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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.
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.
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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.
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.
...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!
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 ;)
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.
You missed the point. This isn't about "useful," "practial." or "cheap." This is Good ol fashioned hardware hacking. (see look, it even says it on the site. neeener.) It has much less to do with how usable it is as it does with its coolness factor.
- 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
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.
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.
Of course, you can only have one interface connected at a time, BBA or Modem.... No HD needed for a NAT box (you would shoot the low power req right there). Get a cheap cable/dsl "router". This interface may even take up the BBA slot, so no network with this. To make Dreamcast a Good NAT box, you would need an adapter with two Ethernet ports and a bit of nvram (if you want to have any sort of persistant, yet flexible rules..)
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Check out the IPAQ storage brick. It didn't take much hardware hacking though.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
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? ;)
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.
News For Nerds. (says it all) I for one am stoked to someday be able to hook a hd up to my DC....
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
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.
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.
Umm... ok....
Go... dreamcast?
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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!
>But I would still like to see hardware hacking of stuff I could use.
That's what companies are for. This guy is doing something he thinks is fun and interesting for his own benefit. He's not trying to cater to your wants, and I don't see why you think he should.
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!
closest I can get is a 1Ghz Duron and ECS K7S5A for around $80
On behalf of level-headed DC fanboys everywhere, I apologize over the jerk who modded you .It's something that happens in every article that mentions a game console. It's especially bad in PS2 articles, but only because the PS2 fanboys are more numerous.
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Ikaruga scoreboard (supports netranking)
No,
but running mame and then playing all the old arcade standards is very neat. Plus the DC games are still very playable. That's what I did and I've been very pleased with results.