Weeee, got me a Dreamcast.

[amigean]

you can run linux on dreamcast - nothing fancy though, too slow to be usable and no ram left after boot up

its biggest attraction as a console atm is that it is the only reasonably specced console that sports a cd-rom (dubbed GD-ROM because it supports larger capacities) - which enables the average user to just burn software and play around with it..

some its games are amazing, even by todays standards

it would make a good candidate for UAE, but noone has ported it yet. Having said that a bunch of guys over at
www.dcemu.co.uk have recently announced (about a month ago) that they are working on a universal M68000-compatible emulator to support software from Amiga 500s, Atari STs and early Macintoshes...whether this materialises we will have to wait and see

There was someone here a while ago that claimed to have booted Workbench on dreamcast, or was it PS2?

 

[amigean]

Back in 2002 whether there are some dreamcasts that CAN'T play copied games had been a subject of controversy in the dreamcast community . There was a lot of people that claimed all dreamcasts can play any cd-rom you can throw at them and another lot of people claiming that they were sure they have seen dreamcasts that have some mysterious copy-lock.

To my recollection, the debate lasted a while, but no conclusive proof was ever presented that in fact there are DCs that are copy-locked. :-?

So chances are that if they do exist they are extremely rare. I have owned three of them (bought in two different countries) and all of them have been able to boot off and play normal CD-Rs.

-With regards to the sega web browser - let's say it was never the best, it just got the job done.

Recently, a bunch of nice people came up with a homebrew internet solution for the dreamcast, incl. browser, irc client and maybe more (I never got the time to try it).

It is called "psilocybindreams" and you can donwload an iso of it from http://www.psilocybindreams.com/ (totally legal)

You can find other interesting freeware games, emulators (ScummVM, SNES, Genesis, GBA etc) in the following websites:

http://www.dcemulation.com/
http://www.dreamcast-scene.com/  

For some weird reason (probably to do with overcoming GD-rom sensitivities) you'll have to use a pc cd-burning software called "Diskjuggler"

Oh and a bit of advice, burn all your CDs at low speeds (x2-x8). Dreamcasts can be picky with data-error prone CD-Rs (which is what happens when you burn a CD at a speed say >x24)

I'm no big fan of DC but my 5 y.o. brother really appreciates it. :lol:

I hope this helps!