Dreamcast Thought: Using Dreamcast as a PC. How far can you get?

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

I legitimately wonder, if you ran DOS-Box on the Dreamcast, how far would you get? How functional would the system be as a really crappy 90’s era computer?

My guess is that you can run some lower power applications, I imagine you’d probably have it crash if you tried to run many games on it. It’s possible that the system would ask for RAM that isn’t there and the whole thing would just freeze.

 

[Bonkers225]

Probably as far as driving a 1920's Model T Ford on today's highway.

 

[Sorion]

considering it's got 16MB of ram and a 200MHz CPU that's not even x86, probably not so far, it would probably perform like a decent windows 95 era PC, the CPU in particular should be faster than anything from the pentium 1 era, but without any compatible software and a limited I/O due to it's console nature, I'd say it's not worth it to use it as a PC

 

[RETRO-VETRO RETRO-VETRO]

The Dreamcast’s 200MHz SH-4 CPU and 16MB of RAM make it a terrible host for DOSBox, which is already a heavy emulator. You might get away with some early text-based DOS apps or CGA games, but anything that needs VGA graphics, Sound Blaster audio, or extended memory will likely crash or crawl. No hard drive, slow I/O, and minimal RAM means you're essentially emulating a 90s PC on hardware that was never meant to handle general-purpose computing.

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

I wonder, secondly, how far you’d get with Linux? I’m sure a Linux extension has been made for it.

 

[RETRO-VETRO RETRO-VETRO]

I wonder, secondly, how far you’d get with Linux? I’m sure a Linux extension has been made for it.

There are indeed Linux ports for the Dreamcast, some based on KallistiOS and others on stripped-down Debian builds, but they are extremely limited. With only 16MB of RAM, no native hard drive, and a modest 200MHz CPU, the system struggles with anything beyond the most basic tasks.You might manage to boot into a framebuffer terminal and run a few ultra-lightweight utilities, perhaps even compile small programs if you're persistent. However, graphical environments, modern networking stacks, or package managers expecting a full Linux environment are effectively out of reach.

 

[PacGuy]

All the way

 

[MajesticSiN]

I feel this wouldn't be a great idea.

 

[Zerpina]

And the fact that the Dreamcast uses a RISC based CPU, probably not really far, and as @RETRO-VETRO said, even something like Tiny Core Linux would struggle to run on a Dreamcast

 

[qw90700]

Only think about using a PC as a Dreamcast!!! lol

 

[PhaseJump]

You can set up and run netbsd on a Dreamcast and go from there, but it is not practical or useful.

Apparently DC's Linux isn't really maintained, netbsd is ported but X11 isn't running very well on it.

 

[Sorion]

To be fair, the PS2 had linux support at some point hahaha, It was developed by sony itself and it ran some ancient version of Linux with a full desktop environment and everything, on just 32MB of RAM, which is kinda crazy if you think about it, maybe if some company tried really hard they could get some kind of comand line based OS on the dreamcast but why would anyone do that?

wait, this legend managed to run doom on play station 2 linux, through an ancient version of DosBox, it runs at like 5 frames per minute tough:

 

[petran79]

maybe a modified version of Windows CE could browse text Web pages

 

[qw90700]

To be fair, the PS2 had linux support at some point hahaha, It was developed by sony itself and it ran some ancient version of Linux with a full desktop environment and everything, on just 32MB of RAM, which is kinda crazy if you think about it, maybe if some company tried really hard they could get some kind of comand line based OS on the dreamcast but why would anyone do that?

wait, this legend managed to run doom on play station 2 linux, through an ancient version of DosBox, it runs at like 5 frames per minute tough:

It turned a PS2 into a PC alright and it was not useless after all considering it was 2002 despite it would be the one of the most ancient low end PC even for its time, yet it was useful enough. When you are poor and can only afford a PS2 instead of a PC it was okay and it could make sense more in the context of how Japan was back then. Yet Sony intended to satisfy the PlayStation tinkerers from the Yaroze days to support indie game developers in their own way so considering how low video game developers were in these days it was a good idea to foster game development in the indie scene and thus scout people and all. After all the famous example is the FF7 parody Fatal Fantasy 7's developer Mitsuru Kamiyama scouted by Square thanks to Net Yaruze and he still works at Square Enix.

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

This whole thread makes me very happy that I’m not some poor sucker who’s only friend and computational potential is a Dreamcast.

 

[Zerpina]

As I recall, Sony only cared about putting Linux on the PS2 for the UK tax break they would have gotten if the PS2 could have been classified as a computer. But when that fell through, Sony said
"Fuck a bunch of Linux." and dropped support, then and there.

Court ruling: In 2006, a UK court ruled that the PlayStation 2 was not an "automatic data processing machine" (a PC) and therefore did not qualify for tax breaks that would have been available to computers.

 

[Ferik]

To be fair, the PS2 had linux support at some point hahaha, It was developed by sony itself and it ran some ancient version of Linux with a full desktop environment and everything, on just 32MB of RAM, which is kinda crazy if you think about it, maybe if some company tried really hard they could get some kind of comand line based OS on the dreamcast but why would anyone do that?

wait, this legend managed to run doom on play station 2 linux, through an ancient version of DosBox, it runs at like 5 frames per minute tough:

The big difference is the PS2 has a hard drive bay, and a PATA interface. The Dreamcast's only forms of storage are discs, which are read only, and the VMU Memory Cards, which are slow and can only hold 128kb. Having access to several GB or storage helps the PS2 immensely in that regard.

 

[Sorion]

It turned a PS2 into a PC alright and it was not useless after all considering it was 2002 despite it would be the one of the most ancient low end PC even for its time, yet it was useful enough. When you are poor and can only afford a PS2 instead of a PC it was okay and it could make sense more in the context of how Japan was back then. Yet Sony intended to satisfy the PlayStation tinkerers from the Yaroze days to support indie game developers in their own way so considering how low video game developers were in these days it was a good idea to foster game development in the indie scene and thus scout people and all. After all the famous example is the FF7 parody Fatal Fantasy 7's developer Mitsuru Kamiyama scouted by Square thanks to Net Yaruze and he still works at Square Enix.

sorry if the comment sounded mean towards the idea, it was not my intention hahaha, I think running linux on the PS2 was a cool concept and I'm glad it happened, and it's very impressive that sony was the one promoting the idea in the first place, it's a shame they went against it a couple of years later with the ps3.
But yeah, in a nutshell, if the PS2 can't run dos box properly, it would be near impossible on the Dreamcast