Homebrew Broadband Adapter?

[segafreak2]

Hi

Wanting to connect my dreamcast to our network at home I went on ebay to gawp at the astronomical price of bbas these days. Even more (http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=dreamcast+broadband&_sacat=0&_odkw=bba&_osacat=0&_trksid=p3286.c0.m270.l1313) than the £50-100 they used to fetch. I then did a little research and looked at how much ethernet cards with the same chipset were going for (http://shop.ebay.co.uk/?_from=R40&_trksid=p3907.m570.l1313&_nkw=Realtek+8139&_sacat=See-All-Categories), and it's peanuts! £2-3 only. I then looked to see if anyone had tried to make a home-made bba before, and I came across this (http://f17.aaa.livedoor.jp/~takotako/g2bus.php) (translation (http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://f17.aaa.livedoor.jp/~takotako/g2bus.php&ei=-4ObTJ3eOpbKjAeX_8jbCQ&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CB0Q7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Ddreamcast%2Bg2%26hl%3Den%26client%3Do pera%26hs%3DEdp%26rls%3Den%26prmd%3Ds)) little japanese website. Now this all looks pretty complicated to simple folk like me, so I was wondering if anyone has actually tried this before and had any successes?

From that japanese website it looks horrifically complicated, but surely it's as simple as mounting a pci card on a g2 bus? Or do they run at different speeds etc.?

Thanks for all help,
SF2

[BlueCrab]

The BBA used a glue chip known as the GAPS PCI Bridge to connect the PCI-based chipset of the BBA to the G2 Bus. In order to make a functional clone, you'd have to be able to clone GAPS and make everything work exactly the same (especially if you wanted compatibility with the few commercial games that used the BBA). Not for the faint of heart. Its certainly not as easy as making a G2->PCI adapter of some sort with some wire and a few 74-series chips (like ISA is).

If you're just looking for something to use with homebrew stuff, I believe its easier to clone the Lan Adapter (although, probably harder to find the parts).