Showing posts with label Broadband Adaptor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Broadband Adaptor. Show all posts

Guest Article: Future Proofing Your Dreamcast

In the second of a series of guest articles from our man in Japan Ross O'Reilly, we'll be looking at how you can pimp your Dreamcast to within an inch of it's life and enjoy most (well, some) of the lovely features a modern games system benefits from. HD output, bountiful storage and online capabilities are all things we take for granted these days and with a bit of knowledge and a fat wallet you can enjoy the same with a Dreamcast right now. Let it be known that I have neither of the aforementioned. Ross, over to you.
So, you want the so called 'Dreamcast 2' (don't get me started on that!), you want a HD Dreamcast, right? You want the ability to play Dreamcast games online? Download DC software and run it on original hardware? Play with a wireless DC controller?

Well, what if I were to tell you that all of those features are available to you right now, today.
Yes, I apologise if I sound patronising to those of you who are regular readers and keep up with Dreamcast developments, but I'm here to tell you anyway, that all of those features and more are available to you already...just so long as you have deep enough pockets to shell out on the numerous devices required.

Let's start from the top...

Toy Racer Dial-Up Connection In The Works

You may have read recently that the online-only multiplayer title Toy Racer is the latest Deamcast game to be dragged out from under a rock and plonked back onto the interwebs (or whatever it's called). And you'd have read right. The Junkyard was recently contacted by Bob Dobbs, a member of the popular Dreamcast-Talk forums, who confirmed that the game's servers are well and truly back online and running well. Unfortunately for most of us, you can only get your online fix of Toy Racer if you own a highly sought-after and expensive broadband adaptor for your Dreamcast, but those clever chaps are also working on a method that will allow you to hook up via your trusty old 33k (56k in the US) dial-up modem. Huzzah! Here's an info-burst from the man himself:

Dreamcast-Talk (International) & Dreamcast-br (Brazil) has yet another game back online. This one is Toy Racer. For the first time, the original game server software has been released (thanks to petter3k who contacted No Cliche, the programmers of Toy Racer). Dreamcast-br has already had a server running, but we do not know if their server is the original or not (Igor Isaias Banlian was kind enough to allow us the IP addy to play). In both cases, the game only connects via BBA (dial-up wants to go to Dreamarena). Currently, DC-Talk is working on a boot-disc to allow the game GD-ROM to use dial-up.

To note, DC-Talk was where the "Netopia" method of connecting your DC to the internet without a PC of any kind. It has much less latency than the troublesome DC-PC server set-up. I use it, which is purely hardware driven (developed by brourke228). The other is the and the PC-DC windows/VMware server portion to work with the Ryochan Linux PC-DC server method (brourke228 of DC-Talk developed the Windows portion).

Here's the science bit:
Brazil IP: 200.165.140.20:2048
TCP Port: 2048
UDP Port: 2049


As stated, the guys at Dreamcast-Talk are working on a boot-disc to get Dreamcast gamers up and running with a dial-up connection, and are currently ironing out some issues with the remnants of Dream Arena at present. For a full guide on how to get online with Toy Racer right now though, follow this link; and be sure to check the DreamcastBr Facebook group for further updates.