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Amateurs Pushing the Dreamcast's Boundaries
Wraggster writes "The Sega Dreamcast console, which died an early commercial death, has recently seen some amazing new projects mainly aimed at emulation. Recently, a coder named Bluecrab released a port of the Saturn emulator called Yabause for the Dreamcast. Also, GPF (Troy Davis) has ported the excellent Visual Boy Advance (Game Boy Advance Emulator) to the Dreamcast. Finally, yesterday it was announced that Nincest (Nintendo 64 Emulator), an early N64 emulator that played demos only, has also been ported to the Dreamcast. All the projects are somewhat slow, but the achievement of the work is not to be discounted. Who says the Dreamcast is dead?"
Having BSD on Dreamcast made the system appealing to me. Granted, NetBSD has been ported to every electronic device that has enough memory to hold the kernel. But there is a certain geeky alure to using a video game console as a terminal, or, as some people have demonstrated, even as a webserver.
I guess it's just the "I can do this" aspect that draws me to it. Just having the ability to tinker with things makes them more interesting.
There was a demo (or a real game, I can't remember) that modified the Nintendo logo on the B&W Game Boy (the logo is just a bitmap in the game ROM IIRC) and it ran without problem.
... now if only someone would build broadband adapters for the DC - it's really hard to get one and they're pretty expensive.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
"Who says the Dreamcast is dead?"
If there isn't new hardware being produced, the architecture is 'dead' for all intents and purposes. I could write code to make the 8085 in my TRS-80 Model 100 emulate an 8088 and run MS-DOS on it. An enthusiast could get an old PDP-11 to emulate an Apple II.
It's cool, it's great hacking material, but it's a 'dead end' project. Nothing wrong at all with cool dead-end projects (Anybody need an Intersil 6100 chip? 12 bit static CMOS microcontrollers that run the PDP-8 instruction set rule!), but they're, ummm, dead.
resigned
Seems the fan community for the Dreamcast is as enamored with them as the Newton Community is. Both groups continue to love their minicomputers, maintain them, and mod away! Very cool! While the DC is learning how to emulate, Newton just learned how to run Gameboy games. Newton now can do wi-fi and bluetooth, so will that be coming to DC as well? Bluetooth keyboards and controls anyone? Very cool stuff!
Your definition of the Dreamcast forgot one fine point: it was meant to make money. You think that you support it by holding on to the fantasy you've created about it, but really you don't support Sega at all.
That is beside the point, though, because your reply is completely off base and defensive. I wasn't labelling your hobby as anything but a hobby. You drew a parallel between the Dreamcast and the personal computer, and i erased that parallel by commenting about how superficial playing with the Dreamcast is compared to playing with a PC.
That is nothing against your hobby, but in reality that is all it is: a superficial entertainment. Much like television, little rockets and train sets.
And I am anything but anti-Dreamcast. For a while it was the only console system that I would claim ownership of.
But I'm not sure how porting emulators of weaker hardware to the Dreamcast in any way constitutes "pushing it's boundaries".
As long as there are people who still enjoy tinkering with something, I really don't think it should be considered 'dead'. This applies to 'dead' consoles, such as the Dreamcast, and 'dead' computers/operating systems, such as the Amiga, and BeOS.:)
They may be dead commercially, but not dead for hobbyists.
ok see i thought we were discussing playing DC games, so there is no emulator being used there on your DC, only on your PC (see in my post that i said DC games weren't emulatable until recently on PCs)
and umm...i don't think factoring the PC in is fair, as if you play it on an emulator on your -PC-, then you already have one! and as nearly all of PCs sold to consumers right now have CD burners already on them, that may not be so good either to factor in...even so, if you don't have a burner you always say "hey friend, burn this cd for me plz" takes a few extra minutes, and in a college setting? fuggidaboutit 2 seconds and you'd have your selfboot from someone in the dorm...i just moved outta one, i know what it's like ^_^
so both your price arguments are pretty much invalid...we have a dreamcast system bought (15 bucks?) versus a ps-usb converter (15 bucks), extra controllers (10 bucks apiece?) etc etc ^_^
but personally i do it your way...just that you seemed rather clueless about the fact that playing DC games on a DC is -much- easier than playing them on a PC