Building a DC development environment

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bbmario
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Building a DC development environment

Post by bbmario »

So, i've been using lxdream to test a couple of my demos and so far it works great. I have a bunch of commands on my makefile so i just get to run F5 on sublime and i get the game running. However, i fear that when i finally get to the console, everything is going to go south on me. What kind of hardware do you guys suggest in order to build a real development environment setup? I have a DC and a TV near the computer and, so far, i've been burning CD's. Is there a better way?
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Re: Building a DC development environment

Post by BlueCrab »

If you can get a hold of a Broadband Adapter or a LAN Adapter for the console for a good price, then they're the best bet for use with debugging on a console itself. Once you have them, you'll simply need to burn a copy of dcload-ip and set your tools up to send the binary up to the Dreamcast with dc-tool on your PC instead of running lxdream.

It is also possible, if you're handy with soldering, to modify a Dreamcast to incorporate a simple and cheap ($5 or so) USB->3.3v Serial adapter. Once again, you'd be using dcload and dc-tool on the PC side, but the -serial version instead of the -ip one. This would normally be used with a coder's cable, but those are pretty hard to come by these days, and it's much cheaper (and simpler these days, since most PCs don't have old DE-9 serial ports anymore) to just mod the USB serial adapter into the console.
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