I'd love to relive some PSO on DC; however, I haven't really delved into getting my DC online again. I don't have the BBA so are there any other alternatives?
My DC keyboard may finally get to serve me again on PSO. It's mostly used now for Typing of the Dead (which is awesome, of course.)
If you still have land-line phone service, you could potentially use that to get dial-up service. Either through a paid ISP or potentially a free one (although the hours are typically limited on the free servers).
Some broadband ISP's offer free dial-up hours also (Or at least they used to)
Or you can go the route of a PC-DC server. Using an old voice modem and a PC with broadband you can upload data from your broadband connection to your dreamcasts modem.
The downside to this is that not all modems work and the only way to know if yours works is to set it all up and try it out. That said, if yours does work the setup is pretty quick and minimal (depending on what OS you use). It's best if you can dedicate an older PC to this task (especially if it can run Windows 98).
Ask around and see if you happen to know anyone with an old PC laying around. (I can't be the only one sitting on these things!) Most people would throw away a computer like the one I used on this. If you've got a friend or relative with one - they'd likely give it to you just so they don't have to pay to get rid of it.
Now, i've never had a BBA, so I can't vouch for how easy it is to setup - but with a BBA you know it will work. That's nice, but it's expensive!
However, at the moment the BBA only works for Quake III and Phantasy Star Online (v1 & v2)
I'd bet you could find an old ~1999 PC laying around with a voice modem in it for little to nothing. Maybe you'll have to buy another modem for it. Maybe you'll have to buy some tylenol for the headaches it will give you when you try to set it up~
But it's likely to be much cheaper than a BBA! (it might even be free!) And instead of supporting just two games it works for Starlancer, Quake III, 4x4 Evolution, Phantasy Star Online (v1 & v2), Maximum Pool and Sega Swirl!
And if all the US games were to go back up, it would support 24 games to the BBA's 6!
So it's definitely worth asking around! I'm sure you can find a working setup!
The only thing I'd need to get would be the Zoom 56K USB modem, which is inexpensive. I'm assuming this is a similar method to the one you have setup. I'm not afraid to do any of the tinkering considering I do this all the time (IT consultant).
I had a hard time getting mgetty to work right with that method. But from what i've read, that method seems incompatible with internal modems. You might not have any hassle at all with the zoom modem. Especially with an IT background. I don't know much about this stuff, i'm just good at finding instructions to follow.
When I tried that method, I had a bit of a hard time finding a working mirror for Crunchbang 10 (what the guide was tested on). If you need it, let me know. I've got a working ISO for it (and the install files for the VMWare player they used).
Anyone that might be interested, there's a good sub-ship on Sylverant called PSO Palace.
Aleron Ives, who worked with Blue Crab on Sylverant, made an enhancement pack image that strips down some of the superfluous content without sacrificing the quality of the game (really cut some data by taking out the European languages on the disc). The enhancement pack does a lot of things, like ramping up the difficulty in Ultimate, removing Section ID's from item drops, which really helps to get gear for a character.
