Initially I wanted to go with an internal build, but I was convinced not to by pcwzrd13 and the more I looked at it the more I would have to pack in there reducing air flow to my overclocked system, and that just wasn't a very good idea without adding a Noctua PC fan mod. I went with a "vintage" Camel Snus can from around 10 years ago. Over all I think it is a pretty clean setup all things considered. The Pi is a regular Zero model, not a Zero W so that is why the need for the hub to power my wifi dongle as well as the USB Fax Modem. Speaking of which this is the version modded with the built in LVI. Thanks to DR TEAMCAST and pcwzrd13 helping me out with the modded USB modem.
Looks neat. Great job! Is there any advantage to using the PI over a laptop for coding and development? What about using Windows 10 for arm? Recently wanted Microsoft Surface RT with Windows 8 RT but it's kind of old and doesn't support Windows 10. Supposedly these PIs are compatible with Windows 10. There's a lot of GNU Linux stuff too but I'd rather use MacOS. Is there anything from Macintosh that supports PI?
Thanks! Well, the Pi Zero can't run Windows 10, that is only for the most recent Pi 3. As for any advantage over a laptop for coding? Not really. The Pi is just good for tinkerers. It mostly runs Linux or other similar OS's after all. I don't know if any OSX OS's work on the Pi, but I do know there was a recent RISC OS release that allows you to use the Pi like a little modern Acorn computer if you wanted to use it like that. The ARM architecture was after all first developed for those computers if I recall correctly.
Not really, if you develop for an arm target you can compile natively on the pi, but for any non-trivial project it's probably much faster to cross-compile on a PC. Some pi3 can run a crippled command line Windows. There's really little point to do that. Anyways, Windows is a PITA for development. Trust me, I write multiplatform code regularly and Windows is painful. The only way Apple would allow for this is if they sold Pis in pretty cases for 500$, call them iPi. Same hardware. You should totally try Linux on Pis anyways; MacOs is basically Linux with locks in the end.
Can you recommend a O.S. for development? I'd think Visual Studio is in my best interest but sometimes it can be too advanced and overwhelming clicking through so many options, and there seems to be limitations multi-targeting. Sometimes I prefer how Linux combines development and O.S. into one unified system, but it seems best at command line. My preference is still Windows Chicago (e.g. 95/98se/ME) with ability to restart into D.O.S. with custom startup disc; enjoyed making Gravis Grip Gamepad profiles in Windows and using results in D.O.S.. Kind of hoping something similar to Raspberry PI can be more common for x86 with mini pci-e slot. Seen Intel compute stick but not sure if any have mini-pcie. They need new software drivers developed for older Microsoft O.S.s.
My philosophy for that is less is more. So I write code using vim under Linux and compile using make files. That way my code is a few kB of text files anyone can compile as long as they have a compiler; no need for proprietary software that won't be supported in 5 years. I don't really like bloated software like visual studio that force you to change how you write code and make it a pain to use third party libraries, almost impossible to be multiplatform. That's why I really like Linux, it's been my daily driver since 2012 and I don't regret a second of it. Don't be afraid of the command line, it's your friend and a powerful tool. On Windows I use a cygwin enviroment with mingw to cross-compile to native Windows. I'm doing scientific computing on x86_64 with a focus on parallelism, so our experience may differ. @Anthony817 nice project! How easy to use on a daily basis?
Pretty simple once you get it set up. You just configure your settings on the DC and Pi, and set it and forget it. I only ran into issues when configuring the wifi dongle, but after realizing I was using an older tutorial video, pcwzrd13 pointed me in the right direction and I got it all working without a hitch. There are a pretty good amount of people who play it online, and the community is growing all the time with more and more people building these little DreamPi's. Kazade got the size of the image cut down by over a full gb, so the image fits nicely on a 2gb micro SD card. So if you have any of those little useless SD cards laying around, there is no better use for them than with DreamPi 1.7. If you want to find out more info on these, you can watch this great video by Modern Vintage Gamer. Also a great channel btw. But people organize game nights and help each other with getting online over at Dreamcast-Talk forums. There are 2 forums, one for Game Scheduling, and one for General Online.
Yep, I actually used my USB LAN adapter with direct Ethernet connection before I got the WiFi working and it worked great! Also, Shuouma is working on a hardware accelerated port of Quake World for DC, and it will allow us to finally play Quake 1 online on the DC with others!
