What did the Utopia bootdisc actually do?

^A former SEGA exec posted a Q+A thread on this site last year. One of the questions was about DC piracy and how significant this was to SEGA's decision to cancel the DC. He said something like no one at Sega thought much about it, and it was not a significant reason for why the system was unprofitable.

Back in 2000, 2001, and 2002 there were far fewer people with CD burners, connection speeds faster than 56K, AND who could actually find and get access to the ISOs. Unlike now when a simple google search will get you a website that has a well ordered interface and a nicely cataloged collection of every DC iso as a direct link, back in the day, warez sites (no doubt run by little teenagers) more often tended to do a holier than though thing, do all kinds of password protection or private restricted access FTPs, try and make you sign up for porn sites in order to get the link, force you to use archaic download managers you've never heard of like "bobdown", and "release" isos on their site on their own timeframe, so you'd get access to the game of the week "Zusar Vasar" rather than access to a big database where you can easily find the game you want. In a lot of cases, it was more "take what you can get" rather than search for the game you want and immediately get it.

This all changed some years later when file sharing got more mainstream with a greater install base of people with fast connections, torrents, and existence of file sharing sites.

Back in the day it was such a hassle for me to find the game I wanted, and then download it over 56K and tie up the family phone line for 36 hours, that more often than not I just went out and bought the game, they were all like $10-$20 by 2002 anyway.

 

As for ripping speed. Of course BBA is the fastest, but I don't know if releases groups used it at first. There's a lot fo way to rip DC games, including but not limited to: Serial (coder's cable), Printer's parallel port to DC serial, dvd-reader swap trick, BBA, sd-card adapter and through 56k modem on netBSD. I've done all but the BBA and netBSD.

I you wanted DC isos back in 2000, you were better to buy the real disc instead. It took literally days to download. It was kinda easy to find on IRC or Usenet though.

FG

 

They probably didn't use the bba because it was released on the end of DC's life.

And Datel really used the SEGA libs? hexaediting the its binary it doesn't seem to have the same structure.
And I'm sure the first self boot disc was datel CDX *demo* that came in a magazine. I tried it about a week before the utopia disk being released. Just google for it, it was really easy to find a cdi rip of it back then.

 

Back in 2001 when I was around, people were already familiar with ripping games via the BBA. I would not be surprised if some release groups did it too. I think the infamous Kallisto group was alleged to have used a special type of PC CD or DVDrom drive with custom drivers to read and rip the gdroms.

 

Why, then, was the system not profitable? Cost of production?

 

it had alot to do with the saturn be unprofitable
and sega focused more on sony then it did on nintendo

the gamecube lasted 7 years and sold 20 million units
and the Dreamcast lasted 4 years and sold 10 million units

if they had kept up the nintendo tit for tat they could of broken even after 10 years

that and sammy killed sega shot it right in the head in its sleep

all gaming fun and innovation died with sega
when was the last time you played a sega game that made you feel like it was innovative or interesting that was made by sega not just sega published

 

A lot of reasons, but most importantly, in order to remain competitive with the PSX, Sega kept having to do price cuts on the expensive to produce Saturn. In order to make a competitive next gen machine, Sega was probably taking losses on the Dreamcast hardware as well - the business model being (as with every other next gen system) that Sega and it's subsidiaries would recoup the loss on selling the console underpriced at an attractive and safe figure for the market, through sales of the console software. (IE: Just think about how well the 3DO sold, when it was selling for $700 in the early 90s!)

I think the biggest problem for sega in the DC era was that the install base for Dreamcast never got large enough, and never grew fast enough to sustain Sega's costs for maintaining the platform. Sega could make quality games, and people with the consoles could all buy them, but as long as it is a hardware producer in the market against competing consoles, sega is only going to release sega software for sega consoles. If its console has a small footprint - then its profits from the games are going to be limited accordingly.

 

The Action Replay Demo supplied with the DC-UK magazine WAS the first.

Only some time later came the Utopia Loader and the DOA2 rip, some weeks later the experiments with dummy files to reduce loading times and the first selfboot tutorials using cdrecord/cygwin.

Exciting times they were

 

I remember that. Still have an AR demo. Plays fine on my NTSC-U DC. Strange PS1 style black disc :S

 

There was 5 versions of Utopia boot disc wasn't there?

Why was there a need of 5 versions, if it did the same thing? Many people don't even know of the different versions and also don't even know the differences. I'm one of them.

 

i saw about 4 different versions, guess i missed the 5th, i only ever used them until self-boot was available, modded DC for imports so was no panic on needing to update the bootdisc

i think some of the early versions struggled to boot some imports and possibly VGA supported games had problems etc. with the earlier discs, hence the need for a few updates over time.

Plus the original disc was in the Audio/Data format where newer DC's wouldnt boot them so they updated with Data/Data to allow it to boot

this is all from memory so dont take it as gospel

i remember the weekend it all kicked off, i borrowed my friends DC for a couple of weeks when he went on holiday with his wife and kids, during their holiday the Utopia boot disc was released and so was Dead or Alive 2

then Crazy Taxi, resident evil etc. and they realised they needed to PAD the discs as Crazy Taxi was really corrupted without the padding, driving down a hill with no ground, no textures etc. until the disc caught up lol

great days!