SDL and the Sega Dreamcast

Has anyone put any thought into what it would take to get SDL running on a
Sega Dreamcast? Or better, has anyone tried to get SDL running in the
Dreamcast WinCE?

I’m not a Dreamcast developer; I’m just curious if I could become one,
with my existing knowlege and experience with SDL. :-)–
Neil Stevens
multivac at fcmail.com
@Neil_Stevens

keyserver search.keyserver.net
Fingerprint 86EA ECD4 F258 FB1B D88F 9136 4F49 90F8 CD3E 5C1C

Thu, 07 Dec 2000 Neil Stevens wrote:

Has anyone put any thought into what it would take to get SDL running on a
Sega Dreamcast? Or better, has anyone tried to get SDL running in the
Dreamcast WinCE?

Why would that be better…? The impression I’ve got so far is that WinCE is
just for quick’n’dirty porting from Windows; not for serious game development.

//David

…- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' ..- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -’

Neil Stevens wrote:

Has anyone put any thought into what it would take to get SDL running on a
Sega Dreamcast?

Hardware specs that are more involved than
’It has an SH-4 processor’> Or better, has anyone tried to get SDL running in the

Dreamcast WinCE?

I’m not a Dreamcast developer; I’m just curious if I could become one,
with my existing knowlege and experience with SDL. :slight_smile:

“Neil Stevens” wrote

Has anyone put any thought into what it would take to get SDL running on a
Sega Dreamcast? Or better, has anyone tried to get SDL running in the
Dreamcast WinCE?

I’m not a Dreamcast developer; I’m just curious if I could become one,
with my existing knowlege and experience with SDL. :slight_smile:

heh, slashdot is running a story that someone got linux running on
their dreamcast. not sure how up to snuff the framebuffer code is,

this was one of the first things that came to my mind. take the
article on how to make a boot CD with linux, throw in a bit of
SDL (when it is ready for dreamcast) and instant dreamcast games :]

heh, slashdot is running a story that someone got linux running on
their dreamcast. not sure how up to snuff the framebuffer code is,

this was one of the first things that came to my mind. take the
article on how to make a boot CD with linux, throw in a bit of
SDL (when it is ready for dreamcast) and instant dreamcast games :]

Yay! Circus Linux! for Dreamcast! :slight_smile:

-bill!

There is also a linux port for the dreamcast
as well as gnu tools avalable, so you don’t
have to fork out lots of money for the SDK
from Sega. SDL could be done if someone put
time into it.

om

Gnu tools for dreamcast:
http://www.barcode-search.com/dcdevstuff/devdev.htm

A great dreamcast resource page:
http://mc.pp.se/dc/

Linux for dreamcast:
http://jove.prohosting.com/~sonikku/dclinux1.jpg
http://jove.prohosting.com/~sonikku/dclinux2.jpg
ftp://ftp.dreamcastlinux.org/pub/binary_kernel/> ----- Original Message -----

From: Mark Kimsal [mailto:chugadie.geo@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2000 9:24 PM
To: sdl at lokigames.com
Subject: Re: [SDL] SDL and the Sega Dreamcast

Neil Stevens wrote:

Has anyone put any thought into what it would take to get SDL running on a
Sega Dreamcast?

Hardware specs that are more involved than
‘It has an SH-4 processor’

Or better, has anyone tried to get SDL running in the
Dreamcast WinCE?

I’m not a Dreamcast developer; I’m just curious if I could become one,
with my existing knowlege and experience with SDL. :slight_smile:

Neil Stevens wrote:

Has anyone put any thought into what it would take to get SDL running on a
Sega Dreamcast? Or better, has anyone tried to get SDL running in the
Dreamcast WinCE?

I’m not a Dreamcast developer; I’m just curious if I could become one,
with my existing knowlege and experience with SDL. :slight_smile:

A friend and I did some research into this tonight. Here’s what we
found:

a) It’s entirely possible to hack up the (binary only) Linux boot image
that was linked to on Slashdot to supply your own ramdisk. After a bit
of gzip header searching and dd’ing, we managed to produce and boot a CD
image with a modified ramdisk. Once you’ve managed to separate the
kernel from the ramdisk image, you can just gunzip the ramdisk, mount it
as loopback, and modify it to your liking.

This should become easier once the developer releases the Dreamcast
Linux kernel source. (I believe he has to at some point, due to the
GPL.)

b) The Dreamcast Linux kernel is an SH4 2.4.0test8 kernel with a PowerVR
framebuffer driver. The SH3 is commonly used in handhelds, and the SH4
is a step up. The one in the Dreamcast is a 200MHz, 32-bit processor
with both big- and little-endian modes. Memory is only 24 megs, which
must hold the ramdisk and everything else. This will be less of a
problem once the Dreamcast CD drive is supported by the Linux kernel.
Input is accomplished with a keyboard adapter (sold separately).

c) gcc supports the SH4 (obviously, with the kernel working). It’s a
very immature backend, but it seems to be mostly functional. To get the
Dreamcast to execute arbitrary code, you’d compile and link the code
into an ELF file with the entry point at the very beginning and a
particular base address that I can’t remember right now (there are
linker options for these), objcopy it into a raw binary image, use an
open source utility (scramble.c) to scramble the image (since the
Dreamcast uses scatter-loading to obfuscate its binaries), name the file
1ST_READ.BIN, make an ISO image with this one file, append a 32K
bootloader (IP.BIN), and burn a CD. There are some details I’ve omitted;
this stuff is well documented if you know where to look. I’ll try to
gather some links.

d) A significant portion of the Dreamcast has been reverse engineered or
discovered from OEM specs. Audio, 2D video, the controllers, CD-ROM, and
VMU access are documented. Most of this is implemented in libdream, an
open source library. A number of people have already written simple and
not-so-simple games with this. Someone has even created an S3M music
player with a graphical interface. The problem with libdream is that
it’s not meant to work with an operating system; it’s designed for
building raw, to-the-metal binaries. (a hacker’s dream, but no good for
porting)

This leads me to believe that, minus the audio and some input device
code, SDL could just be recompiled with a cross compiler for Dreamcast
fbdev support. Once it was working, we could bring in libdream to
provide full controller and audio support. There’s no reason that the
Dreamcast couldn’t become a fully supported SDL target. It would be
great if we could get some free Dreamcast game development going. We’re
dealing with a cheap, compact 200MHz RISC box with 24 megs of RAM, a
CD-ROM that reads gigabyte CD’s, and high-performance dedicated video
hardware. There’s potential here.

I couldn’t resist having a bit of fun while I was logged into the
Dreamcast:
sh-1.04$ cat /dev/urandom > /dev/fb0
sh-1.04$ cat /dev/urandom > /dev/mem
(after which the kernel raised hell and I started singing “I crashed a
dreamcast! I crashed a dreamcast!”)

-John–
Underfull \account (badness 10000) has occurred while \spend is active
John R. Hall - Student, Georgia Tech - Contractor, Loki Software

[long informative message snipped]

There’s potential here.

Wow, good sleuthing, John. :slight_smile:

Drooling…
-Sam Lantinga, Lead Programmer, Loki Entertainment Software

So the Dreamcast will read home-made CDs then, or does it need spcial
modification before it does?
Will it read and CDs, but the official games are on the gigabyte CDs, and
therefore much more difficult to copy?

Ideally, you’d want a network card in there, so that you can boot the DC but
run frequently changed programs from elsewhere?
Is there a network card for the DC out yet? Keep getting mixed up with the
network/broadband/modem options between the DC, PSX2, X-Box etc…

Ben> ----- Original Message -----

From: John R. Hall [mailto:overcode@lokigames.com]
Sent: 10 December 2000 08:47
To: sdl at lokigames.com
Subject: Re: [SDL] SDL and the Sega Dreamcast

Neil Stevens wrote:

Has anyone put any thought into what it would take to get SDL running on a
Sega Dreamcast? Or better, has anyone tried to get SDL running in the
Dreamcast WinCE?

I’m not a Dreamcast developer; I’m just curious if I could become one,
with my existing knowlege and experience with SDL. :slight_smile:

A friend and I did some research into this tonight. Here’s what we
found:

a) It’s entirely possible to hack up the (binary only) Linux boot image
that was linked to on Slashdot to supply your own ramdisk. After a bit
of gzip header searching and dd’ing, we managed to produce and boot a CD
image with a modified ramdisk. Once you’ve managed to separate the
kernel from the ramdisk image, you can just gunzip the ramdisk, mount it
as loopback, and modify it to your liking.

This should become easier once the developer releases the Dreamcast
Linux kernel source. (I believe he has to at some point, due to the
GPL.)

b) The Dreamcast Linux kernel is an SH4 2.4.0test8 kernel with a PowerVR
framebuffer driver. The SH3 is commonly used in handhelds, and the SH4
is a step up. The one in the Dreamcast is a 200MHz, 32-bit processor
with both big- and little-endian modes. Memory is only 24 megs, which
must hold the ramdisk and everything else. This will be less of a
problem once the Dreamcast CD drive is supported by the Linux kernel.
Input is accomplished with a keyboard adapter (sold separately).

c) gcc supports the SH4 (obviously, with the kernel working). It’s a
very immature backend, but it seems to be mostly functional. To get the
Dreamcast to execute arbitrary code, you’d compile and link the code
into an ELF file with the entry point at the very beginning and a
particular base address that I can’t remember right now (there are
linker options for these), objcopy it into a raw binary image, use an
open source utility (scramble.c) to scramble the image (since the
Dreamcast uses scatter-loading to obfuscate its binaries), name the file
1ST_READ.BIN, make an ISO image with this one file, append a 32K
bootloader (IP.BIN), and burn a CD. There are some details I’ve omitted;
this stuff is well documented if you know where to look. I’ll try to
gather some links.

d) A significant portion of the Dreamcast has been reverse engineered or
discovered from OEM specs. Audio, 2D video, the controllers, CD-ROM, and
VMU access are documented. Most of this is implemented in libdream, an
open source library. A number of people have already written simple and
not-so-simple games with this. Someone has even created an S3M music
player with a graphical interface. The problem with libdream is that
it’s not meant to work with an operating system; it’s designed for
building raw, to-the-metal binaries. (a hacker’s dream, but no good for
porting)

This leads me to believe that, minus the audio and some input device
code, SDL could just be recompiled with a cross compiler for Dreamcast
fbdev support. Once it was working, we could bring in libdream to
provide full controller and audio support. There’s no reason that the
Dreamcast couldn’t become a fully supported SDL target. It would be
great if we could get some free Dreamcast game development going. We’re
dealing with a cheap, compact 200MHz RISC box with 24 megs of RAM, a
CD-ROM that reads gigabyte CD’s, and high-performance dedicated video
hardware. There’s potential here.

I couldn’t resist having a bit of fun while I was logged into the
Dreamcast:
sh-1.04$ cat /dev/urandom > /dev/fb0
sh-1.04$ cat /dev/urandom > /dev/mem
(after which the kernel raised hell and I started singing “I crashed a
dreamcast! I crashed a dreamcast!”)

-John


Underfull \account (badness 10000) has occurred while \spend is active
John R. Hall - Student, Georgia Tech - Contractor, Loki Software

Ben Burns wrote:
So the Dreamcast will read home-made CDs then, or does it need spcial
modification before it does?

It will read normal CD’s without modification, but they need to contain
certaim verbatim pieces of code, or the Dreamcast will reject them.
This might be a problem, since undoubtedly that code is copyrighted by
Sega. I don’t think this will slow open source developers down, though.
The file in question (IP.BIN) is readily available on Dreamcast pirate
websites for the primary purpose of copying games.

Will it read and CDs, but the official games are on the gigabyte CDs,
and therefore much more difficult to copy?

The official games are on GD-ROMs, but very few of them actually use the
full 1GB. Pirates have successfully copied DC games by reverse
engineering the CD layout and rearranging games to fit on normal discs.
One popular technique is to convert stereo soundtracks to mono to take
less space. Since IP.BIN (the bootloader) has been reverse engineered,
it’s usually a simple matter to remove region coding in the process.

I don’t condone piracy, by the way. I think it’s lame and dishonest. But
we can use the same information for independent Dreamcast development,
which would just kick ass.

Ideally, you’d want a network card in there, so that you can boot the
DC but run frequently changed programs from elsewhere?

It has a modem (however, I have a sneaky suspicion that it’s a software
modem), and a normal serial port. If I get my hands on one of these,
I’ll definitely use the serial port and an NFS mount (over PPP) for
development.

Is there a network card for the DC out yet? Keep getting mixed up with
the network/broadband/modem options between the DC, PSX2, X-Box etc…

The Japanese version of the DC has a network interface. The US version
doesn’t.
Ironically, Sega is losing money big time on the Japanese Dreamcast
market, but is making a profit in the US (according to a quick
interrogation of the employees at FuncoLand).

-John–
Underfull \account (badness 10000) has occurred while \spend is active
John R. Hall - Student, Georgia Tech - Contractor, Loki Software

Mon, 11 Dec 2000 John R. Hall wrote:

Ben Burns wrote:
So the Dreamcast will read home-made CDs then, or does it need spcial
modification before it does?

It will read normal CD’s without modification, but they need to contain
certaim verbatim pieces of code, or the Dreamcast will reject them.
This might be a problem, since undoubtedly that code is copyrighted by
Sega. I don’t think this will slow open source developers down, though.
The file in question (IP.BIN) is readily available on Dreamcast pirate
websites for the primary purpose of copying games.

Uh oh…

Will it read and CDs, but the official games are on the gigabyte CDs,
and therefore much more difficult to copy?

The official games are on GD-ROMs, but very few of them actually use the
full 1GB. Pirates have successfully copied DC games by reverse
engineering the CD layout and rearranging games to fit on normal discs.

Yep, that’s what I figured.

One popular technique is to convert stereo soundtracks to mono to take
less space. Since IP.BIN (the bootloader) has been reverse engineered,
it’s usually a simple matter to remove region coding in the process.

Cracker’s heaven! :wink:

I don’t condone piracy, by the way. I think it’s lame and dishonest. But

Yep.

we can use the same information for independent Dreamcast development,
which would just kick ass.

It’s sad to be forced to use the back door to do some honest, Free/Open Source
hacking, though…

Ideally, you’d want a network card in there, so that you can boot the
DC but run frequently changed programs from elsewhere?

It has a modem (however, I have a sneaky suspicion that it’s a software
modem), and a normal serial port.

What’s “normal”? 19200 or 115k,…?

Is there a network card for the DC out yet? Keep getting mixed up with
the network/broadband/modem options between the DC, PSX2, X-Box etc…

The Japanese version of the DC has a network interface. The US version
doesn’t.
Ironically, Sega is losing money big time on the Japanese Dreamcast
market, but is making a profit in the US (according to a quick
interrogation of the employees at FuncoLand).

Maybe one should look for a japanese version…? (Well, I’m in europe, so I’d
have to use a 230->110 V converter and a PAL + NTSC capable TV/monitor anyway.)

Do all version do both PAL and NTSC modes, BTW? (Like the N64, for example…)

//David

…- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' ..- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -’

Mon, 11 Dec 2000 Ben Burns wrote:

So the Dreamcast will read home-made CDs then, or does it need spcial
modification before it does?
Will it read and CDs, but the official games are on the gigabyte CDs, and
therefore much more difficult to copy?

Well, if it would read normal CDs w/o chipping (which could be made very complicated by integrating the protection into some major custom chip - which OTOH would make that chip more expensive due to smaller production series...), it would be *very* easy to pirate CD games.

If the games used the full >5.5 GB DVD format (no burners exist yet), it would
be quite complicated, as there would be no affordable media for the copies…
However, how the hll* do you get a console game to use up that kind of
space!? Why? Because if the space isn’t really used for storing data, the games
can still be cracked and copied to 5.5 GB DVDs or normal CDs, thus
significantly weakening the protection. (Custom floppy trackloaders and stuff
never stopped the Amiga crackers, even though you had direct access to the
raw MFM data on those machines… I abused that to fit 1.3 MB on 880 KB
floppies, BTW - just a different encoding.)

As to what they actually decided on, I don’t know.

Ideally, you’d want a network card in there, so that you can boot the DC but
run frequently changed programs from elsewhere?
Is there a network card for the DC out yet? Keep getting mixed up with the
network/broadband/modem options between the DC, PSX2, X-Box etc…

No idea, but that would definitely be the best way to build a nice but low-cost
dev system.

//David

…- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' ..- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -’

Hi,

there are quite some sites about Dreamcast Programming and there is a nice
Mailinglist. On that list is also an employee of Sega of America Dreamcast who
trys to get a licence for hobbist stuff done. Sega doesn’t have anything
directly against people to do custom stuff on Dreamcast, but they don’t want
independant commercial Games and stuff like that.
It seem like Sega did something to prevent newer Dreamcast from booting normal
CD-Rs, but there are already about 2 million Dreamcasts sold which do bot those.

It has a modem (however, I have a sneaky suspicion that it’s a software
modem), and a normal serial port.

What’s “normal”? 19200 or 115k,…?

56kbit is the normal speed, but on some Computers like mine it works with
115kbit.

Is there a network card for the DC out yet? Keep getting mixed up with
the network/broadband/modem options between the DC, PSX2, X-Box etc…

The Japanese version of the DC has a network interface. The US version
doesn’t.
Ironically, Sega is losing money big time on the Japanese Dreamcast
market, but is making a profit in the US (according to a quick
interrogation of the employees at FuncoLand).

Maybe one should look for a japanese version…? (Well, I’m in europe, so I’d
have to use a 230->110 V converter and a PAL + NTSC capable TV/monitor
anyway.)

Do all version do both PAL and NTSC modes, BTW? (Like the N64, for example…)

In January they wnat to release the network card in America and Europe.

http://www.inode.at/hitmen/hitdc/index.html -> They started it all and have
opened the ML
http://mc.pp.se/dc/ -> very much infos about the Dreamcast and how to make
bootable CD-Rs
http://www.allusion.net/dcdev/ Dreamcast Library “libdream” and the first OS
called KallistiOS
http://dcdev.cjb.net/ The News and Link site for Dreamcast

Proff–
Florian ‘Proff’ Schulze - @Florian_Schulze
Homepage: - http://proff.fly.to
PGP-Key available from - http://www.keyserver.net/en/

David Olofson wrote:

It’s sad to be forced to use the back door to do some honest, Free/Open Source
hacking, though…

It’s easy enough to burn these CD’s (a canned cdrecord command will do
it on just about any burner), so it would be feasible to distribute just
the game binary and not IP.BIN. Sega would have a hard time fighting
that in court (if all the code was original and derived from legally
reverse engineered specs). It’s not really a back door, it’s just a copy
of Sega’s bootloader (some parts of which the Dreamcast checks against
its ROM for validity). For instance, you CANNOT remove the “produced by
or under license from Sega” titlescreen code.

Ideally, you’d want a network card in there, so that you can boot the
DC but run frequently changed programs from elsewhere?
It has a modem (however, I have a sneaky suspicion that it’s a software
modem), and a normal serial port.
What’s “normal”? 19200 or 115k,…?

The modem is 56k, so I’d expect a fairly fast serial interface.
(serial ports are not exactly cutting edge technology, so I doubt they’d
save money by using a slow serial chip)

Maybe one should look for a japanese version…? (Well, I’m in europe, so I’d
have to use a 230->110 V converter and a PAL + NTSC capable TV/monitor anyway.)
Do all version do both PAL and NTSC modes, BTW? (Like the N64, for example…)

I don’t know. Keep in mind that the Dreamcast can also output to VGA.

-John–
Underfull \account (badness 10000) has occurred while \spend is active
John R. Hall - Student, Georgia Tech - Contractor, Loki Software

Mon, 11 Dec 2000 John R. Hall wrote:

David Olofson wrote:

It’s sad to be forced to use the back door to do some honest, Free/Open Source
hacking, though…

It’s easy enough to burn these CD’s (a canned cdrecord command will do
it on just about any burner), so it would be feasible to distribute just
the game binary and not IP.BIN. Sega would have a hard time fighting
that in court (if all the code was original and derived from legally
reverse engineered specs). It’s not really a back door, it’s just a copy
of Sega’s bootloader (some parts of which the Dreamcast checks against
its ROM for validity).

Ok, but it still doesn’t seem like a friendly way of doing it. (Not that I care
much - if they want to play it that way, fine…)

For instance, you CANNOT remove the “produced by
or under license from Sega” titlescreen code.

Great! lol

Wouldn’t it have made more sense to enforce something that says quite the
opposite? :slight_smile:

Maybe one should look for a japanese version…? (Well, I’m in europe, so I’d
have to use a 230->110 V converter and a PAL + NTSC capable TV/monitor anyway.)
Do all version do both PAL and NTSC modes, BTW? (Like the N64, for example…)

I don’t know. Keep in mind that the Dreamcast can also output to VGA.

Now, that sounds interesting… Might be very nice with all these projectors
and big screens maturing and getting down to affordable prices. (Apart from not
having to dig out a TV or video monitor for the dev system.)

//David

…- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' ..- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -’

Mon, 11 Dec 2000 Florian ‘Proff’ Schulze wrote:

Hi,

there are quite some sites about Dreamcast Programming and there is a nice
Mailinglist. On that list is also an employee of Sega of America Dreamcast who
trys to get a licence for hobbist stuff done. Sega doesn’t have anything
directly against people to do custom stuff on Dreamcast,

Nice. :slight_smile:

but they don’t want
independant commercial Games and stuff like that.

Actually, I don’t blame them. People keep blaming computers for all kinds of
sh*t, when what they’re actually complaining about is bugs in Windows and
Windows applications.

This is very problematic when dealing with less technically minded customers;
everything is YOUR fault, and you have to fix it whether or not in is
your fault, or the rumors will hurt you…

56kbit is the normal speed, but on some Computers like mine it works with
115kbit.

Ok.

[…]

In January they wnat to release the network card in America and Europe.

Sounds good.

//David

…- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' ..- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -’

Thu, 14 Dec 2000 Mark Kimsal wrote:

Ideally, you’d want a network card in there, so that you can boot the
DC but run frequently changed programs from elsewhere?

A modified serial cable will let you work (rather slowly) without
burning CDs for each test.

No parallel interfaces or other fun stuff to abuse? (Like the user port on the
C64: I got transfer rates well over 25 kB/s when using an Amiga as a file
server in the other end - beats most disk turbos.)

Modern machines can usually deal with up to some 400 kB/s over the parallel
port, but it’s not sexy without DMA and interrupts…

I have done some research on this topic a few months back. Now that I
have access to a DC it would be interesting to try. Anyone who
seriously wants to follow up on this can contact me directly, start an
SDLDC egroup, or something like that.

Well, I don’t have a DC yet, but it’s up a few places on the wish list… :slight_smile:

//David

…- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -' ..- David Olofson -------------------------------------------. | Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |--------------------------------------> david at linuxdj.com -’

Ben Burns wrote:

So the Dreamcast will read home-made CDs then, or does it need spcial
modification before it does?
Will it read and CDs, but the official games are on the gigabyte CDs,
and therefore much more difficult to copy?

It will read homemade CDs w/o modification. All games are on the large
capacity CDs but not all of them use it. Most of the launch titles were

~700M.

Ideally, you’d want a network card in there, so that you can boot the
DC but run frequently changed programs from elsewhere?

A modified serial cable will let you work (rather slowly) without
burning CDs for each test.

I have done some research on this topic a few months back. Now that I
have access to a DC it would be interesting to try. Anyone who
seriously wants to follow up on this can contact me directly, start an
SDLDC egroup, or something like that.