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My own story is complicated by the fact that my family moved trans-Atlantic at the time. In fact, I got a DC in the UK after the PS2 because we moved back and I

My own story is complicated by the fact that my family moved trans-Atlantic at the time. In fact, I got a DC in the UK after the PS2 because we moved back and I got a system and games for cheap from a newspaper classified ad, around late 2002. I suspect my parents didn't feel the need to upgrade from dial-up to DSL or DOCSIS while we were planning a 5000 mile move. We went from 1p-a-minute dial up ("put a timer on the stove, you have 15 minutes!") in 1998 to unlimited (but still with one phone line; drag the cord from the PC to the kitchen and hope Grandma doesn't try to call) a year-ish after, and then got 1.2Mbps DSL once we were in Canada in mid 2002. My friend down the street upgraded and got a new PC around 1999 or 2000. I don't remember the specs, but it was much nicer than my dad's 300MHz K6-2 with no USB ports. For a while we even needed to use CursorKeys because the V90 modem used the same COM port as the mouse! So I used their PC for Napster, then Kazaa and WinMX, for 128kbps MP3s and "which pixel is Neo?" 700MB copies of The Matrix (sidenote: I warned him against searching for xXx featuring Vin Diesel, but he had to learn the hard way...) We were aware of "chipped" consoles, and my family even asked the local indie game store if they could do it ("That'z Entertainment" in Lakeside, if any locals are reading this) but my only experiences with game piracy at that point was my dad's friend who had a modded PSX ("holy crap it says SCEA instead of SCEE!") and then the same friend as the paragraph above getting a PSX that his Army dad brought back from Eastern Europe along with Ice Age on DVD. DC piracy was 100% a thing in its lifetime, but I still don't think it was widespread enough to have harmed the console's chances. The company was just out of cash. > There were also release groups -- because of course there were -- that specialized partly in shrinking a larger (>650 or >700MB) DC title down to a size that would fit onto a CD-R, or sometimes onto two of them. (That involved Deep Magic, for the time, and implicitly involved a download stage.) Even years later I was annoyed that the CDI version of Skies of Arcadia (Echelon, maybe?) didn't support the VGA box.

ssl-3 3y ago
You've travelled a lot more than I have. I've mostly stuck around Ohio. I suspect that we're about the same age. Man, com ports and IRQs: I had 14 functional RS-232 ports on one machine, once, between the BocaBoard (with 10P10C jacks), the STB serial card that 3dfx promised to never erase documentation for (it is erased -- *thanks, nVidia*), and the couple of serial ports that were built into a motherboard or multi-IO card at that time. Once configured to be actually-working, which I did mostly as a dare to myself, I could find no combination of connected serialized stuff that would upset it. And that was fun having a ridiculous amount of serial ports: I had dumb terminals scattered around, and I had machines connected with SLIP and PLIP. (Ethernet seemed expensive, and "spare laptops" or "closet laptops" were not at all a thing yet.) Anyhow, piracy: My friends and I were mostly into PSX back then. I may or may not have installed a dozen mod chips for my friends so I could get a discount on my own mod chip. (I was not trying to make money.) Aaand there may have been quite a lot of piracy. I remember coming home and checking the mailbox to find a copy of Gran Turismo 2, with a hand-written note from a friend who I didn't expect to be able to succeed in duping a disc with Nero, but he'd done it, and hand-delivered it, and it worked. I subsequently played the fuck out of that game. But you've clearly got a different perspective. And that's interesting to me. > Even years later I was annoyed that the CDI version of Skies of Arcadia (Echelon, maybe?) didn't support the VGA box. I've never actually-played a CDI system (I do recall poking at them in retail displays), and I don't know what "the VGA box" is in this context. Can you elaborate?
- SpecialistK 3y ago
  > I've never actually-played a CDI system (I do recall poking at them in retail displays), and I don't know what "the VGA box" is in this context. Can you elaborate? Oh, sorry for the confusion. CDI and GDI are disc images for Dreamcast games, like ISO files. Not the Philips CDi game console. The VGA box is the video output for Dreamcast, which supported 640x480 progressive scan video, most games supported it but a few didn't.
  - ssl-3 3y ago
    Good information. Thanks! I did do a little bit for/with Dreamcast at one point a long time ago, but I never actually owned one for myself. It has always seemed like a nice platform when I've played games on one -- however that happened. At one point I probably knew the difference between formats, but I've definitely forgotten. It has been a very long time. (In other Sega news: The thing I really miss is the Virtua Fighter port to the Sega Saturn.)

ssl-3 3y ago

You've travelled a lot more than I have. I've mostly stuck around Ohio. I suspect that we're about the same age. Man, com ports and IRQs: I had 14 functional RS-232 ports on one machine, once, between the BocaBoard (with 10P10C jacks), the STB serial card that 3dfx promised to never erase documentation for (it is erased -- *thanks, nVidia*), and the couple of serial ports that were built into a motherboard or multi-IO card at that time. Once configured to be actually-working, which I did mostly as a dare to myself, I could find no combination of connected serialized stuff that would upset it. And that was fun having a ridiculous amount of serial ports: I had dumb terminals scattered around, and I had machines connected with SLIP and PLIP. (Ethernet seemed expensive, and "spare laptops" or "closet laptops" were not at all a thing yet.) Anyhow, piracy: My friends and I were mostly into PSX back then. I may or may not have installed a dozen mod chips for my friends so I could get a discount on my own mod chip. (I was not trying to make money.) Aaand there may have been quite a lot of piracy. I remember coming home and checking the mailbox to find a copy of Gran Turismo 2, with a hand-written note from a friend who I didn't expect to be able to succeed in duping a disc with Nero, but he'd done it, and hand-delivered it, and it worked. I subsequently played the fuck out of that game. But you've clearly got a different perspective. And that's interesting to me. > Even years later I was annoyed that the CDI version of Skies of Arcadia (Echelon, maybe?) didn't support the VGA box. I've never actually-played a CDI system (I do recall poking at them in retail displays), and I don't know what "the VGA box" is in this context. Can you elaborate?

SpecialistK 3y ago
> I've never actually-played a CDI system (I do recall poking at them in retail displays), and I don't know what "the VGA box" is in this context. Can you elaborate? Oh, sorry for the confusion. CDI and GDI are disc images for Dreamcast games, like ISO files. Not the Philips CDi game console. The VGA box is the video output for Dreamcast, which supported 640x480 progressive scan video, most games supported it but a few didn't.
- ssl-3 3y ago
  Good information. Thanks! I did do a little bit for/with Dreamcast at one point a long time ago, but I never actually owned one for myself. It has always seemed like a nice platform when I've played games on one -- however that happened. At one point I probably knew the difference between formats, but I've definitely forgotten. It has been a very long time. (In other Sega news: The thing I really miss is the Virtua Fighter port to the Sega Saturn.)