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Upgrading the Memory on a DreamCast? 43

Posted by Cliff from the reviving-old-hardware dept.
dknight asks: "Ok, a friend of mine recently has his computer die on him. Rather than go out and buy a computer, we thought we'd try converting his DreamCast to fit the bill. We've got the keyboard and mouse, and now have Linux running on it successfully(we're working on getting the network adapter). The problem we're running into, however, is that it's REALLY painfully slow. I'm figuring this is due to the meager 16 Megs of RAM it comes with. My question is: Is it possible to upgrade the RAM on a DreamCast? Has anyone else attempted this feat?" I highly doubt this is possible, but if this can be done, this might breathe new life into those unused DC consoles that are lying around.
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Upgrading the Memory on a DreamCast? More

Upgrading the Memory on a DreamCast?

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  • Not the memory... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Howie ( 4244 ) <howie@ t h i n gy.com> on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @10:15AM (#2803495) Homepage Journal
    I'm pretty sure that the DC linux can't swap (no read/write media). So if you haven't got a network connection, and it's not panicking as it runs out of memory, then memory isn't the problem. The SH4 in the DC is not that fast by PC standards.

    • Re:huh (Score:2)

      by CMiYC ( 6473 )
      Who said anything about it panicing? Its slow, not dieing.

      • Re:huh (Score:2)

        by Howie ( 4244 )
        My point exactly. It can't swap (no HDD, R/O root and no network), so when it hits the end of memory it will panic. Therefore, if it isn't panicking, then it isn't a memory constraint that is making it's slow.

        The reason adding memory makes a PC faster is that it reduces swapping, unless is it is actually faster RAM (CAS2 etc). This thing can't swap, so that line of reasoning is pointless.

        • Re:huh (Score:2)

          by CMiYC ( 6473 )
          Okay, I see your point. If the system had more memory though, then the file system would be less dependant on using the GD-ROM drive. Almost nothing can be cached, causing most of the data having to be read back into memory at some point. If he NFS mounts the filesystem and could add a bit more RAM, it would significantly speed things up. However, just mounting the filesystem by NFS, he is still going to run into the same problem.

  • Sometimes.. (Score:1, Funny)

    by fuerstma ( 15683 )
    Sometimes you Linux people are like the bongheads... just like Dennis Leary was saying... As soon as you make your first bong, the bongheads try to make freakin bongs out of everything..

    I have asked my fair share of mundane "Wouldn't think be cool" questions to Ask Slashdot, and I am additionally the cheapest man on the planet, but even I wouldn't try to pass a DC off to someone that actually once had a working PC.. I mean c'mon. I go to compgeeks.com and see awesome PII level machines for like $99.. and wonder what the hell anyone in the world is doing with something less than this (yes, even if you are NOT in the US.. pay the damn shipping).

    Going along with my cheap, tight assed nature, I make use of all of my old PC's, and even with all my niche crap that I do, I still have got P200-class machines that I just can no long use... out of space, out of time.. its just not worth the effort...
    • I love this analogy. Love it, love it, love it. Can I steal it? Is it an open source quote? :) GPL'ed even?

      I can't wait to see the first person clam they made a production SQL server from their Dreamcast, PS2, or watch. From there its just a short step to "We replaced all our Ultra Enterprise 4500, 5500's with Dreamcasts in a Beowulf cluster to serve our Production financial database at [insert large financial corp here]."
    • Is whether you can make a bong out of a Linux Box. Or is it can you run Linux on a bong? Help! I'm confused!! ;-P
      • Is whether you can make a bong out of a Linux Box. Or is it can you run Linux on a bong? Help! I'm confused!! ;-P

        Not with linux, but we're taking the NetBSD/Toaster port and converting it to bong. So far, we've been able to get it to boot, but the smoke gets to us, and we get "confused",
        just like you.
        NetBSD, It'll run on anything!
    • A bong made out of a Linux computer! What a great idea! We can make it net baised, for no real reason than that its cool!

      O, wait, Microsoft is already on pot...I guess I'm probably going to get sued for copyright infringment...

      --theKiyote
    • HAHAHA. Oh god. Thanks, I needed that. That's why I stick to joints. ;)

      Actually, it's much like another quote I know that addresses the same issue:

      If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

      I agree with you man .. why not ship the guy your 5$ casio watch with calender ... surely a small enough kernel and a well-responded to "Ask Slashdot" will result in a number crunching powerhouse in no time flat, right? ;)

  • Dreamcast != PC (Score:5, Insightful)

    by digitalmuse ( 147154 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @11:36AM (#2803930)
    OK, while I'm all for bizarre uses of neat hardware with geek-appeal, you may well be doing your friend a disservice by trying to move him from a PC to a Dreamcast. The first issue I see here is connectivity; you've gotta have it or you're better off just locking him in a closet somewhere with a flashight and a pad of paper.
    Having watched the traffic on the dreamcast-linux mailling list devolve into people spouting noise about how someone should just auto-magically develop firmware and drivers for the WinModem and everyone begging for a BBA for less than $150, I have to say that things are lagging. Without a real option for stand-alone connectivity on the dreamcast, you're screwed. Play rogue all you want, but when your friend is done typing his papers in vi he's going to be SOL when he tries to get the info off the dreamcast.
    As it stands, the going rate on BBA's is $120-150 (pre-shipping, pre-tax, pre-hey-we're-all-out-of-em) which could easily replace the dead PC that has got you into this mess.
    Even if you find a hidden cache of BBAs at an affordable price, you still are going to have him dependant on NFS mounts and other machines for functionality with the Dreamcast.
    My mucking about with dreamcast as a thin-client/mp3-player/SNES-emulator is just that... mucking about. I do not delude myself that I can make it a functioning day-to-day desktop system, and I suggest you re-evaluate your friend's needs with a more cynical eye. I wish you the best of luck in this, and would love to hear how you proceed with said endevour, but you may well find that $250 bucks later the PC is just the best option.
    Keep us posted

    • Re:Dreamcast != PC (Score:2, Informative)

      by dknight ( 202308 )
      The thing is, he's using his roommate's computer for all that stuff. He doesnt need the dreamcast to be his PC, he's still covered as far as all that is concerned. We're doing this for fun. We just want to see how far we can make it go(we've got a lot of free time, and are very bored). As far as the BBA goes, we're actually planning on making one ourselves. The majority of the people on my hall are CompSci or Engineering Majors, so we're pretty confident we can pull it off. They have 2 dreamcasts in their room, so they're not too concerned about destroying one of them, either. The linux image on the CD only takes up about 250 meg, so we're gonna try to create our own CD with a lot of the basic apps we want on it, to save us from most of the NFS and other issues. Really, we would be more than happy to have a dreamcast setup to be on the network, running X-Windows with a decent web browser, and Gaim running on it. The RAM upgrade, really, would mainly be in hopes of decreasing boot and application loading time. This is for fun guys, we know it's not gonna be a REAL pc replacement(though there have been people talking about making a solid-state drive for it...). I'm really just interested in what all has been done, and how much is possible to do with it.
      • I think it would be really cool if you could get more RAM into the DC, but I think you will see pretty diminished returns. If you only run an X server and run X apps from a machine across the room, those apps are using RAM from their host machines, not the X terminal's RAM. Unless you've set up a swap file on an NFS mount, swapping isn't much of a problem. Memory buffering and caching suffers, but once the X server is loaded and running, that shouldn't be much of a problem. The problem is a 200MHz processor, which I would imagine current versions of gcc for SH4 make things comparable to a Pentium 200 or slightly faster.
        • Ive been running linux on a 200mHz machine for simple stuff for years! Its slow, but I dont see it doing much. The thing is, I dont see my Dreamcast doing much either, so go for it. You can make a decent computer for running simple stuff, like basic X server and the like. It might be cool to see it run stuff remotely off of the network, though.

          --theKiyote
    • Ok if your making your own BBA why not add a hard drive to the sucker too, there was a zip drive that was slated to comeout for the thing, but it got axed when sega decided to axe the DC itself, the Zip drive was supposed to fit under the unit where there is some sort of attachment slots. dunno if anyone thought of this but hey try it.
  • What unused DC? Mine is always on - Soul Caliber 2, Marvel vs. SNK, Marvel vs. Capcom. DC is the best 1 on 1 fighting platform ever!

  • my God... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Wakko Warner ( 324 )
    ... just when you think Ask Slashdot can't get any more inane, someone raises the bar.

    Kudos to you, sir!

    - A.P.

  • I found the problem... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mosch ( 204 )
    The problem is that you're trying to use a DreamCast as a PC replacement, and it's not one. The fact that it boots NetBSD doesn't change this, my toaster boots NetBSD and it's not a PC either. Cheap PCs [pricewatch.com] are readily available from many many vendors.

  • Becuase, as other posters have mentioned, a BBA is going to set you back 150-200, the modem doesn't work with Unix, the cpu isn't a speed demon for desktop use, and if you try to start hacking the DC you'd need $$ for parts/tools/replacement DCs when you bork them experimenting.

    Just as an example: www.used-pcs.com [used-pcs.com] They're a shop in Austin, TX (actually a little suburb) that the people in the local freenix community have had nice things to say about.

    Here's one solution that'd run a free unix great, and win9x pretty well: DELL OPTIPLEX GXPRO #BWRZK $129 PPro 200 6.4G 64M, DESKTOP, 1.44FD, IDE CD-ROM, USB, NIC, Sound Add on another $59 for a 15" moniter and you're set (if he's got broadband, add another $29 for a 56k modem if not). [Every now and again they even get dual cpu ppro machines in for about the same cost, for that extra geek factor...]

    Or check the classified adverts in your local paper. You should be able to pick up a decent system (web surfing, email, text processing and the like) for <$300. If there are any state agencies or universities near where you live, try asking if they have a surplus department. You can find the craziest things that way (like a friend of mine that got a mint condition 20" xterminal for $10).

    All this assumes that his old machine is completely dead. Is it just one part that failed? If you can replace the dead parts for <=150 you're probably ahead of anything you could do with the dreamcast...

    • a BBA is going to set you back 150-200,

      actually, in the last few days, Dan Potter (developer of KOS) has figured out enough of the HIT-300 Ethernet Adaptor (different incompatible Sega ethernet - don't know why) to get dc-load running on it. Presumably that means that either of NetBSD or Linux will have that same support soon, if they don't already.

      A HIT-300 is nearer $100 to buy, and seem a bit more available from people like LikSang.

      [bleh - a month after I paid my $150 for a BBA :) ]
    • If you have a spare box running off a broadband connection, connecting the DC's modem to it is fairly simple. I have an extra IP for my DSL connection (*), so the setup was actually trivial. Pop in a modem, start up pppd on my Linux box, plug the phone cord from the DC into it.

      (* Without an extra IP, things get more difficult. You'd have to do IP Masquerading, with special accomodations for some UDP DC stuff, which plenty of people have done, but I thankfully was able to avoid altogether.)

      The only trick is manually HUP'ing pppd to answer the phone when I start a blind-dial on the Dreamcast, and some games (Ooga Booga?) don't give you the option of dialing without a tone, but I can surely browse the web, have downloaded some VMU files, and played Worms World Party.

      A search for "Dreamcast Linux ppd" should bring up a HOWTO.
  • Was every component taken out in a massive lightning strike?

    Using the DC is an interesting idea, but why not just fix his current PC rather than trying to make an orange into an apple?

  • yes, his PC is _DEAD_ (Score:2, Informative)

    by dknight ( 202308 )
    Ok, just to clarify for all of you:
    his PC is _DEAD_ not just one or two components, but basically all of them. The few parts that can be salvaged, quite honestly, arent worth it. We have everything we need as far as tools, parts, etc.. on hand, free. Nothing we do to this system is gonna cost us. That's part of the beauty of it, we're just at this for kicks, to see how much we can do to it. I mean, if we really wanted, we could probably upgrade the processor too, it wouldn't be reasonable to do it, but we probably could. We're on a college campus with an OC-3, and network drops in every room, so we've got net access, so we dont need to worry about the whole modem thing. I'm not asking you guys to understand why I want to do this, and I certainly dont expect you guys to think I'm sane for it, I just want to know what all has been done, what can be done, and what is within reason to attempt to do, if you guys know more than I, which I would assume most of you do. Thanks guys.
    • One question: Can it run mpeg123 from a console and stream MP3's from my http server via the add-on network adaptor, or is it too slow for even that?

      If so, I'm there! I've been looking for a nice, easy, no-soldering required, streaming MP3 player in my living room... This might just fit the bill!

    • I assume you already looked here [netbsd.org]?

      It's just the first thing that came up from Google.

      That said, IMHO, a DC that isn't being used to play Virtua Tennis is a DC that's being sorely mistreated - unless it's an extra DC of course :-)

  • Answer the ASKED question (Score:4, Insightful)

    by doctrbl ( 306815 ) on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @01:47PM (#2804566)

    The original poster asked if it were possible to upgrade the RAM on a DreamCast... I have not attempted this, but am also curious about it.

    Notice I avoided these comment paths:
    1) DC != PC, even w/ lots of RAM
    2) Proc is bottleneck, not RAM

    Even if you feel that upping the RAM is pointless, do you have any info to share about it?

    -- INSERT SIG HERE --

  • A couple of helpful sites (Score:4, Informative)

    by zoward ( 188110 ) <email.me.at.zoward.at.gmail.com> on Tuesday January 08, 2002 @02:10PM (#2804704) Homepage
    I've done some light hacking on the Dreamcast, and have my Linux box mountable as an NFS volume over a coder's cable (helps when programming for the DC :-)). I've been looking over material on the web for DC hacking for a few months, and I have yet to see anyone actually upgrading the memory of a DC. But why let that stop you?

    The two sites I've found helpful for DC hardware info:

    1. DCEmulation.com [dcemulation.com] is a general-purpose DIY Dreamcast site. There's a variety of info available here.

    2. Dreamcast Programming [mc.pp.se] - Marcus Comstedt's excellent hardware reference for the DC.

    If you get anywhere with this, please post your results to DCEmulation.com. I'd love to hear about it.

    For anyone else interested in running in booting Linux on their DC, the DC Linux site is here [m17n.org].

    Windows users will find a a "burn it and run it" Disk Juggler version of Dreamcast Linux here. [fivemouse.com]
  • The way I see it, your best bet at getting reasonable performance out of the DC is going to be using it as an Xterm connected to a real computer.

    Other than that, this is -not- the way to get your friend a working computer cheaply and quickly. It'd be an interesting side project to work on after you get him a machine, but your time and resources would be much better spent elsewhere. Check the local forsale newsgroups (and forums on overclocker webzits... those guys are always upgrading and getting rid of good hardware) for cheap/free hardware.
  • Once you get ahold of your network adapter, just set up a remote swap file. Either that or configure the dreamcast memory cards to hold your swap memory. 16 MB is fine, but that's the )_only_ memory you have. Once you get ahold of the network adapter (good luck), things should be looking brighter.

    Good luck to you! My dream cast died when I took it apart and put it together all fscked up. Hardware aint my forte.

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