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Dreamcast Reading An IDE Hard Drive
evilpaul13 writes: "Somebody got an IDE Harddrive hooked up to his Dreamcast! He plans to build a new case for it as a later project. Maybe this will encourage new Linux for Dreamcast work with the greater possibilities it presents for a small SH6 based web server?" This is still a work in progress -- but it's encouraging, especially given the current price of Dreamcast consoles.
See, the Dreamcast is NOT dead. Nobody can stop the Dreamcast - nobody!
_
Windows Users CLICK HERE!
Cool, I've been looking for a low power device to use as a NAT server on my home lan... if this matures, this will be just what I'm looking for
Here's the text of the website, since it may get Slashdotted pretty soon:
;-)
o up _id=23791
l ea se_id=85710
;-). All the graphics you see there are pretty much finalized graphics that will go into the game itself. This also shows off the new scoring system, with step ratings and health/combo meters. Finally, you actually see two player mode there, each player with a different difficulty of Rhythm and Police from DDR. Unfortunately I'm playing by myself here, and the controller input goes to both, so I'm not doing so well on Maniac mode! =D
Some new hardware pics
Posted by Dan on 2002-04-27 01:33:41
I haven't quite finished my new ISA/IDE interface for the DC, but I have verified rudimentary communications between the DC and an IDE hard disk today, so I figured I'd post some pics. =D Sorry for the crappy webcam pic quality.
#1 #2 #3
(note stylish blue LED
I call this a "bridge" rather than a "bus" because that seems a bit more accurate to me -- it just hooks two existing buses (ISA and DC EXT) together.
This is actually built up from the diagram of Kiyoshi IKEHARA, with some modifications of my own. Specifically I had to resolve the 6-way NAND gate, and I got sick of looking for an ISA IDE controller, so I wired up my own directly into the board. This isn't as bad as it sounds because IDE is basically designed to plug directly into ISA anyway.
This is the beginning of my "DC Navi" project, which I'll keep people posted on, in case anyone is interested. I'm eventually planning to outfit a Dreamcast motherboard with a flash BIOS, reset switch, and IDE/ISA interface, and put it into a new case. This will also involve writing a new BIOS for it, which will be based mostly on KOS.
Yeah, I know, I'm crazy, but it's fun ^_-
Small update: I've confirmed it 100% now. I've got a small KOS program that reads this data from the HD info block (IDE cmd 0xec):
Drive is a 'WDC AB1210F', C/H/S=988/12/34 (196MB), buffer size 0MB
Matches the disk exactly. Whoo hoo! On to driver and file system goodness =)
Good ol fashioned hardware hacking
Posted by Dan on 2002-04-21 20:52:17
Just got my first real DC hardware hack installed on my "sacrificial lamb" DC. }-D This one is pretty simple though, just mainly warming up. I installed a reset switch in the side of the case. Very handy if you do any amount of DC dev and have to reset your DC once in a while. Thanks to Bitmaster for the diagram on where to solder things! It's a little ghetto looking right now but I'm not really planning to keep that case forever.
Now I just have to get ahold of some flash memory and a few other odds and ends and I'll start on my more ambitious project of replacing the BIOS with a flash chip.
KOS 1.1.7 posted
Posted by Dan on 2002-04-20 16:27:51
Well, after ~3 long months of development time, KOS 1.1.7 is posted on the SourceForge download page:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?gr
You can find the release notes and changelog here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?re
If you've worked with KOS in the past (and haven't been following CVS) then please look through the release notes. Quite a bit has changed since 1.1.6.
Some of the highlights of this release:
Rewritten 3D API ("ta" has been replaced by "pvr") which allows one to use some or all of the lists in various configurations, fog, paletted textures, etc; also includes "direct render" macros which allow you to inline your 3D pritimive creation and TA submission for super speed (I've seen up to 2.4M triangles/sec with this method)
Rewritten maple system, with interrupt driven I/O and hotswap
Unified network API for both types of ethernet, and working lwIP port
Much more GL compliant KGL library, and a KGL manual
Lots of updates in various 'addon' libs, and a ton of new ones
A lot more examples
And of course, most importantly, includes a port of Hunt the Wumpus and Adventure from the BSD games tree.
E3 Tickets?
Posted by Dan on 2002-04-10 17:45:30
This is pretty unorthodox and I'll probably get in trouble for it, but what the heck. =)
Seems that our supplier for E3 tickets can't get any extras this year. I figured I'd post here and see if anyone had some extras they'd be willing to donate. I'm looking for the "retailer" type like you get for owning a game store (read: requires no admission fee, for the main show only, get to stand in line for 2 hours upon arrival -- that type). I'm looking for 8, but beggars can't be choosers, so if someone has some they'd like to donate, please let me know!
Technically CA could probably get official for-pay tickets at this point, but we can't afford those right now, so it's free ones or bust =)
Updated FoF shots, KOS status
Posted by Dan on 2002-03-30 22:51:35
First off, I have an updated screen shot for in-game play of FoF, just so you all know I'm not sitting back livin' it up instead of working on the game
On the KOS front, things are slowly moving along towards a 1.1.7 release. It's taking a lot longer than I originally expected, because I want to make sure that it's good and solid after so many core systems being replaced and tweaked. It's looking REALLY nice though. I think everyone will agree it's worth the wait and the small amount of porting that will be required to take advantage of the new features, including a fully async, interrupt driven maple system with enumeration capabilities, nice PVR API to replace TA, newly ported lwIP with support for both BBA and Lan Adapter, etc.
Some FoF screenshots
Posted by Dan on 2002-03-18 21:38:36
Still working on getting all the art and such together, but here are some "in progress" screen shots showing the main menu and in-game play. The steps you see on the second screen shot are for Lupin '78 from DDR 4thMix Plus. Of course this song will not be in the final game, just using it to test out the sync'ing of the arrows =)
Update Mar 19: Sorry, my bad for misunderstanding the intentions of the article there on Boob (update last night). =) Late -> Brain Tired -> You Know. ^_^
Feet of Fury
Posted by Dan on 2002-03-14 23:20:00
On behalf of the other members of Cryptic Allusion, I'd like to announce our current game project! The game we're working on is called Feet of Fury, and will be somewhat DDR-like, with more of an emphasis on player-vs-player interaction like the current puzzle fighting games. We are currently on track to have a decent pre-release ready for E3 this year, which will most likely include the development tools and source code once again. Over the next few weeks, we'll be getting a web site ready for the game and dribbling out some screen shots and other fun "multimedia" pieces. =) Stay tuned!
Site Redesign
Posted by Dan on 2002-02-25 23:12:40
Finally got around to giving the main page a makeover. The front page isn't actually using PHPSlash anymore, I'm just using it to handle the back-end story creation. Eventually I'll also replace this part since there's a lot more (and a lot nastier) there than I really need for this site. Feedback welcome!
Also if you haven't been following, we've got the new maple system in place in KOS, along with some KGL upgrades.
Big KOS changes last night
Posted by Dan on 2002-02-09 11:12:04
Last night I made some fairly substantial changes to the KOS tree, so if you are following CVS, please do an update to your whole tree and a make clean / make from the root of the tree. This will make sure everything gets rebuilt appropriately.
Libc has been split out into its own library now, so if you have "-lkallisti -lgcc" at the end of your link line, it needs to have a "-lc" added before "-lgcc". Or you can replace all three with $(KOS_LIBS) if you use the Makefile.rules from KOS.
I also have switched KOS' default 3D API to the PVR API. If you were loose in your usage of the old TA API (manually allocating textures, etc) then you'll have to correct these problems before your program will work with the emulated API, but almost all of the examples are working now, as is KGL.
I again urge anyone who's following KOS CVS (or using the release versions, even) to join the mailing list so you know when big changes are coming up.
Come Join the Fun
Posted by Dan on 2002-02-07 22:58:57
Not a whole lot has been posted to here lately... because all the fun is happening over on the SF KOS list! If you are at all interested in up-to-the-minute updates on what's going on, then hit the SourceForge link in the top navbar and join the cadcdev-kallistios list. There's also a CVS commit list showing what got committed when.
_
WINDOWS USERS CLICK HERE!
Given the relative slowness of the dreamcast, even at less than a $100 buck it still can't compete with a PC. You can easily put together a Duron sytem for around the same cost and have a far more useful Linux box. Being able to run binaries and not recomiling to run on the dreamcast will save a boatload of time in the long run too.
A friend of mine was / is looking to purchase a Dreamcast, but none of the large retailers carry them any more. Unless you can get one off of E-Bay or a Pawn Shop, you will probably have great difficulty finding any these days.
END COMMUNICATION
I'm not as interested in running linux from a dreamcast but this would be rather handy if you could play games from the hard drive. I'd probably play with my dreamcast more often if the damn games loaded quicker.
i heard something about someone putting linux on an xbox and running it on that. where can i find information?
Agreed, they're no where to be found on places such as Amazon.com or EBworld.com (or Gamestop.com), which are the big three retailers AFAIK. Smaller online specialty shops may still have them, but I imagine they're asking more than retail given the shortages these days.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
When Dreamcast already runs NetBSD. :)
...but getting it to work on an X-Box would be even more so!
:)
But seriously, I'm constantly amazed by the ideas people have of devices to run Linux on -- perhaps more so than the actual hacking required to do it.
Check out this Linux on a toaster... Crazy teenagers!
Why anyone would really consider this "promising". Cool, yes. Geeky, yes. But come on, for the price of the hardware, you can buy a two or three generations old real machine on ebay and have a MUCH more funcitonal webserver without any of the do-it-yourself hassle. Can you really see someone going out and buying up a whole slew of dreamcasts and hard drives to build out a cheap server farm?
It uses a Hitachi SH4, not SH6, iirc. Just splitting hairs :).
--
Phil
SuSE 7 ;)
RedHat 7
Mandrake 8
SOURCE RPM
and SOURCE TARBALL
PowerVR has just made the Dreamcast into an aspiring platform for Linux gaming! Good graphics, 128 bit SuperH CPU, good BUS, affordable(less than $100 at retail, cheaper used), and now a harddrive... shame on them ;)
Now THIS will solve my library of VMU's problem.
- 1 el cheapo Dreamcast for your local walmart with dreamcast linux installed
- 1 inexpensive little TV (you've probably got one in your garage)
- 1 spare ide drive -- I've got one sitting on my desk
- Plywood and paint
And as a bonus, you can play Sonic the Hedgehog on it!Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon
Someone else made it, a team of college students I believe. They made an interface 4 it. now that the dc is rather dead and its cpu dated it doesnt much matter. Well it might to those linux nuts that want to run linux on everything from a wrist watch to a cash register
Why make a Dreamcast web server? So you can post a link to it and cause it to burst into flames?
:P
Timothy, you're a cruel, cruel, man...
This is cool. :)
If we incorporate the DC Navi with Lain OS, then we will have a full NAVI styled DC NAVI
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
Dear Professor Linux,
How can I steep from boiling myself with windignation every time I smear wee Frenchers referred to as "cheese-eating surrender moonkeys"?
Jean-Marie LePen *mold* us we shouldn't be our usual slug French selves when we laughed about the Borida recount!
Sacre blew!
Sinceerely,
Francois P.
There's a store just up the road called GameStop. It's a part of Barnes and Noble, so I assume you can find GameStops pretty much anywhere you can find a Barnes and Noble. Anyway, they sell used consoles, including Dreamcasts. I bought my N64 there about a year ago for only about $50, and it's worked wonderfully since then. Good quality, low prices. Check them out.
Much more information here:
DreamcastDK
It has beend done, here is a url:u can even get an ISO for the modified RedHat/eCos there.
http://www.m17n.org/linux-sh/dreamcast/
Yo
It supports the video card (unaccelrated framebuffer, maybe improved by now), and the BBA (if you are lucky enough to have one). You *could* make it into a web server through nfs, or static on CD, but see no good reason. Doesn't support the sound though.
Personally, If I had a BBA and linux supported the sound, it could make a convenient MP3 jukebox with neato visualizations, or even an MPG player. You can get software to play MPG and MP# from CD already, but over NFS would be so much more convenient... Home theater applications, that could be useful, since it's form factor is so nice. Linux on the XBox would be a truly great Home Theater thing (hard drive and ethernet built in). Hell, any general purpose OS on the XBox would make the box more attractive, the games sure as hell don't excite me.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
bITmASTER32 made an IDE interface and Kiyoshi Ikehara built released a driver for NetBSD a long time ago. What this guy did was nothing special. They have been Lan booting NetBSD on a dreamcast and using the HDD (albeit slow, 800k/sec) for a while now.
Some new hardware pics Posted by Dan on 2002-04-27 01:33:41
I haven't quite finished my new ISA/IDE interface for the DC, but I have verified rudimentary communications between the DC and an IDE hard disk today, so I figured I'd post some pics. =D Sorry for the crappy webcam pic quality.
#1 #2 #3
(note stylish blue LED ;-)
I call this a "bridge" rather than a "bus" because that seems a bit more accurate to me -- it just hooks two existing buses (ISA and DC EXT) together.
This is actually built up from the diagram of Kiyoshi IKEHARA, with some modifications of my own. Specifically I had to resolve the 6-way NAND gate, and I got sick of looking for an ISA IDE controller, so I wired up my own directly into the board. This isn't as bad as it sounds because IDE is basically designed to plug directly into ISA anyway.
This is the beginning of my "DC Navi" project, which I'll keep people posted on, in case anyone is interested. I'm eventually planning to outfit a Dreamcast motherboard with a flash BIOS, reset switch, and IDE/ISA interface, and put it into a new case. This will also involve writing a new BIOS for it, which will be based mostly on KOS.
Yeah, I know, I'm crazy, but it's fun ^_-
Small update: I've confirmed it 100% now. I've got a small KOS program that reads this data from the HD info block (IDE cmd 0xec):
Drive is a 'WDC AB1210F', C/H/S=988/12/34 (196MB), buffer size 0MB
Matches the disk exactly. Whoo hoo! On to driver and file system goodness =)
Five knuckles of TRUTH right hea in yo' face WHAM!
Here for your ED-ification and EAT-itication are the top sandwiches!
1. PBJ: the bestest ever, now and forever
2. Bacon and Avocado: on wheat bread with sprouts! Melts in yo mouth!
3. Provolone and Swiss: gotta be real swiss, 'cause then you can't miss!
Gayest sandwich: egg salad. I'm sorry to say, egg salad is VERY gay.
Check out the IPAQ storage brick. It didn't take much hardware hacking though.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Siskell: When will trolls learn? I mean HOW many times have we seen this troll Roger? Thumbs down. Ebert: baaaaaaaaaaaaah! baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Hit up a Babbage's or FunCoLand (same parent company). Babbage's sells mostly new stuff, but has some used/refurbed DC stuff, and FunCoLand is primarily a used game/console store. The one near me has about a half-dozen used DCs for sale. I even got a DC keyboard at FunCoLand for $10, new in the box. The Electronics Boutiques around here seem to be dropping the DC merchandise and just selling off the remainder, though, and the local Wal*Marts have stopped carrying it completely.
This is not a Fugazi
Maybe this will encourage new Linux for Dreamcast work with the greater possibilities it presents for a small SH6 based web server?
The Dreamcast is SH4-based, not SH6. The SH5 chip is just about ready to be released.
Gives a whole new meaning to embedded operating system, eh? ;)
They can turn it into a web server so it can get slashdotted within nanoseconds. SOunds like fun. :P
CowboyNeals Chocolate Eclair
Ingredients
2 (3.4 ounce) packages instant vanilla pudding mix
1 cup confectioners' sugar
3 cups milk
1 (8 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed
1 (16 ounce) package graham crackers
1 (16 ounce) container chocolate frosting
Directions
In a large bowl, combine pudding mix and confectioners' sugar. Whisk in milk until mixture is smooth, then gradually fold in whipped topping.
Place a layer of graham crackers in the bottom of a 9x13 inch pan. Spread 1/3 of pudding mixture over crackers. Cover pudding with another layer of graham crackers. Continue layering until pudding mixture is gone. Cover last pudding layer with another layer of graham crackers.
Remove lid and seal from frosting and microwave at 20 second intervals, stirring between intervals, unil frosting is pourable (about 1 minute). Spread frosting evenly over top layer of graham crackers. Refrigerate 24 hours before serving.
Linux is a marvelous OS but it doesn't need to run on EVERYTHING.
...as mentioned even on the guy's web page:
Link
WHY DONT YOU JUST TRY TO PORT LINUX ON YOU ANAL VIBRATOR!!!?????
Wouldn't that be ANUX?
lameness filter workaround cock bitch cunt cockslap dickwaffle buttsex
Sega Master System - Z80 cpu. no idea of mhz
Sega Genesis - MC68000 cpu, z80 cpu for sound
Sega 32x - SH2 cpu, able to utilize 68k as coprocessor
Sega Saturn - Dual Hitachi SH3's, 68k for sound
Sega Dreamcast - SH4 cpu, (SH3 for sound? heh)
Anyone have any idea what the Game Gear used? I'm guessing z80, though it might have been others.
...for running Linux off of a HDD hooked up to a dreamcast, although the PS2 serves the purpose a little better for me (just based on its shape and its PC-like CD tray): car "PC" systems! Think about it, a console is generally cheaper than a PC, has a smaller profile, doesn't generate as much heat, and has more "out of the box" uses (A PS2 placed in a car is already capable of playing games, DVDs, AND CDs - and with Linux running on it could probably very easy serve as an mp3 player).
A Dreamcast might not be as useful for that specific purpose, but the moral is don't immediatly assume any Linux project done "just for the hell of it" has no practical use. Anyone with the creativity and skill to get Linux running on unusual hardware (and in this case modify the hardware itself) can definetly come up with a good use for it.
If you need to interpret my post, then you don't get it.
This has been done before, it's actually been done a lot better before.
I apologize for not being able to find the URL. For some reason, dreamcast hackers don't link to eachother much at all, so the info is hard to find with google. Somewhere around here, I have a PDF with a schematic.
About a year and a half ago, someone released an unfinished schematic for a board that connects where the modem or BBA connects and has an onboard IDE controller and an ISA slot. The website for it also had pictures of an improved design with a notebook ide connector and mounting hardware, and a pcmcia slot instead of an ISA slot. All this hardware being supported under netbsd, with source provided.
the creator / author said on the page that the complete design was unfinished but very close to finished. It was uncertian whether he was planning on printing and selling boards, or even telling anyone else how to do it.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
I've Googled and Googled, but have yet to find any resources covering homebrew on the Game Cube. It uses a modded IBM G3 and some interesting SRAM-ish memory. I'd be nice if a resource like Marcus Comstedt's existed. So far the closest I can find are photos of the guts, and some marketing from Metrowerks.
Nope.
Those dolts can't even drop a bomb properly.
You can pick one up with very little effort from Gamestop.com ( http://www.gamestop.com/) They have several deals on used systems with 1 or more games starting around $69. As you mention - ebay works well too. If you're gonna hack it anyway, why buy new?
Using the dreamcast as a webserver will give the Dreamcast new life considering it's gaming aspects are completely worthless
"Can't sleep. Clowns will eat me"
God damn, that sounds good. Do you have the culinary skills to prepare that meal? Invite me over to your place some day.
Oh and here, have a song.
New Order - 1963
It was January, 1963
When Johnny came home with a gift for me
He said I bought it for you because I love you
And I bought it for you because it's your birthday, too
He was so very nice, he was so very kind
To think of me at this point in time
I used to think of him, he used think of me
He told me to close my eyes
My gift would be a great surprise
I saw tears were in his eyes
He never meant to hurt me
Oh, God, Johnny, don't point that gun at me
There's so many ways our lives have changed
But please, I beg, don't do this to me
Johnny, don't point that gun at me
Can I save my life at any price?
For God's sake won't you listen to me?
And though he was ashamed that he had took a life
Johnny came home with another wife
And he often remembered how it used to be
Before that special occasion, 1963
There was too many ways that you could kill someone
Like in a love affair, when the love is gone
He told me to close my eyes
My gift would be a great surprise
I saw hatred in his eyes
He never meant to hurt me
Oh, God, Johnny, don't point that gun at me
There's so many ways our lives have changed
But please, I beg, don't do this to me
Johnny, you keep on using me
Can I change my life for any price?
Oh, Johnny, won't you listen to me?
He told me to close my eyes
My gift would be a great surprise
I saw hatred in his eyes
But he never meant to hurt me
Oh, God, Johnny, don't point that gun at me
There's so many ways our lives have changed
But please, I beg, don't do this to me
Johnny, you keep on using me
Can I change my life for any price?
Oh, Johnny, won't you listen to me?
I just want you to be mine,
I don't want this world to shine
I don't want this bridge to burn
Oh, Johnny, do you miss me?
I just want to feel for you
I will always feel for you...
It runs on pretty much everything, probably more stable than Linux too (it has been for me on x86 but not as much fun stuff)
http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/dreamcast
Dreamcast Linux distro isn't a success yet from what we've used (on the DC we bought specifically). It's certainly got potential. Just a shame about the broadband adapter drought.
An interesting idea for the xbot would be to make a compiler for the gpu on the thing.
This would be much more effective on the xbox as you can read from the gpu *a lot* faster than on a pc, as they share memory.
Don't think it would be too hard. Want to do 640*480 additions thousands of times a second (~300,720,000 ops)? Get two textures and blend them. I'm sure something similar could be done with the vertex processors, and the sound processing unit.
The controllers are very low latency. Which could be used for message passing in a cluster situation.
The xbox at its price is a bargain for someone with a lot of cash to hack it, and make a useable platform out of it.
Set up a shelf company with some fake game developers, join the xbox incubator program to obtain enough of the specs. Make a bunch of other seperate companies, hiring hardware/linux/compiler hackers. Stir for six months, and you should have it.
Buy 30,000 xbox's. Then you have one of the worlds fastest clusters for a song.
500 * 30,000 == $15,000,000 including transport. Note: that xbox's are 200 USD in australia.
240 terabytes of disk
1.8 terabytes of memory
I'd really prefer the "I made X into Y" articles were in their own category, rather than hardware. There's enough of them to warrant a category, and I suspect I'm not the only person who has no interest in them but still wants to read legitimate hardware news.
You would see that he EXPLICITLY states where he got the info he needed to do it.
My server
Being a software pirate, I'd love to see this used to store games.. wouldn't it be cool to have a 100GB drive hooked up to your Dreamcast and to be able to load games off the HD? Probably tough to do since I'm sure games read the CD directly.. but it'd be cool. Like those N64 copiers that read games off zip disk.
eat my poo [ Reply to This | Parent ]
I've been following the scene for quite awhile. Was hop in #dcemu 6 months or so, when it wasnt busy. Went through the big John Henderson fiasco.
. com/
There is alot the DC offers, that nobody realizes. Do you know its the only cheap $50 console, that has accelerated 3d rendering? in free, open source libraries (KOS 1.1.7).
Rocket Racer beta2 is a wipeout-style game, no AI or Multiplayer till beta 3, but the techdemo of it kicks ass (4 cars, 2 tracks, time trials only).
DCShooter (beta that is out is old, wait for next release).. loads Q2 levels. Its a homebrew multiplayer (1-4) shooting game. Will soon be goldeneye-style.
DCAsteroids and DCFighting are both 3d, but are on backburner for the shooting game at the moment.
Look at fucking DcDivx!! Made by team Project Mayo themselves! (Divx 3,4,5 support, AVI, MP3 - Disc Swap Support) Its only beta 3, and is an -excellent- movie player.
There are outstanding emulators too.
NES : NesterDC 6.0
SNES: DreamSNES 0.9.7
GB : DCGNUboy 1.0.3-0.4
Genesis : DCGen 0.34b
Sega Master System/ Game Gear : Smeg 0.84
Just to name a few.
The harddrive is only a smaller mod that makes up the DC as a whole. Look at everything, and it kicks the crap out of any PS2 or Xbox...
Go ahead, play a super nintendo game on the Xbox.
Play a DivX movie on your PS2.
http://www.dcemulation.com/
http://www.dcvison
http://www.boob.co.uk
http://www.angryburrito.com/ The best, completely unfinished software review site ever.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
The most obvious thing would be not only Linux on DC, but the other applications.
Imagine your cool Dreamcast MP3 player with no disc swapping because the MP3's are on the drive. It sucks now, even though I have all my MP3's on CD because I must swap and look for the CD I want to play.
Imagine the cool shit - rip CD's to the drive and you've got a cheap unit similar to the HP or the others.
I'm excited! I loved the Dreamcast - IMHO the coolest console to come out in a long time. For some reason I scoff at the new ones because my love runs so deep. Fsck Xbox, PS2 and GC!
Dreamcast I Love You! - Please Don't Die
I'm lame, mod me as such
Get your Unix fortune now!
What are you stupid? I am a white man, a gentile, and I know that the jews are god's people. I am afraid that god will punish people who do not treat the jewish people with respect. I sugest that you rethink your position. If the world treats the jews with respect, the world will prosper.
All Dreamcasts can read CDRs. The ones made after Oct. 2000 just refuse to boot the most popular format (in terms of CD sessions) for burned Dreamcast games. You can use another format that works fine on later-manufactured Dreamcasts. See the dreamcast articles at for more details.
I'll sell you mine for 30$.
- Guy who needs money
I don't know if this is an elaborate "Beowulf" troll or what. Your post makes no sense. The GPU on an XBox is not useful for anything other than graphics. Making a cluster of these things is a bad idea.
It seems to me the point of using them would be to use a LOT of them. In which case it would make sense (to me) to put a broadband adapter in it and have a netboot server for them. That way you can harness their cheap processing power and don't have to worry about difficult hardware manipulation to add a hard drive.
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
As I Dreamcast lover, I LOVE this kind of stuff. "Why do this? You can buy a cheap PC and blah blah" ... that isn't the point. The point is that people who love the DC are finding all of these great other uses for it. The Dreamcast is still a beautiful system, and is very versitile in what it can do. The bigger the underground DC scene becomes, the happier I am. I remember back when VMU animations were just becoming possible, and how fun that kind of stuff was. I made two Japanese flash card programs for the VMU through the simple animation routines. What was the point? Just because I could, and I got a kick out of seeing it work.
If you are looking to build a cheap web server, MP3 server
Reviews here and here!.
Why bother? Is the question I am most frequently asked about running Linux on the Dreamcast.
Well, it's not because it's a cheap alternative to a PC - it's not. The system is cheap - there are bucket loads of them for sale on ebay etc - and you get a lot of bang for your buck. But it's not a PC and wouldn't be a PC if you attached a RAID array for 40 GB disks to it - it's a games console.
As such it's pretty close to working in the "embedded space" and its also a challenge - we have a sound driver, but no sound DMA yet - we have a video driver, but no 3D yet - we have lots of devices for which support is still being worked on - microphones, cameras even.
Nobody is ever going to get noticed for writing a new driver for a sound card on a PC, but you do get noticed if you write one for the DC. And isn't getting noticed and complemented on your work what being a hacker is all about?
This site is subtitled "News for Nerds" and there isn't anything more nerdy that writing Linux drivers for a games console - so join the fun.
What is undocumented is the real power of this system - its advanced DSP properties. It's relatively easy to get it to play 48k bit rate stereo though.
Babbage's/FunCoLand/SuperSoftware and a couple of others are all now GameStop. You can check out their used DreamCast section here.
The one near me (Houston, TX) just got a bunch of used DCs in and they're selling them for $69, due to high demand. That should change soon.
Whenever I see things like this I think that it is quite cool, but wonder what the point really is. Isn't this guy just trying to re-invent the PC? Can't he do something better with his time?
Mike
-- Mike
The number of things that people have done with a dramcast amazes me. I don't know much about Dreamcast hardware, so here's my question:
Has all of this stuff been done with the Dreamcast because its hardware is extremely flexible, moreso than any other console?
Or is it simply because the Dreamcast has been around for long enough that people are starting to wonder what ELSE they can do with it, and modifying it?
JoeRobe
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
netBSD also doesn't have a working mouse for DC.
netBSDs real strength is its portability and stability. When DEC/Compaq support runs out on VMS for VAX, I'm turning the VAX server where I work into a netBSD mailserver. The DC port was probably done for two reasons (all good): To have fun. And to test the claim that it can port to anything. (The Linux port was done for the same reasons I assume).
A possible problem with the Linux port as opposed to the NetBSD port (as I found with x86) is the difference in distros and platforms. (I never have problems with pkgsrc)
So?
Most people in the world use Windows on the desktop does that mean Linux is dead on the desktop?
The *BSD's have their fans and their niche.
For example I don't have to compile a weird SCSI emulation layer to run an IDE CDR/RW in NetBSD. I can run most Linux apps (I'm useing netscape under linux emulation right now), FreeBSD apps, Solaris x86 apps, and Windows apps using bochs.
For fun get two identical machines, one with NetBSD and one with linux. Run X, Abiword, Netscape, FreeCiv. Now run top. Compare the memory and swap useage.
I agree and disagree. We (I and a housemate) were attracted by the cheap, powerful, reasonably low power-draw, sleek little box with TV-out that is the Dreamcast. We were, and still are, hoping to use it with DCLinux. We want to have it hooked up to the TV, playing MP3s, DIVXs, Linux games or just generally for web-browsing.
The uses for the Dreamcast are limited by your imagination. The one glaring problem is network connectivity. Those ethernet adapters (BBAs) are rare and expensive. We've decided to go with serial for now although the reverse-engineering of the proprietary slot looks promising.
Anyway, the biggest hinderance does indeed seem to be the networking (my friend stupidly killed a DC messing with the serial port - dangled a 3.3V line over the power supply heh). Still, I don't agree that the DC has no potential. Instead, I argue, it has untapped potential.
Yes, there's little that can be usefully done with it although that can change, if the community spirit encourages enough development.
If Sega had pumped out many more of those ethernet adapters before killing the DC, we'd be looking at a much more enthusiastic developer community today.
Stop trolling. The reason the DC is so cheap is because it is discontinued. Sega doesn't make it anymore. When they did make it, it was around $200 USD.
...but to no avail. No one I know seems to want one anymore!
boogieman22000@yahoo.com
I would just like to plop down on the couch in front of the TV tube, put my feet on the coffee table, boot NetBSD, Linux or *nix, using the modem (no broadband in my area) telnet to my server, browse (lynx or w3m ), have an editor available (vi), maybe email (pine), and FTP, FXP ability. External, removable storage would be nice but it seems like flash memory would be more suitable to the nature of the device. If I have the X system available, then viewing multimedia would be cool, but it would have to be from media exchanged from the boot CD. NetBSD does this, Linux does not.
Posted by 'bayerwerke' (password doesn't work and my mail server's T3 is down, can't retrieve it)
I originally wrote a longer post, remarking about exactly why the GPU only makes sense in a graphics application. I edited myself down to keep it simple. But since you mention it...
Accuracy is certainly a problem. Today's PC graphics hardware computes results with 8 bits of accuracy. But just as important, I think, is the fact that the GPU is not a massively parallel unit in the first place. I.e., it does not have the ability to process in parallel more than a handful of data.
There is a reason for that: 3D graphics does not parallelize all that well. It is a big pain in the neck to try to fill multiple graphics pipelines. The applications programmers are not going to like it. So you keep it simple, deal with one polygon at a time. You might keep a few pixel pipelines full but even that only works well if your polygons are pretty big on screen.
Consequently these folks try hard to make their mostly serial hardware fast. It costs more money to make such a fast part.
If your problem is embarrassingly parallel, why try to reuse some expensive graphics specific part with a bunch of accuracy limitations? You can put a bunch of cheap DSPs on a board and go nuts. The original poster wanted to spend $15M on a large cluster, networked together with game controller cables and safety pins. That's nuts. It is not the cheapest way to get a large DSP array.
People do use MMX and other SIMD instructions, because they need to do media processing, and the desktop PC already has one CPU. For cost reasons it's not a good idea to squeeze a separate DSP in there. But don't tell me you would build a cluster of MMX enabled PCs to do a big parallel DSP task. Again it would not be the cheapest way.
Re: your headless idea. XBox has a UMA, so the frame buffer can be located in one chunk of main memory, and the GPU can be off chewing on some other part. So you could have a pretty display on your XBox cluster.