Possible Wifi on DC solution?

[MAXIMUSpowers]

Hi all. Now that there is an SD card adapter available for the DC I was wondering if software could be written to utilise a wifi SD card. If so this would be awesome if incorporated into multiplayer homebrew games or simply for browsing.

Heres what im talking about: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4307857&SRCCODE=GOOGLEBASE&cm_mmc_o=VRqCjC7BBTkwCjCECjCE

I think this is the method used for the GP2X.

[BlueCrab]

Would it be possible? Maybe?

Would it make much sense to do? Probably not.

When you factor in the cost of a SD Card adapter (if anyone ever actually produces them en-masse, which doesn't seem to be going anywhere), and the cost of a WiFi SD Card, it's going to cost as much, if not more than buying either a cheap DD-WRT-capable router (that you can turn into a Wireless Bridge), or even just buying a Wireless Bridge to start with.

It really wouldn't make economical sense to do it, and I don't know how gung-ho anyone would be about writing the drivers for it to start with (I know, I'm certainly not interested in doing it).

[MAXIMUSpowers]

Hi BlueCrab. Thankyou for your reply. What is DD-WRT router? I never realised there was another way to connect the DC to broadband other than the BBA adaptor?

[BlueCrab]

Hi BlueCrab. Thankyou for your reply. What is DD-WRT router? I never realised there was another way to connect the DC to broadband other than the BBA adaptor?That solution would also require a BBA. DD-WRT is an alternative firmware that runs on some types of routers enabling many features that the manufacturers don't normally enable in their firmware.

In all actuality, you're not missing anything when it comes to being able to connect the Dreamcast to the internet anyway at this point. About the only useful thing it can do online any more is play PSO, which would never work with a SD-WiFi solution anyway. There's about 0 homebrew (ok... there's actually like 2 homebrew programs that can do stuff online) that goes online, and even that would all have to be redone to handle any new hardware.

[Cast128dreams]

Blue crab do you know how many Dreamcast fans in nowadays wants to connect their Dreamcast on the net?

There are many!!!..BBA is really expensive and rare so making a product like this will boost dreamcast scene mails away.A lot of people will appriciate and i will be the first to pe order cause i always wanted to play pahntasy star online and quake 3 on my dreamcast..(rush rush rally have internet ranking also)...
Plus i always wanted my DC for backup when my PC is down.

But i dont know how much would cost such thing to produce.Well,its not a big deal and any hyper technology.In the market WIIFII receivers costs 15-30 eyro(it depends of the speeds)

i think that will be something "out of this world" if Dreamcast will have WIIFII.!!!!!!!

[BlueCrab]

You will not be able to use a SD-WiFi based solution in PSO/Quake 3. Period. End of Story.

We do not have the source code to PSO or Quake 3 (or the web browsers) so we'd have no way of modifying it to make something like that work. Its not going to happen.

The only things you'd be able to use something like this with would be homebrew that was designed to support it. Not only that, but there's all of about 2 or 3 homebrew programs that ever even supported any kind of networking anyway.

I'm speaking from a realist position here when I say that I don't see this being a very attractive option to anyone. You're going to have to write drivers for things and all kinds of other messy stuff. Even if we had a WiFi option in the development libraries, we'd end up only supporting one or two cards, if that. These types of things are extremely difficult to program for, and I somewhat doubt there's many DC Developers left who would do it for the sake of 2 or 3 homebrew programs. I know that I'm not planning on modifying KOS' whole network stack to do something like this since there'll probably be even less people who have a SD Adapter and a SD-WiFi card to use with it than there are people with BBAs (I'm the one who wrote the built-in network stack for KOS).

[Cast128dreams]

Hmmm sound hard and impossible...Ok i undersatnd.But if SD WIFI wont work on Phantasy star and quake 3 there is other sollution.

And the sollution that comes to my mind is modding the original BBA.BBA has cheap chips and technology and the arthtecture is simple.
Just imagine building a BBA with a shematic of WIFI receiver on it.

What do you think Blue crap?
Could that be possible?

[BlueCrab]

People have attempted to build a BBA clone before. While its true that the network interface hardware is fairly commonplace, the problem is the Sega-designed GAPS chip that interfaces the G2 bus to PCI as required by the network chip.

As far as I know, nobody has completely reversed how that works. Of course, that would only do wired connections anyway.

You can't change the hardware in any major way and expect it to work, so don't expect any sort of WiFi (it would be possible, yes -- but the work required basically means that nobody's going to do it).

Also, people doing any sort of hardware hacking on the Dreamcast have dwindled significantly, so I wouldn't expect anyone reversing GAPS completely to come up any time soon, if they haven't already.

Finally... p and b are nowhere near each other on the keyboard, nor does b look that much like p. I don't particularly appreciate what happens when you end my name in p instead of b.

[MAXIMUSpowers]

Ha ha "Blue Crap" sounds like it would be nasty. Drank too many WKDs?

[Cast128dreams]

Thaks for the fast answer..Ohh man when you dont know how it works it sounds pretty simple.Meaning that you know more of how the BBA works.I am thinking itlike a PCI slot of a PC.You got out the card and you put another.Browsing some Dreamcast Dev sites i have found(many years ago) that they can do several things with the Dreamcasts modem slot.For example..They had created their own Dreamcast broadband modem plus it has a USB on it(iam sure that you know the site iam talking about..it has chinese everywhere)

Iam 90% sure that this people could make a WIFI conection into BBA.Sure its difficult as you say i agree.....but i beleive inside me that these people can make it.(dreamcast's dev stuff)

Ovrall..sadly and worried about the dreamcast scene i dont expect evryone to make one no matter how COOL and Functional would be...



Omg sometimes it happens with just simple luck HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAH
man you had me going.. freaking funny!!sorry for the the p letter i was asleep..really(fwwwww i gues he will beleive me);)


Finally... p and b are nowhere near each other on the keyboard, nor does b look that much like p. I don't particularly appreciate what happens when you end my name in p instead of b.

[BlueCrab]

Thaks for the fast answer..Ohh man when you dont know how it works it sounds pretty simple.Meaning that you know more of how the BBA works.I am thinking itlike a PCI slot of a PC.You got out the card and you put another.Browsing some Dreamcast Dev sites i have found(many years ago) that they can do several things with the Dreamcasts modem slot.For example..They had created their own Dreamcast broadband modem plus it has a USB on it(iam sure that you know the site iam talking about..it has chinese everywhere)The finished ethernet adapter on the site that I think you're talking about is actually a clone of the HIT-0300 Lan Adapter, which is a completely different beast than the BBA. The Lan Adapter isn't useful for anything commercial except for the web browser that it came with. Its still useable for homebrew purposes, however. I've seen one attempt at cloning the BBA that I'm not sure how far it got in development (from the same guy who cloned the Lan Adapter). I'm reasonably sure that he never had a completely working clone, which is somewhat disappointing (even though I doubt many people would be able to build the device anyway).


Iam 90% sure that this people could make a WIFI conection into BBA.Sure its difficult as you say i agree.....but i beleive inside me that these people can make it.(dreamcast's dev stuff)As I said, possible, yes -- likely to happen, no. There's very few people left in the community that do much in the way of hardware hacking, and if anyone were to clone the BBA, they'd be cloning it exactly -- not trying to add functionality that would complicate the design. Cloning it exactly would be fairly straightforward if one could clone GAPS properly. Adding any sort of wireless functionality would not only mean cloning GAPS, but also cloning the Ethernet chipset and making it adapt to WiFi. Not an easy task. The interface would have to appear the same as the BBA on the software side, but talk with a radically different set of protocols on the hardware side. Its not an easy task at all, and something that I doubt anyone left in the community would even attempt (I somewhat doubt there's many (if any) people with the level of hardware knowledge to accomplish it).


Omg sometimes it happens with just simple luck HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAH
man you had me going.. freaking funny!!sorry for the the p letter i was asleep..really(fwwwww i gues he will beleive me);)It's happened before. On a story that got submitted to slashdot, no less.