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."

Comments

Re:Slowly into that good night

[commodoresloat]

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.

It's hard to believe that the Betamax, with its better sound and picture quality, ever lost out to the VHS.

I guess if you've got the resources of JVC, you can pretty much screw anyone you like.

wow

[nyquist_theorem]

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?)

Re:Slowly into that good night

[packeteer]

oh it brings a tear to my eye to hear you say that... i agree with you very much and you pointed out just a few of the many features the dreamcast has... it has TWICE as much video ram as the ps2 while the ps2 has twice as FAST video ram which means that programmers must waste their time coding swapping functions and worrying about management...

also the 128 bit (xbox has nothing on the dreamcast here with its 32 bit p3) 200 mhz risc processor just kicks ass... its easy to compile linux for risc so practically any software can be burned onto a cdr and the dreamcast can read it...

i am very glad and i will be pre-ordering possibly 2 or 3 of these... i wanted to hack my dc more but $200 for the nic was too much...

Am I the only one

[xercist]

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 :)

Quick translation

[BJH]

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).

Homebrew

[The Pi-Guy]

cadcdev.allustion.net

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dcdev/

b00b Dreamcast Research (no, NOT pr0n. sorry.)

DCEmulation.

ConsoleVision.

Hanger Eleven

Have fun!
--j0shua

Re:Slowly into that good night

[phaze3000]

Not only that, but there were actually some fun games that looked good too.

As an owner of both a PS2 and a Dreamcast (amongst quite a few other consoles) I was quite puzzled by this comment. The PS2 release games were pretty piss-poor to be honest (with the possible exception of Tekken Tag if fighting games are your thing, but IMO it doesn't come close to the almighty Soul Calibur). Even now, I'd say the Dreamcast has way more top quality titles:

PS2:

• GT3
• GTA3
• Ico
• Tekken Tag
• Rez

Dreamcast:

• Soul Calibur
• Jet Set Radio
• Virtua Tennis
• Ferrari F355 Challenge
• Shenmue
• Rez

With the exception of GTA3, you could argue that for every PS2 game there's another in the same genre on the Dreamcast that's better. Of course, the DC didn't have Sony's marketing might, or the selling point that it would play DVDs too...