Surfing the Web on Dreamcast - Media Disc

the dream count was the last console made by Sega first released in 1999 on 99.99 to be exact it'll be only on the market for Less Than 3 years ending production in 2001 for it short lifespan it tracked a very dedicated fan base over the years very dedicated like there are Indie Games still released for the system over 20 years later I never had dream gas during its time in the market I went from playing my Sega Genesis to playing Sonic games on Nintendo platform there was quite a lot I missed in between for me the dream Gast was his mythical con that everyone always spoke so highly of I have since purchased the system too in fact but I never had a chance to go online with it until today over the years fans have developed many aftermarket modifications for the Dreamcast you could just about replace everything inside the system aside from the motherboard this is my modded Dreamcast ignore the dirty shell I'm plan on replacing that one day and ignore the power cabl sticking out the console I'm I'm I'm just stupid just just pay no mind I'm moded by system with a GD muu clone allowing me to play games off a SD card I Chang out the power supply with a Pico PSU which allows for cooler temperatures inside and to Aid that I even upgraded the exhaust fan to a much quieter Nautica fan this really feels like a PC with how easy it is to take Parts out and put new ones in in a way the Dreamcast is a PC even using a form Windows CE for some games a big Focus for Sega was on online gaming this is one of the first dedicated video game consoles to feature a 56k modem bundled with every system the '90s were the first time for many to have access to the worldwide web the internet was brought via our phone wires to our houses in order to browse the internet you just had to not use your telephone at all sit down on your computer most likely running Windows 95 or 98 and listen this beauty of a sound oh yeah I can hear the data moving through those phone lines then you would check your email go to your website you usually visit and even play some video games online for the home consoles these activities were completely Uncharted Territory in order to play your online games on the Dreamcast you have to sign up for ISP service with Sega this was different for the three main regions of the world us had a service called Sega net think of this like PlayStation Network or Xbox Live of today it charged a monthly fee and you can use it to not just play certain games online but some games offer DLC to download and you can even use a web browser the Sega net service was pretty uccessful at its time launching in the year 2000 you could have gotten two years of seet a bundle with a system a keyboard and web browser and you would have gotten a rebate for the console essentially giving it to you for free unfortunately deals like this could not have saved siget discontinuing the service along the Dreamcast then openly shutting down the servers in 2003 having less than a year of active support this would have been the end for the little console that could except the fans would never let the system down nowadays private servers are very popular for older games allowing people to play games like they used to back in the day Dreamcast has that plus some other online features restored and that is all possible with Raspberry Pi for the Dreamcast there's a piece of software called dream pie it allows you to use your modern Internet to play these dialup games and go online once again not everything is playable or working right now but there's an active effort to bring as many games online that they can their dream pie software runs on a Raspberry Pi single board computer I'm not going to give a tutorial on this but it's pretty easy once you have the correct Hardware to do it a tutorial can be found on the website Dreamcast live.net it's like the main hub for all things online for the Dreamcast for instance they sell these special USB 56k modems personally I never saw them in stock you can send in either Adele or Lenovo modem to them and they'll give it a line voltage inducer I didn't opt to do that instead I bought this cable from a seller on eBay one end goes to the Dreamcast while the other end goes to the USB modem I got this noname brand adapter your mileage may vary if you get one but this one works for me then the USB for power gos and the Raspberry Pi I have the pi 02w to be exact with this Raspberry Pi you could use Wi-Fi but I couldn't get it to work so I'm using this Nintendo switch ethernet adapter and that worked just fine as far as setup on the dream Tas goes all you need is a web browser I'm going to use this web browser 2.0 I got from a convention years ago go into the internet settings you can put anything for a user to login but the password is Dreamcast all in lowercase put 1111111 into the dialup number boxes just like I have it for the DNS boxes set all those to zero leave all the other settings at the defaults then save to the internal memory which I didn't even know the Dreamcast had then you're good to go okay we went through all that that got online again but what could we do like I said not every game is restored online functionally but one thing you can do surf the web I recommend that you get keyboard as typing with the controller is a pain you don't have to get an official Dreamcast keyboard there are adapters allowing PS2 keyboards to work just like this mad cats one I have this keyboard is Old Dell mechanical keyboard sounds so great but you have to press down some keys really hard for them to work though there's also USB adapter for modern keyboards and even for modern computer mice there is definitely an adjustment period to browse in on dialup again Sitting Waiting for a web page and all its pictures to load this is one thing I don't want to remember about browsing the internet there are a number of web browsers for the Dreamcast but the one that's probably the best to use is the XDP browser it is the latest browser currently available latest as in was the last released in 2008 but there are a few websites that will work the main one being dream pipe. net using the dream pipe should automatically redirect you to the site with official browsers but it didn't work for me dream pipe is the main restoration hub for Dreamcast it has a few links to other websites you can create account as if a seet account although I couldn't seem to do anything with it you can also view leaderboards for certain games that's neat the vmu option allows you to download DLC for Dreamcast games yeah DLC was a think in 1999 it was free too the BB option gives you a Dreamcast bolon board to use think of it like a retro Reddit internet forums were how many people in Phantoms could come together and talk spread information and get their ideas out in the world it's like the oldest form of internet communication you get such great things like what do you call a swimming pasta a poodle how riveting Dreamcast live has a Dreamcast optimized version of his website here can view the latest news talk in the chat room browse the DLC again there's a music section but that didn't work for me you can even sign the guestbook websites used to have these all the time it's a way to leave your mark on a website that you visited the website also gives a few links to some older content here you can learn how evil Internet Explorer is yeah enough of that the homepage for xtp browser is so wonderfully mid-2000s it hurts never mind the fact that the person who made this site named them eles after a drug reference the style and layout is so functional sure it doesn't have material design or whatever we call Modern app Centric websit we want to download the browser bam download it on your PC in 15 different parts want to listen to some music bam download some and play some [Music] midies who needs Spotify am I right want to play some games here you here you go of course I'm being a little ridiculous all these things are very rudimentary but this is how we did things online back in the day going on websites to play flash games downloading these files online we had to be more patient back in those days the website also has a Dreamcast vmu save files they can freely Download Remember unlocking things before everything was just behind pay wall or loot box now who knows how long this website will be up and still hosted but for today I got to view it for the first time one more website I'd like to mention is is the old net.com it uses the internet waveback machine to view old web pages from the past is now perfect now everything was saved or could be saved this website was made so older computers could have access to websites easier like you could go to sega.com from 1996 not sure why it's playing a Sega voice clip over and over [Music] again did you know there's a problem with a batch of game discs in 1999 I didn't but now I know you can also browse Wikipedia from here how however it was really slow and actually made my Dreamcast freeze up so just fair warning Dreamcast live has a list of currently available games with restored online features I would also check the connection guide as some games require you to do something else to get them to work there is also a weekly schedule with multiple game night setup if you want to experience online gameplay on the Dreamcast I recommend you to join them a helpful website is called Dreamcast now you can set it up with your dream pie and you see other people's online status outside those scheduled times is basically impossible to find random people to play online with thanks to the dream pie I was able to turn back to the clock and experience browsing the internet on the Dreamcast for the first time today's websites use many security protocols in order to function so for the grand majority of websites they just don't work on the Dreamcast technology advances leaving the internet that we knew behind while we can never get the exact same experience again like we did in the year 2000 what we do have is kind of like with the best hits of what was once possible the drink Castle was ahead of his time s with bad business decision it was able to make his mark on the video game industry it's still thinking Wonder know what it's thinking about [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Media Disc

Views: 2,263

Keywords: Steven Duda, sega, dreamcast, dreampi, dreampipe, the old net, 56k moddem, modem, 56k, gdemu, picopsu, noctua fan, dreamcast mod, dreamcast modded, dial up, internet, sega online, seganet, sonic, windows ce, raspberry pi, pi zero, pi zero 2 w, voltage line inducer, ebay, media disc, sega dreamcast, video game mod, modded console, modded system, gdmenu, aol, america online, internet forums, dream arena, surf the web, surfing the web, sega saturn, sega pc, sega genesis, gamecube, ps2

Id: PybfXR5-eEk

Length: 9min 59sec (599 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 01 2024