DreamPi Software (DC <> Pi)

Thanks! What is the authent_demo? Do you have any more information on the authentication?

Given that the port is 8010, it may well use HTTP after all (many non-default HTTP ports use 80**) - I'll give it a go tomorrow as I'm out tonight.

 

Well, the Dreamcast gets an PI of 192.168.X.100 and the Pi gets an additional interface at 192.168.X.101. You can ping the DC from the network so if you had some kind of file sharing enabled on the Pi, and some software on the DC to access it - then yes.

 

Yeah, that's a possibility.

We can keep adding stuff, but I don't want to detract too much from the goal of just rolling back the clock to '99

I'm not using a patch disc. I'm using the PAL version of PSO Ver. 2 and it works fine. I'm not sure what the patch disc does? If it's just DNS then the Pi handles that directly.

 

It's from the R11 SDK. There are some useful documents pertaining to the Dreamarena authentication library, too.

 

What kind of speed can we expect?? might look at streaming to dreamcast

 

A few kB/s.

 

Hey, I'm "Delete" over on kazade's blog, just found this forum, so I'll jump in here from now on.

First, kazade, thanks! Awesome work so far!
I've got my DreamPI up and running on the Alpha SD image, and built my line voltage inducer. I've been trying to trick non-blind-dial games into dialing by timing the swap between a real phone line and the DreamPI line, timing it between when the game "hears" the dial-tone and when it starts dialing. I had some luck, but now that we're close to an SD image with dial-tone support, I'll wait for that. So far, I haven't been able to get any games online with DreamPI:

- PSO: maybe I have the wrong version, but despite having the settings right in the Browser, the game always complains that I need to set-up the connection in the browser first, and won't go any further.
- PlanetWeb: dials successfully, but the DreamPI hangs on establishing the connection and the Dreamcast eventually gives up.
- Quake: tricked it into dialing with the swap trick, but didn't have my line voltage adapter finished, so couldn't get any further.
- Toy Racer: won't blind dial. Waiting for dial-tone update.

Is there a definitive list of DC online games somewhere, with the hurdles to getting them connected listed anywhere?

For those who are having trouble getting burnable browser images, here's a collection that burn OK. Maybe one of them will work to set-up the dial-up connection for you -- I finally just bought one for a couple bucks on Amazon cause of the PSO issues (still didn't work!), but maybe these will help someone else:

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=D4C0AF674C4148FE!156788&authkey=!AK6ai6jAxt-ImQ8&ithint=folder,cdi

I'm going to try out the keyboard-adapter power trick for the PI, since I have a spare Dreamcast I can risk it. Would be great to get Line Voltage from somewhere other than a battery too!

Update: Pulled down the latest with git pull but still can't get the connection to finish with PlanetWeb 2. DreamPI answers the call, and sends some modem commands, but otherwise just sits there blinking at ATA... It worked once with Quake, though! Now to find the DNS servers for it...

 

Current : http://www.dcserv.org/?page_id=5
All : http://dreamcast.onlineconsoles.com/phpBB2/content_gameslist.php

If you still haven't built one that's probably your issue

That would mean it connects, but no packets can be transferred because there's no power in the line. If you don't have your voltage inductor built that is

Edit:

Are you using GD-ROM?

 

Hi, Which is the best raspberry model to connect my dreamcast to internet? Thank you!!!

 

Watch my video, you will see it loads pretty slow lol. But, in games like Phantasy Star Online you can play it just fine without lag.

I used a Raspberry Pi B. You need one with an ethernet port, so don't use model A.

 

Awesome! Thanks!

I've def built one, so that's not the issue.

In further testing, I can connect 1 out 3 or 4 times. Sometimes if it fails, I get a clean hang-up and can try again right away. Other times, it just hangs and I have to kill the PI script and re-start it before I can try a re-dial. I'd estimate that it takes me about 10 minutes to successfully get online with DreamPi right now. When I can get on, there's no games available -- but from this site, it looks like there are scheduled events that would make for good times to try. I'll try to hop on the Quake event tonite, so I can be sure the DNS trick is working (I'm setting DNS at the DreamPI AND on the Dreamcast, just to be sure!)

I'm using a burnt CD from theisozone. They had a few others, so I'll try one of them.

 

Just FYI, I'm currently preparing a new image. This one includes dial-tone generation and the custom DNS server for dreampipe.net / slyverant / Sonic Adventure. It doesn't include Dream Arena auth which is going to take quite a bit of reverse engineering :/

 

Here we go!

Let me know how you all get on! The link on my blog has also been updated!

More details here: http://blog.kazade.co.uk/2015/11/dreampi-092-released.html

 

New image loaded, boot is cleaner, straight to the log-in prompt.
Q: Is there a way to auto-login and run?

Successful connections are still random, works about 1 in 3-4 times, just like before.
Q: Is there a way to improve this? Or a theory on what part of the chain is problematic? (better modem, less failures?)

Update: Quake 3 Arena worked great!
No luck with Starlancer and 4x4 Evo. In both games, I'm eventually able to get to the point where DreamPI reports "Connected" but the game immediately pukes, reports a generic error, and hangs-up. Maybe they can't find their servers? I used the instructions here for each game.

 

Aye we just played I didn't know that was you

I couldn't get starlancer to work even with netopia. Tact only successfully connected once i think. Hopefully Openspy adds support for it

All else I don't know. Good to see you online though man

 

It already does? The software runs as a system process so you don't need to login - it should just run on boot...

On my cheap Conexant modem connecting is 100% reliable, so I guess it is something to do with the modem. But without more info, I can't even begin to know what's causing this.

So, Starlancer I understand. I need to add this DNS server to the upstream list: 142.4.223.23. I'll do that for the next release.

4x4 Evo though - I don't know? It doesn't seem to require a custom DNS server. If you're connected everything should be routed to the Internet as normal.

 

OK, so I'm preparing the 0.93 release. This just simply adds the Starlancer and Quake 3 DNS servers. Annoyingly my SD card reader has died and so I'm having to "scp" from my laptop across WiFi which is taking ages :/

 

Here we go, try this one with Starlancer!

 

sure enough, it does! but as a service, its not observable. With my success rate so low, I'd like to be able to watch it, kill it and restart it -- something I need to do 2-3 times before it works. I've been messing with these instructions to make the Pi auto-login and run the script at startup, but the script errors out when run this way.

Update - got it working:
I modified /etc/inittab (sudo nano /etc/inittab)
commenting out the the line that starts with 1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty (add a # to the front)
Then I added the replacement line:
1:2345:respawn:/bin/login -f pi tty1 </dev/tty1 >/dev/tty1 2>&1
This makes the Pi boot to a logged-in command prompt.

Then I edited /etc/profile (sudo nano /etc/profile)
adding a line to kill any scripts, in case I ssh in, wait a bit for the modem to hang-up if it was previously listening, then start-up dreampi in non-service mode:
sudo killall python
sleep 2
sudo /home/pi/dreampi/dreampi.py --no-daemon

Finally, I had to prevent the service itself from starting at boot, which was causing errors with my startup script. I installed rcconf to manage services...
sudo apt-get install rcconf
sudo rcconf
Use the arrow keys, then space bar to unmark the DreamPI service, tab to get to OK and exit.

Then reboot (sudo reboot). Now DreamPi runs in interactive mode, which means now I can see what's happening. From the code, it looks like the script is doing some logging, but I don't know where those logs get written to.

How can I provide you with more info? I'm happy to try another modem, if we think that's it. Yours really connects every time, the first time?!

 

@Jon Sorry I didn't reply to you yesterday, I had really little time to get that next release out and was trying to look after my baby daughter at the same time

Most (all?) of the output would be logged to /var/log/syslog even when started as a service. Yes, my modem is 100% reliable. I basically need to see the output of /var/log/syslog when the connection fails to begin debugging the issue.