Collection of some Dreamcast hacking information with other OSs like Linux, NetBSD.
Last tested Linux release on real hardware: dreamcast-linux 6.15.1
Rich Knowledge Base of Dreamcast hacking
Many great articles of technical details of the Dreamcast, like howto burn bootable CD-Rs, format of Bootloaders, System calls.
Dreamcast Architecture | A Practical Analysis
"This article describes how to upgrade a Dreamcast from 16MB to 32MB of system SDRAM. I have done this exactly once, so this is still rather experimental. Please only attempt this with a spare Dreamcast you don’t mind destroying."
Calibrate Laser of GDROM Drive / Laser Calibration
X.org server on NetBSD/dreamcast 9.1
NetBSD/dreamcast "root on GD-ROM" Boot CD Demonstration
Slightly patched version of img4dc tools
img4dc converts ISO files to CDI, that can be used on a gdemu
Development environment and tools for homebrew dc
Many code examples to be used with dc
Builds Linux distro in docker container with current linux kernel.
Restored the historic linuxdc project from 2001, with components form the time.
Dusting off Dreamcast Linux (Blog)
Dreamcast Linux tools bootdreams (Forum Post)
Old Files from 2001 that contain a working dreamcast-linux
Nice Docker Container that cross-compiles a dreamcast linux kernel, uses sh-boot loader (currently, doesnt boot for me and needs some customization eg CONFIG_SH_DREAMCAST)
Dusted-off Dreamcast Linux booting through GDEMU (YouTube)
Dreamcast emulator, e.g. boot a ISO:
gxemul -XEdreamcast -dco23965696:data.raw
NetBSD officially supports Dreamcast and it really works, supports many features and peripherals.
Booting NetBSD/dreamcast with GDEMU
"I've successfully booted it on my Dreamcast with a GDEMU by taking the generated data.raw generated by dc-burn-netbsd and converting it to a cdi with cdi4dc (https://github.com/Kazade/img4dc)."
The creation of a Live-CD to boot on the Dreamcast works flawless.
From NetBSD, install dc-tools from pkgsrc.
Create Live-CD with base system, create data.raw to boot.
dc-burn-netbsd -s base -l
data.raw from the build-script:
gxemul -XEdreamcast -dco23965696:data.raw
Burn Image as Multi-Session CD-R see https://mc.pp.se/dc/cdr.html
dd if=/dev/zero bs=2352 count=300 of=audio.raw
wodim dev=/dev/sr0 -v -multi -audio audio.raw
wodim dev=/dev/sr0 -v -multi -xa std-live.raw
Alternatively, the data.raw from dc-burn-netbsd can be converted to cdi format and put on gdemu to boot. For this you need the tool cdi4dc from img4dc.
cdi4dc data.raw output-for-gdemu.cdi
The resulting file can be put on gdemu and be booted.