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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."
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"
>It's hard to believe that the Betamax, with its better sound and picture quality, ever lost out to the VHS.
:-)
Oh no, not this one again.
Picture quality -- about 10% better (barely) in units from the same era. A modern $70 VCR still beats the pants off it, though. BetaMax had only an extra 10 lines of resolution, and a very slightly less noisy picture going for it at the time. Not to mention this is largely due to running the tape faster, which happens to be their (alternate) reason for dying. You have to switch tapes during just about anything if you want the quality to beat VHS. Hardly anything to write to slashdot about...
Sound quality -- AFAIK, while VHS started out mono, a full HiFi Stereo VHS VCR gives a similar fidelity to a Sony Betamax VCR, although without actually hearing a unit it is hard to tell (not that VHS HiFi sounds bad -- its right inbetween a decent Metal casette and a good CD).
Besides, Sony eats their young. And therefore its their fault Beta died. And a good thing, too.
It's just one in a very long list of failures of Sony in the US, along with 8mm, Memory Sticks, and MD. Sony just can't seem to figure out what makes us Americans buy stuff, and probably never will as long as they keep it so very proprietary.
Here's a little more on that format war, for those interested.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
never could read japanese, but here's the link to the pre-order page.
Sometimes people just have to learn and adapt to change, it is one of the requirements of being a living thing.
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.
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