Dreamcast-Talk.com

What does the DC serial port really do other than ripping DC games and linking certain games?

It was primarily designed just for system link play, and I think the Midi thing used it. It only has a max transfer rate of 2mbps, so it is very limited in what you can do with it. The SD adapter only uses that port as the first option they were going to go with, the modem port, was to difficult too program for, and is beyond most homebrew devs cpacity.

So in short, the serial port was somewhat of a last resort just to make an easier sd adapter. Using it for something like a homemade modem could work, but I think it is highly improbable as it was only really designed for 1 thing, and that was system link.

Items that use it (that I have any way).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vwRtKknjqg[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yAmva5nkZo[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9iuxv3skO0[/youtube]

I saved a guide from some Japanese website ages ago on how to wire a true DB9 serial port into the system. And the person who made the guide was able to successfully use an external dial-up modem with the system through the port with what appeared to be a regular Passport disc.

game_player_s wrote:I saved a guide from some Japanese website ages ago on how to wire a true DB9 serial port into the system. And the person who made the guide was able to successfully use an external dial-up modem with the system through the port with what appeared to be a regular Passport disc.

I would be interested in reading about thsi if you can find the link.

brourke228 wrote:

game_player_s wrote:I saved a guide from some Japanese website ages ago on how to wire a true DB9 serial port into the system. And the person who made the guide was able to successfully use an external dial-up modem with the system through the port with what appeared to be a regular Passport disc.

I would be interested in reading about thsi if you can find the link.

I also am interested in reading this.

That makes a wide range of possibilities.

Yeah, if I read correctly he was getting USB 2.0 speeds (480Mbps) speed through the RS-232 (Serial) port he added. I can't read Japanese, so that's just what I'm guessing that he says in this. He had a great website, thankfully Archive.org has all of it available to view. The specific page with the Serial port mode is here:
http://web.archive.org/web/200502081435 ... dcser.html

Rest of Niga's (F. Nigawara) site can be access from here:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://nig ... index.html

If you hunt around he had an interesting page that referenced the NetBSD DC project with a link to a site regarding the development of both an ISA Card port and IDE HDD port adaptors for DC. Apparently working models were made and successfully used in the DC version of the NetBSD OS, something I'd never known about until just tonight. Seems the project ceased in mid-2002 as the mirrored site wasn't updated beyond June of that year.
Again though the original site for that is gone now, but I found a decent mirror of it here in better condition than Archive.org's capture of it:
http://www.fuzzymuzzle.com/Kiyoshi/Drea ... 20Page.htm

That IDE adaptor is extremely promising considering an IDE-CF adaptor was successfully used on it. CF cards offer Read/Write speeds up to three times faster than a Class 10 SD card. Class 10 SD cards, best presently on the market, have 30MB/s read. Fastest CF cards on the market have 90MB/s read, and the slowest SanDisk is marketing now (Ultra Series) is 30MB/s. Truly opens up a Pandora's box load of oppurtunities.

Wow, that sounds amazing. Wish something came out of it.