Dreamcast Modem Is Reverse Engineered 149
00_NOP writes "The hobbyist's favourite console - the Dreamcast - comes with one of those braindead Winmodems that have made it very difficult for those on the active DC development scene to use. But now all that is about to change. Thanks to a find on the internet and some heavy duty hacking - real modem support is almost here. This is fantastic news for the Linux and the NetBSD teams and for *nix advocates everywhere - as immediately millions more people could access these OSes and use them in a meaningful way to get online etc. Don't forget - four million plus of these things were sold in North America alone!"
Should have put this in the original post... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:not a winmodem... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, would be more accurate to say 'is capable of' running a version of WinCE. It's a title by title basis; the hardware itself doesn't run an OS, only a bootstrapper and a few hard-coded utils to play CDs, change the clock, and futz with the memory cards.
Re:not a winmodem... (Score:3, Informative)
than the main processor which makes it an
embedded modem rather than a winmodem
(even when it is running CE which it technically
can but which most games do not use because
of the overhead that would bring with it)
Re:How about modem to ethernet mod? (Score:5, Informative)
--scroll down about 1/2 way.
Minor problem... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How about modem to ethernet mod? (Score:3, Informative)
http://hh141.hiphip.com/templates/frmTemplateE.
it says that preorders are closed.
Your comment deserves more mod points, too.
Re:How about modem to ethernet mod? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:How about modem to ethernet mod? (Score:4, Informative)
Hello, the production will proceed and we will update our website and customers once we have more news on the ship date. Thanks.
If this means that there will be plenty to go around, i do not know - but i hope so, seeing as i didn't get a pre-order in on time. I'm betting that major resalers ordered quite a few, though.
Re:not a winmodem... (Score:5, Informative)
The Dreamcast is not inherently tied to Windows CE in anyway.
I can't really comment on the non-Sega projects for the Dreamcast, since I honestly haven't really followed them, but there are three official IP stacks for the Dreamcast.
1. Windows CE - This one isn't really used that much. Windows CE was meant mainly as a quick port of existing Windows games. From what I recall hearing, there was a plan to have Windows CE exclusively as the Dreamcast OS (much like the original Dreamcast was supposed to use 3dfx chips, instead of PowerVR), but I think the execs at SOJ (Sega of Japsn) didn't like that idea, hence the SegaOS was made.
2. PlanetWeb - The web browser that shipped with every Dreamcast, and was available in magazines, was called PlanetWeb, and I believe the company that made it was also known as PlanetWeb. They had the "official" Dreamcast IP stack if you were using the SegaOS - Windows CE was not required for IP connectivity.
3. I can't remember the name of the third stack, but it was used mainly for broadband related titles. It was developed by a third party, and paid for by Sega of America and Sega of Europe, as an alternative to the PlanetWeb stack (because we wanted source code, and an optimized stack, and PlanetWeb didn't seem to care about that).
Note that Windows CE, last time I checked (well, while I was working at Sega anyway, and I don't think that they released a new toolkit since then) NEVER supported the broadband adapter, they supported the modem only.
-- Joe
Re:$199 Wal-Mart PC (Score:3, Informative)
I use the dreamcast as a dumb X terminal, it loads up, and i get X Windows and can browse the web, use irc chat or do email. It works great for that and it serves its point in my home network. Im sure its the same way with other peoples setup or even the little kiddie who knows nothing of computer architecture and programming and just wants to see how different another system running on a completly different CPU architecture is.
Re:not a winmodem... (Score:5, Informative)
Since another person has kindly derailed your WindowsCE argument, let me derail you on the hardware side.
The Dreamcast uses a something along the lines of a hardware-accelerated software modem. The Hitachi SH4 that the dreamcast uses has a couple of registers and, IIRC, a couple of instructions specifically for working with the modem so that you don't have to fuck around when you're trying to work with the hardware.
It's a software modem but not software in the sense that we're used to.
Re:How about modem to ethernet mod? (Score:1, Informative)
Last year, some of the smaller Japanese shops and import game stores still had surplus Japanese stock of BBAs lying about. Those had a resale value of only 90%-100% of retail price on auction sites, because collectors (A) knew about them and (B) didn't want them. Hackers, of course, didn't care, and bought them up at reasonable prices.
Four million? (Score:3, Informative)
And who is really going to run a *nix variant on them except for a few hardcore geeks?