> The other problem we need to solve is swap. Linux, or at least not this Linux, won't let you use a swapfile hosted over NFS; swapon will give you an illegal argument error and refuse to enable it.
Yes, or via the (very slow) built-in serial port. The broadband adapters are quite rare.
Interestingly, for a long time there were no publicly available tools for or docs on dumping GD-ROMs. New releases from Echelon and Kalisto would appear promptly, so there was obviously a way, but you could only partake in the rampant piracy by downloading the (occasionally-massaged to fit on a CD) disc images online.
A lot of discussion in the (tbf probably quite young and inexperienced) community was around how this was possible. A popular theory/rumor at the time was that they were using CD drives with modified firmware, for example.
This probably also helped keep the piracy amd homebrew scenes fairly well separated on the Dreamcast, as there was a lot of info and examples around running your own code. This is in contrast to eg. the Xbox scene, which was in many ways the equally vibrant successor to the DC scene, but where piracy and homebrew seemed much more intertwined. Not least because all the homebrew binaries were built using the off-limits Microsoft SDK, so you had to go to some shady FTP site via links found on IRC to download them.
> The other problem we need to solve is swap. Linux, or at least not this Linux, won't let you use a swapfile hosted over NFS; swapon will give you an illegal argument error and refuse to enable it.
To my shock, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_block_device says
> The protocol was originally developed for Linux 2.1.55 and released in 1997.
so I wonder if you could use that? It's better suited to swap anyways.
Yes, NBD works. I use it to give my 256Mb Pi a swap off the sdcard. You could also use iSCSI now.
Hold on now. Swap over NFS? I’m amazed this is viable. I guess the difference between line and device speed wasn’t as vast as it is now.
Having read the article it makes more sense. They need additional capacity for the RAM disk.
And this is how GD-ROMs got ripped. Broadband adapter and the shoot out the data over Ethernet
Yes, or via the (very slow) built-in serial port. The broadband adapters are quite rare.
Interestingly, for a long time there were no publicly available tools for or docs on dumping GD-ROMs. New releases from Echelon and Kalisto would appear promptly, so there was obviously a way, but you could only partake in the rampant piracy by downloading the (occasionally-massaged to fit on a CD) disc images online.
A lot of discussion in the (tbf probably quite young and inexperienced) community was around how this was possible. A popular theory/rumor at the time was that they were using CD drives with modified firmware, for example.
This probably also helped keep the piracy amd homebrew scenes fairly well separated on the Dreamcast, as there was a lot of info and examples around running your own code. This is in contrast to eg. the Xbox scene, which was in many ways the equally vibrant successor to the DC scene, but where piracy and homebrew seemed much more intertwined. Not least because all the homebrew binaries were built using the off-limits Microsoft SDK, so you had to go to some shady FTP site via links found on IRC to download them.