a CD, you don't have to worry about someone modifying files on it if they manage to hack
Or, you could buy any one of a number of solid-state firewall routers that periodically sell for less than $50 and run on less than 5watts. (Mine is an SMC that cost $49 a few months ago, is the size of a small cigar box, and is also a printe server and DHCP server.)
e.g., www.smc.com
Perhaps the sega box is fun for playing games and experimenting, but there are more practical solutions for firewalls today.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
DC manufactured Sept 2000 or before can run anything, and are the ones you want to get.
Some Oct 2000 and all Dec 2000 and later do not boot using the audio+data format. This is the format that most pirated games and emulator disks use. There is an alternative burn method to get the later manufactured ones to boot CDs, www.dccopyworld.com and www.isonews.com and www.dcemulation.com has more info on that.
Only VERY few DCs were manufactured that do NOT boot from CDs at all. They were only released in Japan, and were generally "special" DCs, like the Sakuren Taisen (sp?) special edition DC.
BleemDC works on all US DCs, so other CDs should also.
Actually, all of the Sega ones are pretty much being ported cross platform. The only ones that I know of that have some exclusivity (for a limited time) are Sonic (GameCube, funny how the 2 most recongizable brand characters are appearing on the same platform) and Shenmue 2 (X-Box). Sega seems to be taking their cross-platform strategy seriously and porting most of their games across the board. Some games that are being ported to Nintendo, PS2, and X-Box (more than one platform) include Soul Caliber, Virtua Fighter, Sega GT, and Super Monkey Ball. Capcom titles may be heading over to GameCube more than X-Box (considering what's happening to RE series). Hopefully, Sega will remain a strong neutral player so that they don't upset anyone anymore (considering Sega fans are loyally divided now).
From amazon anyway, there is no buy button and they don't have any in stock. Adding it to one's wish list gives " This item is currently unavailable. "
I have been looking around for a good joystick for the Dreamcast, and the one from Agetec pointed to in the above amazon link seems to be the best from what I hear. The problem is that Agetec has stopped producing them and they are almost as rare to find and get as Kryptonite. I have tried looking around a few months back in stores that Agetec listed and could not find one. There are places online that I can get them which is also rare, but I don't really trust them and one store would not take my credit card order for some unknown reason.
Good luck finding a decent arcade stick. Besides this one and the one by interact which is also hard to find, all the others I have seen are cheap pieces of junk.
For those interested you can see both joysticks here)
Right, but these games are available now, and the system only costs $50. The Xbox costs too much for me right now.
What have you got to lose?
Licensing fees. Sega may have discontinued the Dreamcast as hardware, but the platform is still very much alive. New games are still coming out for the DC because Sega is still licensing out to game developers.
Rumors also pointed to a Dreamcast PCI card and/or set-top-box that had recording features as well as Dreamcast Features. (RUMORS. Don't take this as fact!)
You're better off developing games under Linux and porting them to LinuxDC.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Does anybody know if there are any good games that will keep a youngster entertained for hours on end? Somebody that already likes Mario.
I've seen Sonic and that's just a little too fast for a 5 year old.
I never really looked into the dreamcast, but is it possible to play a networked game of doom?
if so Im going out right now and buying one!
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I got a phone call today telling me that they were only 20.00 at target. Aparrently it has been so since sunday. Good luck finding one though...
Sheesh, after all the work of brainwashing people on buying me Dreamcasts for Christmas, now I need to do it again for something else (since the darn thing won't run Linux).
Ah well...
Petru
Called a different store and asked if what I the price I saw on the web is the same as the one in the store and if they had them in stock. Got a 'Yes' and 'Yes'. Am printing the web page and giving it another shot. I _really_ dont want to be in the shopping madness on Friday...
LEXX
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
i run mine like that except i drain it into a mister fusion reactor,the benefit of that is it's self powering and i have an all over tan.do not use a mini blackhole tho,my dog imploded when he took a piss in it.
Record of Lodoss War was released for Dreamcast in the USA.
Buy one. Even though almost no new games are coming out for it, the games that are currently out are some of the best. And since they're only 20-40 dollars each, you can buy a whole lot. If you're getting a Dreamcast, I'd recommend: Soul Calibur, Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, Jet Grind Radio, Shenmue, Crazy Taxi (original), Virtua Tennis (or Tennis 2K2, i suppose), and Phantasy Star Online (they're both good). Believe me, you won't regret it. Even if you can't run Linux on it...
Anyone know if SETI, or any other distributed network client, runs on the Dreamcast? At $50, this makes for a fairly cheap client. You could build a whole farm of these!
Jean-Sebastien Morisset, Sr. UNIX Administrator
I hear that Dreamcast games are rather easy to find on the net if you know where to look.
6.1. Newer Non-CDR DCs and workaround Thanks to DJ Motion from isonews, jc, OEM, and Xeal on dcwarez.
The new DCs have their BIOS programmed to prevent booting CD(R)s which have audio (audio boot data in this case) before the game data (formally known as the MIL-CD format). Not nice. Especially considering nearly all previous games - including ECHELON rips - work like this. When buying a Dreamcast, look for Dreamcast units manufactured BEFORE November 2000. There have been some units manufactured in Nov. 2000 with the new BIOS revision that will not work with CDR's. Note that retail box type (regular or Smash Pack) does not matter, only the manufacture date of the unit, which should be visible through a small window on the Dreamcast retail box. Also identified as not working with CDR's are the Sakura Taisen and Hello Kitty special edition Dreamcasts available in Japan.
So it looks like data only CDRs should work, just not audio _before_ data.
lnical
I still have mine, in a store-bought protective plastic storage case with tons of games. Every once in a while I pull it out of the closet and play it. Simply awesome.
;)
Ever since I started exploring the emulators though I've taken to just storing it safely and leaving it alone till the year 2050 or so
I've read that the last Dreamcast that's manufactured is gonna have something *really cool* inside the box. Anyone hear what it could possibly be yet? My stab at it is that it's some kinda coupon for every Dreamcast game made - they're not gonna be doing too much with all those games right?
"My days are less enjoyable because of people." ~ Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
DC Tetris, coming soon if I can ever find the time to finish it.
If you would just admit that you're jealous of my Amiga, we could move on.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Under 50 bucks... 50 bucks? heheh
Humm, I may have to dig up my old PS joystick and try this out. I can't believe I forgot about these types of adaptors. I guess I will also look into Playstation 2 joysticks and adaptors.
Of course if I really had the cash I would buy this at 94.95 and additional system support at + 34.95 for each system you add. But since I want to have two sticks and don't want to spend that much cash, I don't think I will be getting one from there for quite some time.
Thanks for the info, I needed that reminder.
Having looked around at all the stuff the Dreamcast can do.. play mp3s, VCDs, go on the net, the games.. these seem a snap at $50 and I want one.
In the UK, however, they cost $150. Even the ones for sale on eBay UK are like $100. Too much. $50 is an ideal price, and I even looked at the import duty on them from the US.. 2.2% + 17.5%.. even with that it'd still be under $90 for a brand new one.. but Amazon won't ship electical items to the UK!
So what do we do in the UK? Pay three times more for everything, like normal? Seems like it. Any ideas?
mogorific carpentry experiments
I just went to sega's dreamcast webpage and typed "dreamcast broadband adapter" and a link came up and then it said it was not available.
What good is a device, without network capability?
I haven't seen any that do anything but play from CDs.
Your point brings me to my future dillema (sp?)
I love Sega games, but all my favorites will be spread among XBox, PS2, and GameCube.
So... for now Dreamcast is a great system to play all of the originals on one system. And for $50 for the system and about $8-$20 a game (eBay and other places) you can't complain.
And I don't regret paying $100 for my DC
May I suggest your perusal of this website in which a netplay system for VOOT is being developed.
Scott.
Unfortunatly, the price drop isn't going to be passed on to Australia.
Ozisoft, the Aussie distributer for Sega, has said that their supplies have dried up, and Sega won't be sending any more our way.
Hmm. Luckily enough, I already own one!
A DreamCast Broadband adapter can be found on Ebay for $80-$120 (I'm sure there's 30-50 that'll go up for auction in the next couple month's seeing as how people will need extra money for the Xbox/GameCube + Games) there however isn't such a thing as a /. mod w/common sense.
Special people have long socks, ride short buses, & invent witty sigs.
Here's some kinda-sorta old NetBSD tidbits from the box if anyone is interested.
gamecube only has 64-bit SIMD in the FP registers; it's not the 128-bit SIMD in the SH4 sense.
The BBA was available in Japan months before it was available in the US.
From what I know the Dreamcast Broad Band Adapter is basted of the RealTek 8139 chip, which is common supported. I bought a DC planning on getting on hacking this thing (currently I just play "Worms" on it.. fun game). I took the modem out to look at the interface and it's definately not a stock PCI slot that it plugs into. I'm not very big on hardware but I'd imagine taking your modem and using the parts form that to rip the adapter off and slap it onto an RTL8139 card is possible but I'd like to hear from somebody much more knowledgable on the matter. For me it'd be a heck of a lot of fun whipping out the soldering iron, a $20 NIC and turning it into a BBA adapater for the DC. Can it be done?
First, DC is now a write-off for Sega, so it's now their job to minimize the financial damage that DC has on their bottom line.
By lowering DC to a ridiculous price, Sega:
1) Clears out a glut in the DC supply chain, minimizing cost to both Sega and vendors. This also gets the hardware liquidated before depreciation causes too much price attrition.
2) Temporarily increase its market share to drive a bit more game revenue.
DC is dead, and this is Sega's way of liquidating its DC assets.
Hmm, sounds like the market for after market mod chips just grew by leaps and bounds.
Would it be possible to use the dreamcast to boot linux and then run a divx player that would play movies at acceptable framerates full screen by streaming them from a nfs/samba share on the network using the dreamcast's broadband adapter? If so, this might make a great DivX player because it is quiet and has good image/sound quality.
-max
--------------------------------------- "No! Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try." -Yoda ------------------------
Why does it matter if Sega in particular releases dev tools or hardware specs? Virtually all of the specs are known, it's not as if they are a secret. As for open source, can anyone say "gcc"? That's right, a little quick cross-compilation and you have yourself a DC game. DCEmulation.com and Marcus' DC Dev have loads of information on the subject. Cryptic Allusion is the home of KallistiOS, one of (IMHO) the best DC development libs in existance. If you have a jonesin' to make yourself some games on DC, head over to these sites and you should be all set!
;)
Uhhh, yeah and C/C++ skills would be a plus, heh.
Now just sit back and pray that your DC can boot your game there
Just so no one reads the above post and gets all excited about being able to play Zelda on their newly-cheapened DC, the emulator is a fake, and IMHO a very well-thought out hoax. DCEmulation.com has the full story. Sorry to burst everyone's bubble.
;)
On the other hand, DreamSNES has been around for a while (no work lately though), which (duh) plays your SNES roms. Up to about 90% speed as of now... *sigh* and i wanted to be able to play Chrono Trigger on my DC
"Well, since the SH4 can multiply 4x4 matrices directly why not talking about the powerful 512-bit CPU of the Dreamcast :-)"
Actually that takes about 4 cycles, so the FP unit is not quite that powerful.
If we are going to talk about big numbers, (bus envy anyone?), the PowerVR CLX2 chip in the DC has data paths which are 1024 bits wide. It makes for some very, very high fill rates when you have some level of opaque overdraw or volume shadows. 8*)
Simon
AMD is the _Only_ serious competiton to Intel. And it is not doing well financialy. If we loose AMD well get: High prices, slower development of new products. Trust the economist (me).. we need AMD badly.
mario kart.
update comments set karma=-1, reason='offtopic' where sid=26315
However, using the utopia boot disc, you can boot even those CDs, I'll bet.
Also, if you're crafty, you can change the IP.BIN information and load it into the image, and remove the audio track, having specified that that track is not needed (in the IP.BIN.) This is likely to work with most pieces of software, but perhaps not all. Unless I'm missing something.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I bought (in Knoxville, TN, yesterday evening) a MadCatz brand adapter, marked down to $9.99 from $14.99, with a short cable on one end to one of the four dreamcast inputs, and on the other end a (selectable, via cool little sliding door) port for either a PS/2 or AT keyboard.
:) The Sega keyboard (they had one in stock) feels like a typical PC keyboard -- that is, not great response, but no worse than today's ordinary, mediocre, forgettable, disposable keyboards.*
...
I have read that keyboards other than the Sega may not be compatible with the various OS projects loading on the dreamcast though, so I may have to go back and get a sega keyboard as well. I'd much rather have a nice preowned-by-NASA IBM behemoth hooked up to it, though
Tim
* but I'm not bitter. Noooooo
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
it's true that there are a lot of places in the world where old monitors aren't just lying around people's garages, but ... for a whole lot (most, I think, but can't say) Americans, anyhow, a weekend yardsale haunting or two should yield a working VGA monitor for $20 or so. I say this based on time spent in NYC, suburban MD, rural TN, and Austin, TX in the last few years. Yard sales aside, (not) in the worlds of Ebeneezer Scrooge, "Are there no thrift stores?" I see VGA monitors (rightly considered near useless for modern OSes) mostly unused, in landfills, etc.
:)
Your part of the world may vary
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5