LAN/BBA query & SDISO source code

[Megatron-UK]

Hi,

Is the source for SDISO available to the public? I was thinking that if we were to take the disk command redirection of SDISO and pair it with the LAN/BBA, it could be used to launch disk images from across the network; although the latency would be higher than the serial port, actual transfer speeds would be significantly higher (potentially in the realms of several megabytes per second).

I'm not sure whether the LAN/BBA hardware is initialised in Dreamshell though - you wouldn't need to have a full TCP/IP stack in order to use it, as you could simply use raw ethernet frames instead - the actual logic and sector reading could be handled by a process on the remote host.

If the source for SDISO is available, and the LAN/BBA is initialised and accessible within Dreamshell, this is something I'd love to have a go at!

[SWAT]

You are programmer?
I thought about it long ago and the new DS version did support BBA/LAN, but check it was not on anything. Until recently few days ago I received a BBA, now things will get better.
No open source, but they will be, someday

[Megatron-UK]

Not a programmer professionally, my day job is a Unix systems manager, but I have a Computer Science background (mainly OS design, distributed/network computing and high performance computing) and I have a love of tinkering :-)

How does SDISO work - does it stay resident in memory and intercept GDROM ioctl commands?

It's shame SDISO source is not released yet, I think there could be a multitude of possibilities by using it as a base.

[SWAT]

(13.05.2011 19:10)Megatron-UK писал(а):  How does SDISO work - does it stay resident in memory and intercept GDROM ioctl commands?

Yep.

[neoscriptor]

Megatron-UK писал(а):I was thinking that if we were to take the disk command redirection of SDISO and pair it with the LAN/BBA, it could be used to launch disk images from across the network

I too have been thinking about this for a long time. After hearing about SDISO, this was the first thing I wanted to investigate. Good to hear others have wanted to do it too! I'll be waiting anxiously for it to become open source, since it seems like it will be a great learning tool. But until then, I'm happy to hear you've got a BBA to play with, SWAT.

[DoctorNicholas]

BBAs are too expensive for what their worth. Ive got 5 ps2 bbas i bought for $0.25 each, therefore a dreamcast bba should be no less than about $0.25. is it possible to make one? And do you mean have a streaming service like onlive?

[arthur2shedsjackson]

That's definitely the problem - Dreamcast BBA's will set you back at least £100/130 Euros so, even if it did load up iso's much faster, very few people would use it.

Is there any way to improve standard iso loading from the SD Card Adapter? I think the biggest obstacle at the moment is CDDA.

[neoscriptor]

Those PS2 BBAs are still going for $15-$20, although you can occasionally find deals like you did. An unfortunate possible side effect of being able to read isos over LAN would be an increase in BBA price.

Like Megatron-UK said, you could use raw ethernet frames instead of a full TCP/IP stack to cut down on overhead. i.e. This would not be like onlive, because it would only be sending i/o commands to a computer on your same local network. However, that IS an interesting idea to have those commands sent over the internet to a remote server, but your RTT would probably get prohibitively large.

[Anthony817]

But the Dreamcast BBA's are only more expensive because of how rare they are, and the fact that you can only play 2 games online with it make it a great novelty device, but I just don't have that kind of money for something that will do nothing for me really.

I would set up a pc-dc server, but that is too much crap to mess with.

[neoscriptor]

I never had much luck with the pc-dc server stuff. Oddly enough I ended up meeting the guy that wrote that tutorial while I was in college. (small world)

Perhaps then, this would make the BBA no longer just a novelty device, and at least somewhat justify the price to people other than developers.