Modifying the dreamcast bios, dreamcast OS and a dreamcast hard drive?

Hi, I have a couple questions I was hoping someone could answer for me and I apologize in advance if these questions have been answered before. First off you should know that I know nothing about programing. I am a compTIA certified IT tech and know a good bit about computers and how they work but I don't know if what I'm about to ask is plausible. In my mind it all seems possible but more then likely I'm about to ask some really whimsical questions.

Question 1: Is it possible to SEVERELY modify a BIOS, particularly the dreamcast Bios. I have a bunch of desktops lying around my house and one in particular is an old Pentium 3 1.2ghz cpu with 384mb of ram, 40 gig hd, geforce4 video card and dvd/cd drive. I wanted to know if it was possible to turn that PC into a dreamcast by flashing the PC mobo with the dreamcast bios? I know the dreamcast Bios would need to be modified (if at all possible) to even attempt to run on PC hardware but if it could be done would it work if the bios was tweaked to recognize the PC hardware?

Question 2: There are a lot of dremacast emulators out there and they require alot of system resources. I'm currently running Windows 7 64bit ultimate on an amdfx8350 with 8gigs of ram and a geforce gtx 570. I get good speeds out of my the emulator (I use demul, I used to use nulldc but demul seems to have better compatibility) but I know if I shut down background processes like my antivirus and what not I can get much better performance out my pc in general. That being said why not make a dreamcast OS? Rather then having your PC boot into windows and have all types of unnecessary background processes running while attempting to run an emulator why not just boot into an OS specifically designed to do nothing but emulate a dreamcast? Im sure it could be done. You could even install your drivers since the dreamcast is programmed on winCE (or is winCE layered in the dreamcast somehow? ...not entirely sure on that statement). I think that could defiantly be done with some major tweeking. That Pentium 3 PC I was talking about is currently running windows 98se service pack 3 which shouldn't exist but some brilliant hacker tweaked it, made a service pack and now I can use my external 2tb usb hard drive to transfer files over to it; which wasn't possible until the unofficial service packs.

question 3: I remember when I first was learning about Linux. I was doing all types of research and accidentally stumbled across a website stating it was possible to make any program, game, emulator or what not boot-able. I saw tutorials on the site explaining how make a psx game boot disk. If memory served correctly it ran epsxe with pc drivers and the game; all off a single bootable cd/dvd? Shot in the dark, but I was wondering if anyone knows of this website?

Question 4: Is it possible to modify the maple ports on the dreamcast to run devices such as a hard drive, lan/wifi adaptor and other devices. I read that others have modified the modem port to run a hard drive but others have said that the maple ports were the way to go.

Well that's all of it. Thanks for your time and reading my post.

 

x

 

Wow that was fast. Thanks for clarifying all that. I'm sad that all my ideas were proven to be whimsical ideas but appreciate the fast answers.

 

Go check the DCIO project out in this thread. The goal is to make an emulator to replace the GD ROM drive. There is a working prototype that is going through some finalizations before getting a limited release for beta testing.

http://www.assemblergames.com/forum...e-GD-ROM-emulation-happen-quot-Facebook-group

 

There was a hard drive that someone made years ago that ran through a custom interface with the modem port. It was only useable with linux/netbsd for dreamcast because of the need for custom drivers to support the custom hardware.

Regarding a few of your other questions - I think it would be very possible to have a normal PC "look" like it is booting into a dreamcast emulator. I would suggest looking at forums/writeups by people who build mame arcade cabinets, as there are several people who are always interested in having their emulation arcade cab boot up as soon as possible without displaying a windows desktop for the arcade experience. You could also use some kind of frontend like hyperspin to make things feel like an interactive menu/game rather than clicking on executables on your desktop with a mouse. Lastly, you can buy a USB dreamcast controller adapter to allow you to use the DC controller. You could even do some kind of case mod to try and house the adapter internally.

One of my future plans is to make a naomi/naomi 2 emulation pc, in the aesthetic style of a console, and I plan on doing some form of the above description.

 

I found this http://mc.pp.se/dc/maplebus.html which might be helpful to anyone who wants to know how the maple bus works and why others were thinking about a possible maple bus hard drive.

I know there's a SD card reader hack/device for the DC. Couldn't that be modified to use a usb port? Then you could hook up an external usb device. My Wii is softmoded and I have a 2 tb hd hooked up to it now. I know the dc originally didn't have usb ports but if they could modify it to use a sd card I don't think a usb port is to far of a stretch; you'd probably have to modify dream shell as well but I don't think that would be too hard either. I'm pretty sure Dreamshells code isn't not closed source. I dont see why someone couldn't modify dreamshell to recognize a usb hd.

What you were saying about have your pc booting into a frontend loading a dc emu is cool but what I meant was building an actual DC OS. There are enough devkits, emulators and technical schematics out there that if someone was extremely dedicated to the idea could make something fantastic. I would love to see a dc os with implementation of the xbox 360 or ps3 controllers. You could plug in a headset to the 360 controller and use it as a mic for games like seaman and since it has two analog sticks you could write a maple plugin to recognize it as a twinstick for games like virtual on. I have an 8 core amdfx 8350 cpu with 8 gigs of ram and a geforce gtx 570 in my PC and it runs Demul fine; this is all whimsical thinking I know but its a nice little obsessive dream (no pun intended) that Ive been having about building my own graphically superior mico atx dreamcast pc that would hook up to my pc like a steambox.

Perhaps the more logical conclusion would be a streamed lined OS without all the bloatware; that way all the system resource would be free and available to run the DC EMU at near to perfect capacity. I know you can build your own version of openSUSE from scratch right off their web page. Essentially (in theory) you could build a dumbed down version of SUSE linux with a GUI that requires low system resources like xfce or lxde, hardware drivers, networking/internet and a dc emu of your choosing (might require wine as well, not entirely sure that there is a dc emu for linux let alone how many). Hell, you might even be able to get the damn thing to boot directly into an emu with enough tweaking.

My point is nothings really impossible.

 

I'm still curious as to whether or not the Dreamcast SD card hack could be modified to use a usb device. I found this you tube vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh6SxdUk_Xk where someone built there own so I'm still curious as to why the SD portion of the circuit board couldn't be replaced with a USB port.

Instruction on how to build your own and what not should this information not be on the site. ---> http://forums.benheck.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=38263

And I just thought this was funny---> http://www.instructables.com/id/USB-Powered-VMU-hack/

 

Try looking here https://www.youtube.com/user/RetroGameTech/search?query=dreamshell

Not sure if those videos would interest you

 

SWAT has a dreamcast already running with a HDD attached to it, it has a ISO loader to on the Dreamshell OS.



And the games run pretty good as he shows on his site, you can find the videos here: http://www.dc-swat.ru/blog/dreamshell/873.html

Would love to buy a dreamcast with a finished HDD mod! hopefully someone will sell it to me... please!!