Getting online with Dreamcast
I’ve been wanting to get my Dreamcast online so I can at least see what surfing the web is like on the DC. I have DSL and like everyone else I do not have a broadband adapter for the DC. I contacted Verizon to see if they had dial-up access for their broadband customers, like 5 hours free or something a month. I know Road Runner had that. However, Verizon just offers cheap dial-up access for their DSL customers at about $7.00 a month for 10 hours or something. I don’t need to have the Dreamcast access the net, I just want it to.
I refuse to pay for dial-up when I already pay for my DSL so I decided to use my old Netzero account to access the internet through the Dreamcast.
After establishing a connection, I realize how spoiled rotten I am with broadband. I do not have patience for dial-up. While waiting for the connection and the actual loading of the initial home page, I had time to coax myself out of being a broadband snob for a few minutes.
Anyway, so I surf around looking at webpages, okay, well about two pages and then I got booted. Then I retried, got booted, got mad, reconnected, decided to just write an entry on here, then I got booted in the middle and I ultimately gave up with my fascination with Dreamcast webtv.
The other day, Jake posted a comment and it gave me an idea.
Why not setup a dial-up server on my desktop and have the Dreamcast dial in to it and share its connection. While it’s limited to dial-up it’s still a dedicated connection without the mess of a tied up land line.
After setting up everything and applying a few tweaks, I attempted the connection.
Connected.
As exciting as this was, it didn’t last very long. It connected for a few seconds and the connection was lost, no carrier. I spent more time than I should have trying to make this work without success. I think I’ll set this project aside temporarily.
4 Comments, Comment or Ping
“Why not setup a dial-up server on my desktop and have the Dreamcast dial in to it and share its connection. While it’s limited to dial-up it’s still a dedicated connection without the mess of a tied up land line.”
Woah. How the hell did you actually do this?
I would love to know the details.
Mar 24th, 2004
Talkin’ about PPP. Yeah, you know me.
Mar 24th, 2004
Jake -
Maybe you will have better luck!
I run win98 on my other pc. I downloaded a NAT program, I tried commsocks and winroute lite.
Setup the dial-up server type PPP, enable software compression.
Then went into the registry and edited the answer command for the modem to fool windows into picking up the line without it ringing, “ATA” and set the server to allow caller access.
For the dreamcast, fill out the internet connection use the same password that was set for the dialup server, enter whatever dial number, your DNS1 and DNS2….then you set it up for blind dial so it won’t wait for a dial tone. Change the modem init dtring to “AT&F0″
Just connect phone cable from DC to pc line in and …well hopefully it’ll work. I’m typing all this from memory because I tried it a bah-zillion times with a variety of different settings. There’s quite a few resources out there for this method, let me know if you figure something out.
Mar 24th, 2004
haha, Thanks for the link dunsany.
Perhaps that will be my next venture.
Mar 24th, 2004
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