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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.
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.
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.
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.
Amazon.com/Toys'R'Us has them for $49.99 US.
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
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)
This guy?
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
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.
Actually none of the 128-bit consoles (Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube & X-Box) have a 128-bit processor, I sincerely doubt one exists, only stupid reviewers from crappy gaming sites which haven't got a single clue on hardware talk about 128-bit consoles. The Dreamcast's SuperH 4 has a 32-bit datapath, the tweaked PowerPC 750 (G3) on GameCube too, the Vr5900 (that's a tweaked R5000 from MIPS) of the PS2 on the other hand has a 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. And well, X-Box, talk about mobile Celeron ;-). Everybody is shouting about 128-bit consoles just because every one of those has some vector unit inside able to crunch 128-bit vectors (that is 4 32-bit floating point vars). Well, since the SH4 can multiply 4x4 matrices directly why not talking about the powerful 512-bit CPU of the Dreamcast :-)
If you were going to make your own, the best thing to do, seeing that you say the expansion connector is basically PCI (any pictures?) would be to make a card with a PCI-PCI bridge, and then run your own PCI bus outside the Dreamcast with say 4 PCI slots on it, for you to plug in various NICs, Audigies, and other fun things (no, not an IDE RAID card!)
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.
The AC above me got it right. SEGA released the DC in Japan during the midst of its worst recession since post-WW2. However, the American launch was big (sold more in one day than the Saturn sold the entire time it was being produced.)
As close as I can estimate from looking at some press releases, the DC moved at least 5 million in the US, 2 million in Europe.
It has a large library of games, not as big as the Playstation, but it has a much better crap:good ratio. Games are cheap new or used ($20-$30 range for most).
Doing useful stuff with Linux requires the Broadband adapter or "DC Coder's Cable" (modified serial cable). Both are available from lik-sang.com
The homebrew community continues to make impressive contributions. check boob.co.uk for more info.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
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!
I just read an insert from best buy thats selling them for 50 bucks. and I'm sure I've seen them at EB. I'm just concerned about getting the thernet adapter. I figure i could use one for my folks. hook up the dremcast as a terminal to my machine so they can read their email which is all they do. And since my mom has really poor eyesight (diabetics stick to your diet you don't want to know what its like in advanced stages) i can hook this up to a larger screen tv thats cheaper than a nice monitor. ooh this is nifty.
-
http://homepages.compuserve.de/bITmASTER32/dc/dc-i de.html
With pictures, etc.
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
It's PCI. All the spccs for all the Dreamcast hardware are described in detail here.
Dude!
:-)
Just do a little investigating and you'll find that Dreamcast has a ton of awesome and addicting titles that most systems don't have.
(Sega makes a good deal of them)
Just to name a few...
Jet Grind Radio
Space Channel 5
Sonic Adventure 1 and 2
Shenmue
Soul Caliber
Virtua Fighter 3tb
Sega GT
Lots of good Capcom titles (Resident Evil, Street Fighters)
All the Sega Sports titles
check out
http://www.dreamcastplanet.com
for lots of good info!
plus for emulators to run on the DC, check out
http://www.dcemulation.com
I Love Dreamcast!
Sega Rules!
You don't need to actually fabricate a cartridge. Just pick up one of the Super Famicom/SNES "development and backup consoles" here.
It's been a while since I owned one (1993 I think) but even back then, you could copy, disassemble, and hack every game that existed on these little buggers. Back when Street Fighter II just came out on the Famicom, some friends and I patched the nintendo version to behave like arcade hacks popular at the time (check out the various sfII
roms for mame if you don't know what I'm talking about).
They were, and probably still are, pretty fun.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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).
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.
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.
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...
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!