So, why can't we have a homebrew lan adapter?

Post by **Quzar** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 5:51 pm

ok, you start and we'll all catch up later.

Nemesis · Post by **Nemesis** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 7:17 pm

soccerboi wrote:why does someone always have to say something like that?

What I got from the thread is that you couldn't make a BBA because you needed the chip and firmware. So why couldn't someone make one that uses tunneling?

I wasn't asking any of you guys to do anything, just giving an idea, so stop being an ass.

1. stop flaming
2. it's still more trouble than it's worth, imo

Post by **Quzar** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 7:51 pm

Basically the idea is, yes it's fine, we've all mulled over that and a hundred other solutions from time to time, but the basic thing is that nobody that can do it wants to. If you want to, then by all means lead the way. I'm sure other will follow. If not though, then ... well... that's all there is to it.

semicolo · Post by **semicolo** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 9:43 pm

If you make a non bba compatible network interface, commercial games won't be able to use it.

semicolo · Post by **semicolo** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 11:27 am

I don't see how it could work without patching the games.
isn't Tunnelling a software thing ? how would you do tunnelling on hardware ???

Matt · Post by **Matt** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 12:43 pm

>_<

Give up, its not going to happen

Nick · Post by **Nick** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 2:40 pm

soccerboi wrote:Why not just make a bba that has nothing to do with the old ones as cheap as possible? Couldn't we just then make tunneling software, and play online that way? Then instead of a few games being online, we could have over 100.

Most Dreamcast games use Sega SNAP protocols/info to connect. Reverse engineering this = nigh impossible. And mega illegal.

Oh, and tunnelling usually requires tricking a LAN connection into playing against other people not on the LAN. That's what the Xbox/Gamecube tunnelling services do.

Ex-Cyber · Post by **Ex-Cyber** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 3:13 pm

Things have been pretty much covered I think, but I'll mention that although cloning the G2-PCI bridge chip in a PLD (working from e.g. the NetBSD driver) should be both possible and legal, the hardware might end up being somewhat expensive. IIRC, there's a substantial chunk of RAM on the bridge chip; I don't recall the size but I think it was more than is in any low-end FPGA, meaning that an external RAM chip would be required to duplicate it. This doesn't put it into "insanely expensive" territory, but given the cost of the RAM and the extra I/O pins and logic on the PLD needed to connect it, I doubt it's dirt-cheap either.