DreamPi Software (DC <> Pi)

Hah!
Thanks!

 

OK, it definitely looks like the model A modems need a line voltage. It might be something to do with the cheap USB modem that everyone is using. Someone on these forums has tested with 9v without success, if 18v doesn't work then something really odd is going on that I can't explain.

I've updated my blog post, and also added a small roadmap, and ways that you can help me out if you're feeling generous: http://blog.kazade.co.uk/p/dreampi.html

 

Argh this is so aggravating! I still can't get anything to connect, and I can't figure out what changed to make it all stop working!
I've rebuilt my line voltage inducer, swapped the USB modem, changed the batteries, tried rolling back the software - no matter what PPP still doesn't receive the packets from the DC.

I've basically narrowed it down to a system software problem, or my Dreamcast modem is broken :/

 

Thats what i'm thinking 18v is alot of voltage. Maybe the dc was drawing too much power and even though the system detects the modem it can't transfer data from the line anymore

 

EBay and Amazon has stock modems cheap. Hope everything gets worked out

I would love to purchase a all in one finished kit from someone. Line voltage simulator included

 

Oh my god!

It's the dial tone generation! Once I've used the modem to play the dial tone, it will no longer correctly work with PPP until I reboot!

 

Telephone lines actually use a far higher voltage than 18v (I think it's around 50v). I've tested and 15ish is the bare minimum for it to work - on PAL modems at least!

 

YES, another breakthrough! so if i understood that correctly, after starting dial tone generation, you need to add in a line of code to reset the program correct? ( sorry if I'm wrong and just looked like a complete idiot, i don't know a ton about python and basically nothing about networking)

 

Yes exactly - the hard part is figuring out what I need to reset. I think I need to send the ATXO0 command to the modem after I stop sending audio. I'll try that tomorrow!

 

An idea that i had since my phone line simulator went on the fritz; You should develop a version of this that acts as a phone line simulator with 2-4 usb modems. These things are really expensive if i can't repair mine. The only advantage over just dialing into the pi would be the ability to connect two systems simultaneously to the netopia. It would be a nice practical app too for the pi besides for gaming. But its just an idea and when this is done and polished of course

 

Great break through. Hope you get it figured out.

 

Just a quick update. I've still been unable to get PPP to work after generating a dial tone I cant understand it!
I'm going to do some experimenting to determine whether the act of entering voice transmission mode is the problem, or if its something to do with the way I'm sending the audio. If anyone knows anything about the AT command set I could use a hand!

 

The only thing i could suggest is try averaging how long the dialtone needs to be played before the game dials. Then only have it play for that amount of time. Not sure if you can add a button to the pi. Maybe there's a way to make the pi detect when the modem on the dreamcast is taken off the hook and only generate the tone for that average time. It may be that the dialtone is still playing so neither the pi or dreamcast can detect data transfer

 

Got my Pi <> DC running. I ran in to an issue where I had a bad RJ-11 cable and had to get a new one. The old one had only 2 cables inside, red and green. So basically needs a proper Voice/Data cable which should have 6 cables inside.
http://s2.postimg.org/ne06jc17c/20151017_192518_resized.jpg
http://s2.postimg.org/oqdrq4vhz/20151015_173215_resized.jpg
http://s2.postimg.org/gz15mnuhj/20151017_200113_resized.jpg

Also there is another Pi <> DC software project currently available that does blind dial, and has dial-tone generation. So if you're still trying to figure out how to do auto dial-tone generation for games that don't have blind dial, look through his answer.sh script.
http://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6593
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pi2dc/files/

If you live in the US you need to use PlanetWeb (I used 3.0) to do your setup. Here are the settings needed:

• User Login: dream
• Password: dreamcast
• Dial Up Number: 555
• DNS1: 0.0.0.0
• DNS2: 0.0.0.0
• Modem Init: AT&F0
• Dial: Tone
• Dial Area Code: Off
• Blind Dial: On
• Proxy: No

 

The problem with this approach is the dial tone generation is a.) time limited and more importantly b.) blocks the modem.

It means you can't listen for the key tones from the Dreamcast and so have to manually run the script to answer the call. My approach is to actually transmit a recording of a dial tone continuously until a key tone is received and then answer the call.

It "works" but there's something goes weird with the modem because PPP doesn't receive a response, even if I send a soft reset command (ATZ).

 

Has anyone other than kazade verified that this works? Will it work with games that support blind dial? Or is it non-functional due to dialtone generation? My phoneline simulator stopped working so I might set this up in a month or so

 

I don't have much time to explain ATM, but I'm pretty sure you'll all be interested in this code commit: https://github.com/Kazade/dreampi/commit/dca8dba1ce6d6b2844223e8881513477730f081b

 

so... you got it working with dial tone generation! nice

 

I'll wait for a new sd image I guess.

 

OK, a little more information!

I have successfully made it so games which don't blind dial (e.g. Quake 3, Sonic Adventure, Toy Racer) will dial out and successfully connect to the Internet. This is a massive breakthrough! It means that now the Dreamcast totally believes it's connected to a phone line and dialling up to an ISP!

However! I need to do some work on setting up a local DNS server so that I can make everything work seamlessly and then I can look into tricking the Dream Arena authentication on PAL games. I also need to implement auto-configuration of PPP for different networking setups (e.g. gateway IPs, local network IP ranges, different device IDs). I think though I will make another SD card image once I have the DNS working.

My release target for the DNS is to make Sonic Adventure's Internet section work, and perhaps make the homepage for DreamKey/Planet Web go to dreampipe.net.