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Comment by jsiepkes | Hacker News Reader

Well the hack had a really low entry barrier. As in; no hardware modifications needed. You could just download an ISO from the net and you were good to go with your unmodified Dreamcast.

In contrast the other consoles in that era Xbox, PlayStation, etc. all needed hardware modifications in order to run copied content.

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The Xbox was software hackable. I did it about 4 years ago. You just had to load a corrupted save file for Mechwarrior and it booted linux

Well, for PS2 a soft mod became possible after Mr. Brow's "Independence" exploit around 2003.

Sidestepping the "Mechacon" (the DVD driver chip) happened a few years later, modifying ISO to mimic a "video" DVD and using a "loader" resident in RAM...

There was actually a trick for the PlayStation that allowed you to play pirated games without any hardware mods. It involved starting a game with the CD case open, and using your finger to stop the CD from spinning at certain points. I was quite young at the time and never mastered the method, and we got a hardware mod for the console at a later point.

Wow, that brings back memories. IIRC, you actually had to (while booting/disc spinning) pull out the a retail disc at a certain point, put in your burned disc, and do that exchange once more.

It wasn't hard, just getting the timing down.

I remember a hardware mod that was just a spring you put in the door latch sensor to prevent it from knowing that you had opened the lid. There was a special loader disk you put in first that got it started, then stopped the disk so you could swap in your burned copy.

> In contrast the other consoles in that era Xbox, PlayStation, etc. all needed hardware modifications in order to run copied content.

I wouldn't know anything about that. But I did love the original Splinter Cell and Mechassault games. 007 Agent Under Fire was also halfway decent.

You wouldn't want to lose your progress though, so I'd also suggest picking up an Action Replay so you can back up your game saves to PC. Just in case you lose your XBox or something.

If you need instructions, you could search `splinter cell action replay xbox` and probably find what you need...

But, and maybe I'm mis-remembering, how many people were actually active netizens at this point in history, able to find the ISO? Thinking back to when the dreamcast was a big console - I don't feel like it was common enough to really make a dent in dreamcast owners?

Also, and again only from vague memory, wasn't the dreamcast itself underselling drastically. If it was game sales that broke the manufacturer then maybe - but I recall the console itself being a bit of a flop?

> But, and maybe I'm mis-remembering, how many people were actually active netizens at this point in history, able to find the ISO?

Does it matter? You only need a few people to download and burn the CDs, and sell them in stalls or out of a backpack. From what I remember from that era, physical distribution of warez through burned CDs was very common.

This was also the case for PC games and those made healthy profits in that era too. So blaming piracy seems to be more pushing a certain idea than the actual cause of Dreamcast issues. Especially since the hardware itself sold poorly - if piracy would be to blame, you'd see a lot of unit sales and low game sales. Which did not happen.

At this point in history, at least in the U.K., you could go round the back of your local car boot sale on a Saturday to find someone selling unauthorised copies of console games.

> But, and maybe I'm mis-remembering, how many people were actually active netizens at this point in history, able to find the ISO? Thinking back to when the dreamcast was a big console - I don't feel like it was common enough to really make a dent in dreamcast owners?

As I remember from my high school days, there were lots of people who were downloading ISOs (i.e. in their work or university, where they had access to fat 1Mb/s pipes), burning them and selling at a significant profit. Of course it was illegal, but still they managed to sell them through their friends or from improvised stalls on the weekend computer market, etc.

I remember a friend of mine giving me a big binder full of burned Dreamcast games after his console died and he moved on to a PS2. He certainly wasn't the technical type, I think his Dad "bought them from a bloke down the pub", so to speak.

You could also rent a game from Blockbuster, and clone it. I know folks who did this. I don’t really know if more was involved as it was a bit before my time.

> how many people were actually active netizens at this point in history, able to find the ISO?

One active netizen with a CD writer was enough for an entire school :-).

I don't know what impact this had over sales. Back then (~2001, 2002) I knew people who bought a Dreamcast precisely because they could get cheap games.

My last class in highschool was study hall. I sold a ton of bootlegs and took orders from classmates and even teachers. Made about 50 dollars a day after costs.

ISO files were available then. They were usually zipped split into anywhere from 10-50 different zip or rar files per ISO. Then I remember usually having to click through some ads or something for each file. It was a long frustrating process. Chances are the download would fuck up on one of the pieces, one of them would be corrupt, or by the time I got them all the emulators I had weren't able to play them all that well.

I don't know if you're entirely misremembering, I had a Dreamcast around this time and I wasted a ton of time trying to pirate games - I'd set them to download and wait a few days to get the image. Then I'd have to use my buddies PC to burn (I had a Mac and you needed to use Nero or disk juggler on PC to burn them), write that in a special format and then hope the dreamcast would play it. Touching the computer while it was burning back then was a no-no too. I must've downloaded at least 20 games, but I think I only ever got one to work (Crazy Taxi), but I made plenty of coasters. The dreamcast taught me a lesson about the value of my time as I probably should have just bought the games. I saw Crazy Taxi for free in the Xbox store so I downloaded it the other day to kind of give me some perspective on how times have changed, it downloaded in under 10 minutes and was running. Back in dreamcast days, that was like a 10 day project.

I certainly don't think piracy killed the Dreamcast, it was a lot of built up 'bad will' by Sega and lousy execution. Third parties didn't want to develop for Sega, because Sega was flaky. I remember I had the broadband adapter for the Dreamcast, but it was only supported by one game(Quake). If I wanted to play NBA2K or NFL2K online I'd have to physically remove the ethernet adapter and plugin the dialup modem. Those games would have been great over ethernet, but as it was dialup online play had its share of frustrations. I had a Genesis, a Saturn, Master System and Game Gear before the Dreamcast but I think if Sega came out with another system after Dreamcast I may have had to bolt the company, they were the epitome of 'overpromising and underdelivering,' piracy gave them an excuse to focus in on the things they were better at (not selling consoles).

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