Slashdot Mirror
Upgrading the Memory on a DreamCast?
dknight asks: "Ok, a friend of mine recently has his computer die on him. Rather than go out and buy a computer, we thought we'd try converting his DreamCast to fit the bill. We've got the keyboard and mouse, and now have Linux running on it successfully(we're working on getting the network adapter). The problem we're running into, however, is that it's REALLY painfully slow. I'm figuring this is due to the meager 16 Megs of RAM it comes with. My question is: Is it possible to upgrade the RAM on a DreamCast? Has anyone else attempted this feat?" I highly doubt this is possible, but if this can be done, this might breathe new life into those unused DC consoles that are lying around.
The thing is, he's using his roommate's computer for all that stuff. He doesnt need the dreamcast to be his PC, he's still covered as far as all that is concerned. We're doing this for fun. We just want to see how far we can make it go(we've got a lot of free time, and are very bored). As far as the BBA goes, we're actually planning on making one ourselves. The majority of the people on my hall are CompSci or Engineering Majors, so we're pretty confident we can pull it off. They have 2 dreamcasts in their room, so they're not too concerned about destroying one of them, either. The linux image on the CD only takes up about 250 meg, so we're gonna try to create our own CD with a lot of the basic apps we want on it, to save us from most of the NFS and other issues. Really, we would be more than happy to have a dreamcast setup to be on the network, running X-Windows with a decent web browser, and Gaim running on it. The RAM upgrade, really, would mainly be in hopes of decreasing boot and application loading time. This is for fun guys, we know it's not gonna be a REAL pc replacement(though there have been people talking about making a solid-state drive for it...). I'm really just interested in what all has been done, and how much is possible to do with it.
Ok, just to clarify for all of you:
his PC is _DEAD_ not just one or two components, but basically all of them. The few parts that can be salvaged, quite honestly, arent worth it. We have everything we need as far as tools, parts, etc.. on hand, free. Nothing we do to this system is gonna cost us. That's part of the beauty of it, we're just at this for kicks, to see how much we can do to it. I mean, if we really wanted, we could probably upgrade the processor too, it wouldn't be reasonable to do it, but we probably could. We're on a college campus with an OC-3, and network drops in every room, so we've got net access, so we dont need to worry about the whole modem thing. I'm not asking you guys to understand why I want to do this, and I certainly dont expect you guys to think I'm sane for it, I just want to know what all has been done, what can be done, and what is within reason to attempt to do, if you guys know more than I, which I would assume most of you do. Thanks guys.
I've done some light hacking on the Dreamcast, and have my Linux box mountable as an NFS volume over a coder's cable (helps when programming for the DC :-)). I've been looking over material on the web for DC hacking for a few months, and I have yet to see anyone actually upgrading the memory of a DC. But why let that stop you?
The two sites I've found helpful for DC hardware info:
1. DCEmulation.com is a general-purpose DIY Dreamcast site. There's a variety of info available here.
2. Dreamcast Programming - Marcus Comstedt's excellent hardware reference for the DC.
If you get anywhere with this, please post your results to DCEmulation.com. I'd love to hear about it.
For anyone else interested in running in booting Linux on their DC, the DC Linux site is here.
Windows users will find a a "burn it and run it" Disk Juggler version of Dreamcast Linux here.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"