DC cluster?

[Mental2k]

I was just wondering, if we had a bunch of DCs all with BBAs, would it be possible to set them up in a cluster to allow mega processing power? I know its not really of any great use to anyone, but could a prog be written that splits the data off to each individual DC for processing and then they all send it back to that DC, which then puts out to the tv? just wonderin, its'd be good, just to say it was done, if nothing else.

[quzar]

Yes. I dont know how its done with Naomis but they can do it. Theoretically DCs could do it even if NAOMIs couldnt do it on their own, but the fact that there is a way shows it can be done.

[Mental2k]

Now we'll get the emu's running at full speed ;D

[Eric]

it could be a possibility but people want to get emulation working fullspeed on a one system i dont think coders nor Dcemu want people to get fullspeed having 10 dreamcasts connected to each other to get emulation fullspeed although neat very expensive

[Mental2k]

I was being funny eric, dont take everything I say too literally!

[Eric]

lol i thought you were being serious i dont know man some people are kinda weird

[Chaotis]

Heh, I've been wondering and studying the exact same thing for some time now.

Instead of using the expensive adapters for the dc; has anyone been able to to connect a pci ethernet card to the parallel port instead? I've seen bitmaster's work but I'd assume it would be easier and faster to run just the pci.

I'm only taking elte classes in college right now so I don't know much about what ICs to use to do this and such, anyone else working on this sort of thing?

[semicolo]

There were just isa ethernet cards ever connected to the parallel port of the dc, the biggest trouble to connect pci stuff on it is that the dc port is only 16 bits wide (running a pci at 25Mhz is ok).
But it certainly can be done since the BBA contains a realtek 8139 which is a pci chip (maybe it doesn't use 32 bit transfers ? I'll check that)

Well in fact if you want to build a dc cluster, just connect'em together on their parallel interfaces (with some control logic of course).

[Chaotis]

I see what you mean, what does the dreamcast parallel port run at btw, mhz wise? I know I could pull out some hardware and test it myself but it's easier to ask if someone already knows. ^^;

I see how it would be much easier to connect them together in this way, it would seem much more useful to somehow connect this to a computer and have it manage data or something.

Perhaps build a hub that all the dreamcasts could connect to and then some way to connect it a single computer? Staying away from ethernet altogether.

Sorry if I sound too optimistic, I currently have no actual understanding of how processing can be shared between multiple devices when programming is concerned; the logic is about as far as I've gone.

[Cap'n 1time]

its cool, but its kinda pointless... unless you want some kind of clustered linux server.