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Dreamcast Broadband Adapters
JayBonci writes "Dust off the old Dreamcast. If you're one of the many like myself who still enjoy their Dreamcast or are aspiring DC hackers, then you may want to pay attention to a quiet announcement by CSI, the Japanese manufacturer of the Dreamcast Broadband Adapter (flaky, but understandable translation provided by the fish). If you have no idea what the BBA is, the official page here. If CSI gets 1000 pre-orders for the unit, they will be willing to make another production run. Keep in mind that these units are very useful for the Dreamcast Linux efforts and NetBSD/Dreamcast, and that Japanese units work on US systems."
It's hard to believe that the Dreamcast, with it's better graphics handling and ease of programming, ever lost out to the PS2.
I guess if you've got the resources of Sony, you can pretty much screw anyone you like.
I have been pwned because my
Ok - this is a *big* deal. Anyone who's surfed Ebay looking for a $150USD DC BBA knows that they're horrifically overvalued for what they are - a bit of plastic and an Realtek (8139?) ethernet chip. I wonder what other companies might think of re-tooling up their production lines in light of the fact that their discontinued products sellon the used market for well over the original MSRP? (Roland TB-303, anyone?)
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (Charles Darwin)
I wonder what we could expect to pay for one of these if the order goes through...
I've been sort of kicking myself for not buying one at a reasonable price before the supply died out. But now I might have my chance.
Anata no namae wa non desu ka? What is your name? watashi wa dreamcast Linux ga suki desu! I like dreamcase linux! watashi wa DC Braudband adapter ga suki desu! same as above:-)
keanmarine.com
LOL. You want a N64 DD? Let me guess, you also own a virtual boy and a power glove?
What exactly is a "whoadie" anyway? I mean I know they have some weird words in Yiddish, but damn.
I was under the impression the hysteria surrounding the 303 had passed...
There was a time a decade or so ago when they were one of the few boxes you could get to make those sort of noises with that kind of interface, but surely all the fools and their money have been parted by now?
I never made acid anyhow... those kinds of squealing synthlines give me the shits.
i don't read slashdot anymore.
I can't understand the obsesion with making a gaming machine run Linux/BSD, with or without a network card. Just follow the money trail.
You may have gotten your DC for $99, without a harddrive, NIC, et al.
Meanwhile, you can get a 900MHz PC, with 10GB hard drive, NIC, Modem, etc for $300.
Call me crazy, but I'd stick with the one that I can get replacement parts for.
I can understand the draw of the i-opener, and the tuxphone, but I don't see any particular draw to the D.C.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Off topic I know but for once the OT troll is right.
If more people read this and understood the way a Christian relationship was supposed to be mabey it would not get such a bad name.
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
save me from the spelling nazi =P
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
How could I preorder a BBA? I cannot read Japanese :)
One has to remember that the UK standard of living is lower than that in the United States. The government in the UK is based on a confiscatory tax policy where the government takes almost all your money in taxes, leaving very little disposable income. Everything in the UK is taxed to high heaven. Folks there just can't afford to hop over to the megastore and buy the latest G4 or Athlon based system. For many in the UK, a fast game console with BASIC is as close as they can afford to real computing.
Old Dreamcasts with BBA would be a good way to help our brothers and sisters in the UK upgrade to the 21st Century. While the DC does not offer that much value for American consumers, a used Dreamcast would be an ideal way to help bridge the UK's "computing gap".
tom if you're out there, you acted like a real wanker during your last year at university
...post a link to goatse instead. I hate Bible Thumping trolls.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning-the sixth day
Why do people keep dragging up this ancient shit? Sure, it was a cool project, but hardly newsworthy anymore. How about reviewing some of the more recent stuff from this guy?
You're so sexy when you're like that.
I have been pwned because my
Just out of interest, how many pre-orders would be needed to get another production run of Dreamcasts made?
Maybe I am being over optimistic, but who would have said that Blender would be open-sourced a couple of years ago?
For applications which don't require a lot of processing power, the convenience of having an integrated machine that runs Linux is very useful.
Maybe I missed it in the translation, but I did not notice any mention of price. How much do they want for each adapter? Do they want payment in advance? Etc.
Nice phrasing. Would have had a nice double entendre had you said I was coming onto you.
*squirt squirt*
Drink it down, lovely.
I have been pwned because my
who is subtly annoyed when they arbitrarily rename things to make them sound less complex to idiot^Waverage users?
:)
For example, what they sell here is a "Network Adaptor", or "Ethernet Controller" or perhaps a "NIC" - all terms everyone has accepted and uses to describe the adaptor that allows a machine to connect to an ethernet network. But let's just make up a new name, and call it a "broadband adaptor", because most people will then asociate it with their (cable|dsl) connections, even though the item in question has absolutely nothing to do with broadband. It is, in fact, the exact opposite - baseband.
I know, I know, I'm making a big deal over a small thing, but I just had to get it out, and I feel better now that I have. If you agree, modding me up and you'll feel better too. If you disagree, modding me up will show how you can see both sides of the issue
--
grep "xercist"
How do we make the reservations? How much do we have to pay? What about international orders?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Given the prices of these things I'm suprised that someone hasn't hacked up a substitute.
Of course I have no idea how difficult this is, but people have gone to extemes on this sort of thing before.
So much to do, so little bandwidth.
--
Try Mozilla
The web translation services aren't being too effective. Has anyone found the order form, so that we may pre-order these things? I'm not having any luck, and I really want two of these things.
OK, here's a quick translation of the page:
====
Thank you for visiting our site.
As has been reported earlier the Broadband Adapter (BBA) is no longer being manufactured, with the remaining stock sold out in July and August. However, we have received many requests for manufacturing to be restarted.
As a result, we have decided to accept "countdown" preordering in order to do a new manufacturing run, with the run to be produced only if reservations reach 1000 by the cutoff date.
Please follow the instructions below to preorder an adapter.
In the event that manufacture does go ahead, it will take approximately four months from that point in time until we can deliver the adapter to you. Please take this into account when ordering.
Start of preorder acceptance: 2002/8/26 (Mon) 13:00-
Cutoff date: 2002/9/9 (Mon) 13:00
Number of BBAs to be produced: 1000
Delivery date (planned): A notice will be placed on this site as it is finalized around the end of December 2002.
====
In other words, you won't be able to put your preorder in until after 1pm Monday (Japan Standard Time).
After running the preorder page through the fish, this part came up:
This corporation sells the general customer as the object. In addition, as for the commodity it is for the Japanese country limiting to only sale. Because it is unable to correspond to the order from the foreign country and the inquiry, acknowledgement you ask. Separate consumer tax is necessary in the price which is stated.
E-mail: Dreamcast@csi.co.jp
I wish they would open this up to at elast the US. I know id want to order 1 or 2 of the BBA's if they were like $50 or so, and not the $150 everybody wants on EBAY.
After going through the site I found the preorder it says that the BBAs will only be shipped inside of Japan and will cost about 5000 Yen. If these aren't a problem for you, preorder requests should be sent to: dreamcast@csi.co.jp
As far as I know, Lik-Sang only ran out of these things recently. The actual product link is here. Perhaps this is where you can pre-order these new ones? Also it should be noted that not all American DC games are compatible with the Japanese BBA (most notably PSO).
I remember discovering that I had gotten the money to order one from Sega.com a week after they'd stopped production. Blargh.
-- Yukanojo (who keeps forgetting his password)
Not a new production run on the DC please at least read the post before posting bleh
--zer0her0 home: http://zer0her0.info work: http://lgmp.info
I have to wonder what will be coming out of the community for DC say... 6 mo. after these are sold. I'd be so pleased to see more hacker attention on the DC.
Howzabout a company that will mail order you any DC game? With a DC-proprietary writer you wouldn't even have to maintain any stock! Mail order any DC game $15 - I'd buy that. The DCDisk writers have to be valued at slightly more than scrap metal by this point, and maybe you could get the rights to write the games on demand for a % from Sega...
Too late for my Phantasy Star Online binge...
I had to get a *%*^$*& dialup account PLUS Hunter License to play for 3 months last winter.
I think we're still getting a BBA, though! We wondered why a thrid party or (this is the orginial manufacturer?) didn't make some more BBAs, they were going for $150 on Lik Sang, so clearly the dmand has been there. I wonder if the demand is still there, its almost too late for me. COME ON GAMECUBE PSO!!! I hope theres no broadband lack for the gamecube: nintendo, please don't suck.
Juln
I ran a webstats engine on my 14 million hits over the past four months, and noticed 23 Dreamcast hits. I figured someone had fudged their Mozilla's OS string.
Cool.
Jouster
I don't know about the relative graphics handling capabilities or programming ease (the latter I've heard has been getting better for PS2), but I do see the end result:
My PS2 has better games, plays DVDs, and has the best damn controller design in the history of gaming.
I know the Dreamcast is a whole lot cheaper, and hackable, and if I want to learn some embedded linux stuff, I'll go pick one up sometime. This is good news for linux on console enthusiasts, and maybe the diehard PSO players still left, but I'm more excited about the broadband adaptor for PS2 that's coming out soon, and seeing what impact it has on console gaming, and the linux for PS2 initiatives.
I'm not saying the Dreamcast didn't have great games. Sega has brilliant games, and I'm thankful that they're now developing games for PS2. But you can't deny that there are fantastic games on PS2 that outclass any other console's efforts. Also, last time I checked, there wasn't anybody developing new games for Dreamcast that would exploit this new hardware.
"Now gluttony and exploitation serves eight!" - TV's Frank
The hunter's license won't break your bank. The BBA is only a convenience if you're behind a nat router. Setting up PPP server for the DC is not hard, but you'll have to build the line simulator ($4 in parts from Fry's) if you don't have the 670-14140A model of the modem.
http://babelfish.altavista.com/urltrurl?url=http%3 A%2F%2Fwww3.csi-msp.com%2Fbbsite%2Fweb%2Fnote%2For derRule.jsp%3Ftype%3Dbba&lp=ja_en&tt=url
cadcdev.allustion.net
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dcdev/
b00b Dreamcast Research (no, NOT pr0n. sorry.)
DCEmulation.
ConsoleVision.
Hanger Eleven
Have fun!
--j0shua
There is an export company in Hong Kong that used to sell these BBA's. You can find them at Lik Sang
if you only want to use the BBA to play games, you should be able to figure out a way to make the DC dial into the computer, and then use the computers (broadband/LAN) access to play the games online. It won't be 'broadband' speeds but in reality DC games are optimized for 56k. I've played several DC games online and have never experienced any lag. I was also connecting over a 26.4 baud rate ;)
If you get an error, type "OVERRIDE" or "SECURITY OVERRIDE" and then try the optimize command again.
It's already been done. You can share your PC's dial-up OR broadband connection with your Dreamcast. For Windows 2000 For other Windows OS's Knock yourself out.
Oops!
Cut that out. I read through this whole thing looking for the part where she fucked you.
...how does one go about pre-ordering a couple of these puppies? This is the only thing I've been wanting to get for my Dreamcast before turning it into a Linux box, but I dislike using auctions to obtain things.
Does anyone with a better grasp of Japanese see on the site how to get such a pre-order to the company?
Shimatta
So much to do, so little motivation.
BWAHAHHA! my BBA owns. only issue is PSO didn't work with it (yeah there was a hack to use a japanese copy of the game, but fuck that!). q3a was uber easy though. everyone else had lame ass modems, so fragging them was childs play.
ph33r.
This project is here. I would really encourage any would be or newbie Linux kernel hacker to join the effort because:
There are good people here but none of them are Linus or Alan Cox, so no fear factor.
We don't need wizards (though they are welcome!), We just need competent people, as there are still a lot of basic device drivers to be written.
To keep this OT I'd add that without a BBA it's a PITA sometimes - but you can use the much cheaper coders' cable to connect your DC to a PC and download kernels etc.
Yeah, the mutation of Broadband from "using a broad frequency band" to "supplies a lot of bandwidth" is irritating. But face it, words change. Especially when they express technical distinctions most people don't know or care about.
http://www.ncsx.org/2002/ncs082602/ncs0826m.htm
I know that pretty much noone is going to see this now, but for those who are still reading this, you can preorder your DC BBA through NCSX, a reputable import gaming retailer, for only $49, less than the original BBA cost from Sega. No, I don't work for them, but it's a great way for us who can't read Japanese to get in on this deal. I just hope it hits 1000 orders...
anyone know a reliable japanese middleman? :>