Yup, that one is just a plastic shell. There was another with the headphone socket on the other end. You needed the unit plugged into the DC to download the music.
The Zip drives were real, I heard SEGA canned them because IOmega wanted a MSRP of $150, and at the time that was the price of an entire DC. And the MP3 VMU was 128MB, not 32. About SEGA being ahead, I totally agree, not only the Netlink but other stuff like the Megamodem were at least 10 years before anyone would even think of something like that. In my opinion since after the saturn they had a hole the size of the grand canyon in their wallets, SEGA should have stayed away from the console market, release a new GG like the GBA to take over the portable market (at the time the only rival was the crappy GBC) and release online games for the PC and make money on the server subscription fees. Then in 2004 they would be ready to release the Dreamcast, and with enough resources and backup markets to avoid a new bankrupcy
It looks just like the one in the link i posted, bit longer, fake usb port on one side, fake minijack on the top. Unfortunately, i don't have much of an internet connection these days... I'll put up pics when i can.
