important Dreamcast questions

gamefreak13

Member
alright, ive been working on a portable multi system and i cant seem to find the power requirements of the Dreamcast. seems pretty newbish to ask but i dont own one and have never even seen one in person. so if any one can help please tell me. also, id like to know if there are any hardware mods for the dreamcast i can make, like extra ram, a co-processor for the GPU and CPU or somehow make it play audio CDs and video DVDs. finally if you have any ideas one how to make the Dreamcast run a decent version of linux PLEASE tell me, id love to see an old game console run linux!! :D
if you want to see my multi systems progress, look under N64, it topic is called portable N64 since originally i was going to make a portable N64.
 
i have yet another question, this one could be a little tricky though, now, does the dreamcast boot from the game disk or does it have it's own OS, and if it does, what is that OS written in and how can i access it to edit it?
 
12v, 5v, and 3.3v at 3amps or so.

Dreamcast can run Linux. I don't know exactly how, but I'm sure you could find it easily using Google. It's not like Ubuntu or anything, it's a command line Linux, so don't expect anything fancy.

The Dreamcast can already play Audio Disks. You can add a VGA port, but that's about it for Hardware mods.

The Dreamcast has its own OS, and you cannot access it.
 
thanks, for the power requirements, and how do you know it command line, have you seen one running this version of linux? :confused:
 
sweetness!!! from what ive seen, installing Linux on any console ( PS2 and Dreamcast) is about as complicated as designing a manned rocket to the moon. you must have to patience of a saint!!!
 
OMG, Afro, from what you said earlier, this things a power hungry monster! it would be consuming a massive total of 46.5W!! good god, the batteries on my portable multi system are going to have to be huge and expensive!!
 
gamefreak13 said:
OMG, Afro, from what you said earlier, this things a power hungry monster! it would be consuming a massive total of 46.5W!! good god, the batteries on my portable multi system are going to have to be huge and expensive!!
thats nothing. i was gonna have to deal with 136W. and i have batteries that will do it too. but then i decided not to. 46W really isnt that much. with a 6 amp pack at 7.4v, you can get upwards of 2 hours on a DC. and i hope you are planning on having more like 10 or even 20amps worth of juice. ( i recommend several of these cells. though they do seem to be out of stock. hopefully they get more. those are awesome.)

as for the power management for this, i would highly recommend getting a picoPSU and some nice 14.8v Li-Poly's. much nicer than having separate power boards for every console. most of the consoles will work fine with the 12, 5, and 3.3v from a standard picoPSU. the 8.5v for the ps2 slim might be a pain, but otherwise, you'll be good. ;)

to the best of my knowledge, DCnux is just a CD. get the image, burn it, run it. that aint hard at all. course, i could be wrong.
 
thats not complex. those are mainly instructions for building the disc image. then you need to flash the kernal over to the DC to boot. im absolutely positive you can get the files prebuilt, so most of that would already be done. then you can just stick the disc in, and flash the kernel over (you'll need a coders cable). pretty simple.
 
THANK YOU!!! :D and now heres just about everything there is to know about the sega dreamcast in one place http://mc.pp.se/dc/ i have a word doc of it all that i complied through copying and pasting for about an hour and a half. dont know how to post it as a download, and since its a massive 58 pages, i don't know if im allowed to post something that long and huge.
 
i think you could pastebin it. or, if you where so inclined, you could get it up on the wiki. im not sure if that would help anyone though. the wiki aint read by anyone. nor is it maintained.
 
Back
Top