dreamcast SD adaptor built, but dreamshell english site is down!? just my luck

[Mike26]

hey guys last night i finally sat down and got to work....

I went to the dreamshell website in english translation, and it is down. So i tried dcemulation forums to look, its down and been hacked... Tried benheck forums, only idiot trolls there in dreamcast section...

Does anyone know how to load dreamshell? like how to format the sd card and what goes on the sd card? I tried to gather what I could form google searches but came up with the dreamshell cdi, which doesn't load anything, i do see the led light on my sd adaptor but i dont know what to format on there... I think i built it correctly, but i can't be sure since I don't know how to setup software since all instructions are missing, or in russian and google translator doesnt help really. Anyone have experience with this stuff?

 

[rcantor77]

I only did a google for dreamshell and this came up...

http://gueux-forum.net/index.php?showtopic=191318

Is that what you are looking for?

I had never heard of this until now and I am very interested. Got a Dreamcast in my Naomi cab and would be great not to have to change the CDs... let me know where you get with it.

Where can you buy them from?

 

[Mike26]

nope i found this too ive been scouring google since last night, this is outdated v3 not v4.11 and doesn't hold any specific info on how to setup the formatting of the sd card, whether or not dreamshell .cdi that i dl'd and burned should have the dreamshell os on it or not, whether or not the disc i burned is just a sd launcher, so it if it tells the dreamcast to load image from sd card etc. Very difficult to gather from the net i guess. thanks for the help tho rcantor, yea man this sucker should be cool once i can get it running. I'm kind of stuck, unsure how to even test it. the led is lit all the time, but no way to know if my dreamcast laser is not loading the disc or if it cannot read it correctly or if its reading it fine and going to the sd card to look to boot or not

 

[Professor Plum]

I bought a SD adapter from a guy in china. It plugs into the serial port of the dreamcast.
Here is the link. I still have not tried it because I have way too many projects going on but one of these days I will try it out.
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=9661485967

 

[Billkwando]

Wow, I've never heard of this either and we got mad dreamcasts up in this heezy. It would be nice to load up Shenmue 2 without a boot disc.

That link above seems slightly english defficient.

 

[Mike26]

yea dude info for this project is scattered all the funk over the 'net. but i got it working, turns out the dreamshell cdi was burned on hp cdr that my one dreamcast doesn't like. Once i reburned it on different media it booted and mounted my sd card. Man this is cool now i just need to fit it inside the case of my dreamcast. Stay tuned fellas.

 

[Mike26]

install is all done

thing is cool

some games run ok but most have hiccups. every compatible rip needs to be cleaned and converted from cdi to iso format. Just throw that on the sd card and boot up to dreamshell. Open the file manager and point to the sd card, click on the iso and hit accept to run.

easy as that.

 

[distropia]

Could it be done with the dreamshell running entirely from the SD? I'm looking at a DC f*ck up drive.

Also, I've entered on http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=9661485967 and the page is in a perfect chinese language, so I don't understand a single word and google translator can not translate images with text.
Does that thing works well?

 

[Mike26]

not really because you need to load up a program to tell the dreamcast to go to the SD card as far as i know. The only other way would be well if you soldered a reprogrammable bios in, and somehow managed to flash the bios either before hand or via a pc with a programmer or another dreamcast to flash the new bios with dreamshell, then the dreamcast would boot up straight to dreamshell bypassing the gd rom. The bios chips are tough to come by, i know some dude on benheck.com forums who was supposed to save a chip for me when he put in a 15 chip order with some chinese company but looks like the guy's a flaker. Update on my sd card, it stopped working i need to open it back up and reflow some connections. arrrrh

 

[mastamuzz]

the forum I found with more info is in assamblergames.com there are also some geniuses and wizards there always willing to help like in this forums
look on this thread and they will help you with the BIOS chip
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32250&highlight=dreamcast+dream+shell

APE haves some chips up for sale he can even preload them for you so you only have to install, also with the sexy boot screen from the devkit!

also some Hong Kong stuff for non tech guys http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29679

for what I've seen running games from the card is not 100% accurate on sync but I haven't tried this myself so is just speculation and 3rd hand info!
I want to wait a little bit more because this is still on the dev stage!

 

[N30_G30_speed]

Yesterday I got my SD reader in my mailbox... I'm very frustrated, the CD with dreamshell that came along seems to be empty or at least none of my computers detects the data in it. I got the dreamshell iso (around 6mb) from the internet and recorded it with the DiskJuggler (that I use for all games for the DC) still after burning 3 99mins CDs I couldn't get it to work... I wonder if its the mode I'm selecting, or the CDs I'm using. This should be a god damn piece of cake but I still can't make it work... I fear there's a compatibility issue with my dreamcast lens...
Is there anyone who has the SD reader (not installed but as a separate thing...) that can tell me the steps to burn the damn Dreamshell properly?

 

[metallizer]

there is a very specific way to burn DC media. Can't you find a dreamshell cdi instead of iso image?

 

[N30_G30_speed]

actually I made a mistake, I meant it was a .dsi file image

 

[DanAdamKOF]

Do these all interface over the DC's serial port? Have they figured out how to get any sort of decent read speed from it? Or do you just deal with everything reading in at balls-slow-bits-per-second for the sake of not changing discs?

 

[N30_G30_speed]

Do these all interface over the DC's serial port? Have they figured out how to get any sort of decent read speed from it? Or do you just deal with everything reading in at balls-slow-bits-per-second for the sake of not changing discs?

I promise to let you know once I get it to work

 

[metallizer]

actually I made a mistake, I meant it was a .dsi file image

you mean cdi, right?

try another brand of cdr media, it's worth a shot.

 

[N30_G30_speed]

So I finally got it to work.
I used regular Verbatim cd-r 75mins.
And I downloaded the Dreamshell 4 beta 4, I've been downloading different BOR mods all weekend long, some are really crappy others are really fun