Basically my gaming is taking a massive nostalgia trip lately, and it's lead to me getting my Dreamcast out and hooking it up via VGA. Anyway I've been playing through some of the fantastic Dreamcast titles, some of which I was too young to finish / fully understand at the time of playing. Gonna play through the Sonics again (finished the first), playing a lot of Capcom fighters and will play the full Shenmue series soon which I don't think I actually ever finished when I was young.
Anyway I stumbled across my PSO disk which I haven't touched since it officially went down in 2008 (and even then I fully stopped playing it in about 2006 I think, I only broke it out again during the final hours in 08. I did some Googling, found this community, Sylverant etc, and multiple phone cables and extensions long enough to go from my Dreamcast to the phone jack.
TL;DR
I only played a couple hours, about 12 people were on. I didn't have my keyboard annoyingly (didn't bring it from the loft, didn't plan to play PSO), and I even met a lv.1 actual genuine new player. What the hell, right?
Basically, the Dreamcast isn't going anywhere, anytime soon. I'm going to make a DreamPi and find that damn keyboard so I can get this thing back online permanently. I would have stayed longer, but I've moved back in with the parents for time being after uni (yeah I know), and "what's this wire doing here and why's the phone unplugged" doesn't exactly go down too well.
I guess this is a "hello cult of Dreamcast" post . I used to post at OnlineConsoles at a few points some years back, I think called [UKR]Adam if anyone remembers (although if you do, it probably won't be for good reasons. I was like 12).