Dreamcast Hard Drive

Man, for the expansion slot NOT being the way to go, that 50mb/s looks very tempting. But I suppose a Maple Bus extension would be easier to code.

A DC Maple Hard drive would be a whole new peripheral. I wonder, would such a device need its own firmware to identify itself on the Maple Bus ?

I was running Dreamcast Linux yesterday, which also accesses the maple bus....
Unfortunately, the DC-Linux project is inactive.

The NetBSD/Dreamcast group, however, is still active (and working on the next version.) Maybe they would have some ideas/input on the technical requirements of creating such a peripheral.

I think that what could be considered a VERY usefull Maple Bus device would be a maple bus NIC. It'd get decent speeds, and would out-perform a Serial NIC as I have heard others suggest.

All in all, a hard drive would be wonderful, but with a NIC, you can just stream from a PC as if it were a hard drive.

For a DC Maple Ethernet interface,
Maybe this XPORT can do the job:

http://www.gridconnect.com/xports.html

The XPORT features a serial/ethernet bridge, even a built-in webserver. Cool!

For WiFi, there is also a WIPORT:

http://www.gridconnect.com/wiports.html

Developing a new peripheral would require alot of talent from the DC Scene.
Perhaps a cooperative partnership between the DC Scene's hardware-experts, software-experts and Marketing-experts.

This would be very hard but so cool.
Hard drive will be amzing but just thing of an upgrading system that would clip under.Dreamcast has four small clips under it.
Or just thing of a DVD rom.
Everything would be easier for porting because of the memory space.
Then a new homebrew world will rise for the DC.

This is starting to sound like a connectivity peripheral.
I think anything is possible when there is enough talent, will, and economic incentive.

I ask the DC Community:

*How much market demand for a new Dreamcast connectivity peripheral ?

----Connect the old dinosaur Dreamcast to their home-network/internet
--------For fun, or nostalgia
------------Play MP3s off the net
-----------------Simplify homebrew; Execute games from network-attached drives (no disc-burning required.)

*Which connectivity format desired (Ethernet/WiFi/Bluetooth/USB/Ultrawideband) ?

----WIFI will remain the most ubiquitous wireless-personal-networking standard for 2005/2006.
-------However, by 2007, *Ultrawideband* will start to replace Wifi in many types of home applications.
------------Currently, Ethernet chips are the cheapest, and most cost-effective.

Finally,

*Can a new DC Connectivity Peripheral be marketed economically and profitably ?

--Price for Chips
----Fabrication Costs
-------Distribution Costs
----------Profitable ? Or Money Pit ?

The Xport is interessant, but il couldn't be used for dremcast, becaus there's no maple xport (and there certainly won't be any) and the serial rate is too different from the dremcast's to be really effective (one could maybe have rates around 300kbps working but not more)

no, the serial port on the DC has speeds up to 1.5mb/s. Those are the maximum speeds that have been achieved via the serial-to-USB coders cable. And 1.5mb/s is PLENTY of speed, even for homebrew online games.

And I was just thinking. The maple bus, is it 2mb/s per PORT? or 2mb/s TOTAL over the whole port system? If its over the whole port system, then any kind of bandwidth hungry device would render then entire controller/keyboard/vmu/mouse system immaculate, since you would have no bandwidth left for standard Dreamcast periphrials. Once again, a NIC would be far more feasable, and far more usefull than a hard drive.

Think about it, homebrew online, streaming storage/media, coding, and interconnectivity versus just streaming storage/media.

I think the Dreamcast Serial interace uses 3.3v signals, right?
Those signals must be elevated to 12v to work with conventional serial devices.

I see that Marcus Comstedt's Serial Adaptor does the voltage-elevation needed:

http://mc.pp.se/dc/serifc.html

The resultant 12v signals should be acceptable to the XPort:

http://www.gridconnect.com/xports.html

Turns out the voltage elevation is not necessary

According to the XPort's datasheet,

http://site.gridconnect.com/docs/PDF/xport.pdf

The XPort accepts 3.3V signals.

So the Dreamcast's native 3.3v serial IO signals should be fine.