[Logicdustbin] sent in his iCast project. He gutted a blue iMac and inserted a DreamCast and an LCD. It looks very nice. His ports on the front seem almost factory installed. You can follow his build on the cgcc forums.
Looks slick (until you have to turn it upside down to get to the CD tray)
also, why a dreamcast? arguably one of the worst consoles ever (and I say that owning one)
The exterior of the build looks nice and clean, I’ll give it that.
Posted at 2:08 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by Wolf
Dreamcast was ahead of its time. too far ahead.
Posted at 2:26 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by u
@Wolf
you don’t know what you’re talking about. The dreamcast was awesome!
Posted at 2:30 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by jaded124
Press the damn start button!!
Posted at 2:35 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by BigD145
Dreamcast was amazing. It was indeed way ahead of it’s time.
Dreamcast has a fairly large modding community so it seems a perfect fit if you ask me. (Plus they are dirt cheap =D)
Posted at 2:50 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by Mike D
The Dreamcast was way ahead of it’s time… it’s only downfall was the fact that it wasn’t marketed as well as the PS2 and thus lost out on the marketshare it deserved.
I still have mine hooked up in home theater and it still gets played regularly (actually it gets way more action than my PS3 or my Wii) lots of great games with local multi-player, Typing of the Dead is always a party favorite.
Posted at 3:04 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by twistedsymphony
I know of only 2 consoles with OEM VGA support, and the Xbox360 was released long after the Dreamcast.
It is the best console to play Vigilante 8 on, especially if you put a switch on the VGA cord (sadly its initialization doesn’t recognize the cable, but it works perfectly if you switch it off while the ini. loads.)
The Dreamcast had graphics so far ahead of its time, it is a shame that a lot of the games didn’t take full advantage of the filtering/anti-aliasing options.
I would just like to point out that the controllers sucked donkey ass, painful and awkward to use with non-existant ergonomics and poor build quality.
If somebody knows any links to a homebrew PSX pad adapter I would like to make one ($20 apiece for the commercial models is a joke.)
Posted at 3:49 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by nubie
@Wolf – You dont have a clue, no offense, the DC is a beast for many reasons.It was the first console platform that I could mess with, before that, there was no hackability or re-purposing of your game console. Below are some reasons to back up my opinion
1. Microsoft’s 1st console venture, call it the seed for the xbox–>x360
2. It could play backups of games or audio CD’s
3. Planet Web Internet on your TV?? Better w/ DC keyboard tho, or DIY hacked USB/PS2 adapter
4.Best 2d fighter selection EVER!
5. Emulators, first time not on the PC for me, and inherently using a controller not a keyboard,I never had a usb gamepad when I was young.
6. Plays VCD’s = No more watching movies on PC
Im probably forgetting a lot of reasons… but yeah DC
Posted at 4:04 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by Reezy
This is not about which consoles are better, I think I have everything from the 2600 to the latest 3. I picked the Dreamcast because I was in the middle of doing an internal VGA mod for one of my systems when the idea came to slap a LCD monitor in one of my iMac G3’s- installing the DC just felt natural.
@ spacecoyote
I posted a video response, it is not the best way, but it works.
@bigd145
am I too slow for you? here ya go, I fixed it for you:
http://james.nerdiphythesoul.com/bennyhillifier/speedup.php?id=nrwmsqp-qpg
(at least I didn’t add annoying music to the video)
@nubie
I *think* the PS2 did VGA, if you had a modchip.
oh, and some one posted this:
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=666828&st=0
I think I might give this a try for the DC.
Posted at 4:25 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by Logicdustbin
I’ll forgive your ignorance for the time being, wolf. The dreamcast kicked ass in ‘99 and it still does today.
Posted at 4:26 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by spacecoyote
dreamcast was one (if not first) console that could run linux, which in my book makes it pretty legendary. Also shenmue was at its time one of the most eyeball water-ingly awesome games.
Admittedly the controllers probably left me mildly crippled for life.
Anyways, good hack, I’m going to have to get my dreamcast out the closet.
Posted at 4:26 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by }{itch
I did this 5 years ago with an xbox, looked identical.
Posted at 6:06 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by Jeff
That would really be rad if it was a XBOX 360, I think I will have to mod one with an all in one 360!
Thanks for the idea!
Posted at 6:43 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by SheepsBlood
That is too cool. Good choice with the dreamcast in my opinion. If it were anything else i dont even think i would bother commenting.
Posted at 7:33 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by theTick197
Wow, I wouldn’t have thought I’d catch so much flak for bashing the dc, but I stand by what I said.
Alot of you have mentioned that the dc had graphics ahead of its time, fair enough. Or that it supported vga, also reasonable. But those aren’t the sorts of things that really make a console. As far as hackability, it was ahead of the generation-1 consoles, but was similar to the ps2, and paled in comparison to to the xbox1, which boasted an easily upgradable 8gb HDD, built-in ethernet, excellent graphics hardware, an easy to replace operating system, and an unrivaled quantity of useful home brew software (Evox XBMC dvd2xbox HCE emulators for everything up to playstation ect.)
The dc’s biggest failing though was it’s games. it was supperior in a few niche genra’s like light-gun games, but but for every good dreamcast game available there are at least 5 for the xbox and n64 and maybe as many as 15 for the ps2 & ps1.
Don’t get me wrong, the dc console itself isn’t bad at all, but sega really doomed it my releasing it late first generation, late enough to have to compete with the second gen consoles, yet early enough to be technically inferior to them. A consoles value is sort of like a feedback loop, the dc’s comparatively weak player base resulted in a proportionally weak game line up, which further dissuaded gamers and so on…
Posted at 7:46 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by Wolf
Posted at 7:48 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by Wolf
I recognize that guy from neo-geo.com
What a cool mod.
Posted at 8:30 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by DanAdamKOF
Wrong again, The DC requires NO modification to boot custom software, and is infinitely easier to program for than the PS2. The only reason the xbox has more useful software is because it is more powerful, no shit your not going to see XBMC on the dreamcast. It does have some modification advantages like you said because MS basically sold a cheap PC with a custom OS, the games where fantastic though, there where some crappy ones but there where some that to this day are considered some of the best of their genres. The reason for less games is the console wasn’t out as long. There are TONS of games on the PS1 and PS2 because they where out way longer, and going by your logic I could say Yeah the PS1/PS2 was awesome but for every good game there where about 50+ shitty ones because they where pumping out/licensing like 10+ games a week. There is no way most of them are going to be that good. Again your wrong on your last points, the console didn’t come out “late first generation” (what are you like 15 judging by that statement because that would be FIFTH generation by my count) It came out EARLY for the next generation to compete with the PS2. The processing power of the DC and PS2 have also been compared time and time again with each of them coming ahead in different tests making them very comparable. The DC could for sure keep up, so no one was technically inferior. Everyone was outperformed by the Xbox though. As for your theory on why the Dreamcast failed, wrong AGAIN, This is definitely debatable but I can tell your for sure that your answer is entirely wrong, Most people agree that it was because the PS2 came out and was so huge, everyone was distracted from the Dreamcast long enough to kill it. Sony launched right away with some killer apps/big franchise titles, Sega already had theirs out so they had nothing to fight back with until it was too late. They had also failed miserably with the Sega Saturn (Have you ever even heard of it? THAT is what was meant to compete with the PS1/N64) so they weren’t in a very good situation. Although even the Saturn is a very cool console, they where just a little late to the 3D party.
Posted at 8:45 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by shibathedog
I guess I should have added that the Xbox is even easier to program for than the Dreamcast. It’s default OS is basically Windows 2000.
Posted at 8:46 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by shibathedog
I think it would be cool to do this with a saturn too so i could play burning rangers and panzer dragoon zwei. I love those games!
Posted at 8:57 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by theTick197
oh yah and to the comment directly above mine dont forget that its the kernel your thinking of for the xbox not the os and the dc has got windows ce on it to develop for
Posted at 9:01 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by theTick197
@wolf
yeah, we get it, you love xbox.
1. easily upgradeable 8GB hard drive
seriously? “easily upgradeable”? i’ve done it on two machines, and there’s two routes to do that. one is you modchip the system [go out and buy things, solder/mess with pogopins, unlock/relock, and reformat with some acquired OS disc], or two, boot the game console, let the motherboard ATA unlock the hard drive, hotswap the drive out while leaving power plugged in, follow argument 3, write the new ATA unlock key to the hard drive, write new key to EEPROM, then switch drives with new one [preformatted for new xbox, and also ATA locked]
not easy.
2. the nvidia geforce “2.5″ has nothing on nec’s powervr chipset. no way. that chipset pounds the heck out of what’s in the xbox. the only thing that makes it look bad…are the developers. i’m sure you’ve seen some horrendous titles on the xbox also. and i’m sure that as time went on, it improved. same with every console. as they get familiar with the hardware, tricks and improvements climb dramatically. too bad the dreamcast didn’t last that long. shining gems are skies of arcadia, sonic adventure 2, quake 3 arena, half life [unreleased gold], shenmue 2, tokyo xtreme racer 2, along with others.
3. easy to replace operating system?
hmm, to do something different that the manufacturer didn’t intend, i could:
a: swap a disc with another one, or…
b: warm boot my machine, dismantle down to pieces, remove the ribbon cable from my hard drive while still on [to bypass ATA unlock...it did boot to the dashboard, right?], hook up to a desktop that has already completed BIOS disk scan BUT hasn’t booted an OS yet, connect ground potential between desktop and xbox, hook up hard drive to desktop, boot a linux live disc that was built with XBOX extensions [to understand FATX and the partitioning layout], wipe out the existing microsoft dashboard, replace it with whatever from whatever storage you have, undo all steps, and pray…or…
c: hunt down an exploit disc, have a friend that made a exploit memory card for you to upload to your xbox’s hard drive, boot the game, launch the exploit, and have that overwrite your dashboard minimally, so you can FTP the rest of the modifications over.
note that options B and C completely void warranty. whereas A [the dreamcast], is as simple as switching a disc.
“easy to replace”? please, be real. you’re not talking to fanboys, you’re talking to hackaday.
dreamcast is a great embedded system. xbox is a great small footprint pc. they both have their uses. when the xbox didn’t exist, dreamcast had it nailed, pretty much.
it only figures that something with over twice the processing speed [733mhz celeron vs. 200mhz hitachi superh], quadruple the ram [64mb vs. 16mb], and a too high multiple of storage [8GB vs. 128KB!], would have an advantage.
you wanna compare, do apples and apples, alright?
Posted at 9:04 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by david comeau
btw:
dreamcast: squid proxy/firewall/ssh gateway [omg, 30 watts?]
xbox: stepmania arcade machine
–smile– i do both. they both have strengths.
Posted at 9:13 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by david comeau
@shibathedog
According to wikipedia your right, about the generations, I guess I’ve just heard other’s refer to them as 1,2,&3. As for the xbox’s hardware, as I said, the dreamcast is only inferior because it’s older, BUT IT’S STILL INFERIOR, they cost about the same these days, but the xbox is more capable in modding terms, period. Btw, what do you mean “not out as long”? the dc came out before any of the 6th generation consoles. Did you mean “took less time to die”?
As for the disparity in games, obviously we can’t argue objectively about their average quality, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve provided no reason for the dc’s games to be above average that wouldn’t be invalidated by the consoles differences in popularity.
To be fair, you are right about the the ps2 stealing the spotlight from the dreamcast with it’s brand association. I don’t think that was the only factor in the dc demise, but that was certainly a large part.
@david comeau
First of all, despite you’re verbosity, I fail to see how loading a gamesave and copying some files via ftp is so daunting (this is had, remember)? Also, I don’t see how having a prefrence for one system or another makes me a fanboy, right now I have all the major consoles from the last three generations, and have most of the major games for each of them. The consoles each have their strengths and weaknesses, but between myself and 4 roommates, the dreamcast is the only one that doesn’t get played.
Argh… arguing with an entire comment thread is tiring. Goodnight guys.
Posted at 1:36 am on Feb 27th, 2009 by Wolf
Guys, the xbox came out 3 years after the Dreamcast, so you can’t really compare them.
The coolest thing about the DC in my opinion is that it’s easy to write homebrew code. Grab a coders cable (serial) or the ethernet/lan cable (hard to find), download KOS and you have a fully working GCC environment with libraries for hardware access and things like SDL for easy porting.
Posted at 2:09 am on Feb 27th, 2009 by Paul
Wolf says dreamcast “paled in comparison to to the xbox1″.
Posted at 5:30 am on Feb 27th, 2009 by Mark
@wolf
simple statement:
get a hacked save to a unhacked machine. with no machine hacking. [normally requires another hacked machine]
have fun.
Posted at 5:52 am on Feb 27th, 2009 by david comeau
Oh come on you guys, it isn’t that hard to hack the xbox, I just bought a memory card and soldered a USB cable onto the end, then use Action Replay software to load up a tainted Splinter Cell save, and you are running a launcher.
Then follow a simple tutorial to back up your current config, burn it to a CD with bootable Linux and format the new hard drive on a PC. Swap disks and you are done.
@Sheepsblood:
If you are going to do an xbox360 would you use two Apples to make a widescreen (aka FPD1775w) version? The fpd1775w is an actual 1280×720 pixels, so the quality is amazing (there is an eMachines model without DVI and HDCP, only VGA, but it costs about the same.)
Posted at 7:39 am on Feb 27th, 2009 by nubie
The best thing about the dreamcast was the ease of piracy and getting the games for it.
I have 2 DC’s in the house that i’d love to get linux up and running on, but the lack of ethernet adapter built in puts me off. Why is the broadband adapter so damn expensive for the DC?
Posted at 7:55 am on Feb 27th, 2009 by DJ_Q
Dude, my VMU is more hackable than your xbox.
Posted at 10:28 am on Feb 27th, 2009 by spacecoyote
I think you guys are missing a major point.. being 2 years….
Dreamcast came first 9/9/99
Xbox came LATER 9/15/01
I dont think any1 can argue about the Xbox’s hackability. I mean XBMC is pretty much the greatest thing ever (nothing can compare to its functions for the price u can get 1 for) and I use it every day. I also own a Popcorn Hour NMT I now use for all my HD media…
Alas the overpriced under-availability of limited accessories is kicking us in the pants (yet again). The Component Cable with Optical Audio for XBOX1 is the same way….
I was 15 when the DC dropped, and 17 when the xbox dropped, those 2 years were vital upbringing AFAIC…
Posted at 1:19 pm on Feb 27th, 2009 by Reezy
To those whom bring up xbox’s superior “hackability,” for the most part all the emulators and programs, even the famed XBMC uses Microsoft’s SDK for the Xbox, unlike the dreamcast. Even the hacked gamesave to softmod the xbox uses it. The Dreamcast’s emulators were from the ground up homebrew AFAIK.
Given the tools that they had the dreamcast homebrew community created some amazing homebrew way before the Xbox. I was using programs like GypPlay and a Divx player on my dreamcast to watch movies way before I managed to mod my Xbox, and use XBMC.
The dreamcast community was the first homebrew community that I joined, and I joined it as it was flourishing. There is respect due for the dreamcast that people rarely give in my opinion.
Posted at 7:56 am on Feb 28th, 2009 by bobnikelson
Just look @ this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5chJoEh0X6c
With out DC we would not have Xbox.
Both good systems and deserve a spot on any gamers shelf. But FU*@ DC had the most innovative games and hard ware and VMU Motion reactive Fishing rod come on cool shit and way the fuck ahead of anything, we would not have a lot of the stuff we have now if Sega did not Drop the Dreamcast and in my opinion DC IS STILL THINKING :) and will never stop :.
Posted at 12:21 pm on Mar 2nd, 2009 by Sureshot
The only reason why the DC lost out and the 360 won was because Sega knew they couldn’t compete with M$, so they bailed and concentrated on games only.
Posted at 5:03 pm on Mar 2nd, 2009 by KTrimbach
This is pretty neat, though if you go to http://www.BenHeck.com, you will find a ton of console hacks. Should have a front-loading disc (look at the Dreamcast Tablet).
Sorry, I wanted to weigh in on something. The Dreamcast rocks your fucking face. Wolf, you rock absolutely fucking nothing. You suck at video games can’t spell (“genra’s”? Are you fucking KIDDING me?). I hate you.
Posted at 10:17 pm on Sep 5th, 2009 by Z.Z. Badnusty
Err… You’re arguing with someone who does not feel that preferring one console over all the others and preaching about how superior it is would be defined as a fanboy. That’s… pretty much exactly what it means though. One of the other issues that no one else pointed out here (from a programmer’s perspective) was that the Dreamcast was too easy to pirate. If I could pay my licensing fee and code/release on the PS2 or the DC, I’d go with the PS2 because it was much more likely to be sold. If say 1000 people played my game on the PS2 and 1000 played it on the DC, I’d sell 990 PS2 copies (minor piracy) and maybe 40 DC copies if I was lucky as hell. Had a couple friends who DID work for game developers (not naming ‘em for privacy) and that was the general opinion of ALL their programmers and company heads at the time – it was so common for everyone to simply pirate the games instead of buying a copy that the DC wasn’t economical. Yes, it was more powerful in some ways, but money talks.
As a side note, you left out a huge set of categories. 2D fighting
games. DC really won on that one.
Shoot-em-up vertical games. Again, DC really had a nice huge library.
And best of all… RPGs. The PS2 did have a good library too, but there were so many beautifully done ones that the Dreamcast was THE console for it’s generation if you really loved RPGs. Note the development dates on the 2 as well, while both the PS2 and Dreamcast were out, the DC by far had a huge lead. Once it was ruled down to just the Xbox and PS2, the PS2 took over since there really wasn’t any alternative for programmers – again, target audience, what % of them own a system, what % are likely to buy the game. That makes the decision.
Sadly, since then it’s been difficult to find a good RPG system.
Wii? Xbox360? PS3? Where are all the RPGs in the US? I want my good ol’ turn based ones! (Granted, there are a few, like Oblivion for example, but it’s not console-specific, and it’s sort of… restricted. No turn-based strategy driven battles. That aside I love the game, but I still want a nice old-school Final Fantasy/Xenogears/Dragon’s Quest/Chrono Trigger/etc type game every now and then.)
Posted at 11:14 am on Sep 13th, 2009 by ArtemisKitty
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How do you change the disc?
Posted at 1:17 pm on Feb 26th, 2009 by spacecoyote