Best toolset/hardware for homebrew testing?

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bbmario
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Best toolset/hardware for homebrew testing?

Post by bbmario »

What toolset do you guys recommend for developing and testing homebrew games on the DC? BBA? SD Card? Any eBay stores that you guys recommend to purchasing the items?
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Re: Best toolset/hardware for homebrew testing?

Post by PH3NOM »

I personally do not have a BBA or LAN adapter, but I do use the SD adapter.

I know its not the most accurate approach, but for testing small changes I actually use NullDC (emulator) for testing DC code on my PC.

When I am ready to test on real hardware, I actually use Dreamcast Media Center
viewtopic.php?f=72&t=102594
as a boot disc to launch my compiled (unscrambled) binary from the /SD/ card.

Good luck friend!
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Re: Best toolset/hardware for homebrew testing?

Post by |darc| »

For development, the broadband adapter is your best bet. It's fast and you can send code without having to physically swap CD-Rs or SD card.

Next, I would say serial cable. It's slow, but you don't have to physically swap CD-Rs or SD card either.

Next would be SD card, since you can just copy your binaries to the card and plug it in. But the SD card speed would be limited just like the serial cable.

Last would be CD-Rs, you can just make a multisession CD-R and write a new session to the CD-R for every build.
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Re: Best toolset/hardware for homebrew testing?

Post by bbmario »

Do you guys have any good links for tutorials on how to setup the BBA for DC homebrew development? Or the SD-Card?
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Re: Best toolset/hardware for homebrew testing?

Post by |darc| »

It's pretty straightforward, download the dcload-ip source from the Cryptic Allusion git repository here. Edit the DREAMCAST_IP value in Makefile.cfg to enter a static IP for your Dreamcast (when using dcload-ip it will not get an IP automatically via DHCP). Compile the source code and burn it to a disc. That's your boot disc. Then use dc-tool (also in the same repository) to send your Dreamcast ELF binaries to the console via BBA for execution. More on that in the readme file.



For the SD card you're basically just formatting an SD card as fat32 and then using the DreamShell disc to launch the compiled BIN files.
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