LinuxDevices: Turning the SEGA Dreamcast into a Linux Firewall/Router

“This highly detailed 101-page how-to article provides the
necessary background and procedures to turn a SEGA Dreamcast gaming
console into a Linux-based software router with firewalling and
virtual private networking capabilities. The article explains how
to create the necessary toolchain for compiling both programs and
the Linux kernel, and shows how, starting from scratch, you can
build a Linux operating system that runs entirely in memory.

“Today, the total costs of ownership (TCO) of a personal
computer are so low, that you might wonder: ‘Why bother to build a
software router based on a gaming console?’

“Actually, a number of technical challenges made the project
particularly interesting, including…

• “First, the hardware architecture is a non-x86 computer system,
  so there is the challenge of learning to work with a ‘foreign’
  platform.
• “Next, there is the challenge of learning to setup and use
  cross compilers. Cross compiling raises a number of issues you
  don’t run into when you are simply recompiling your favorite
  program to run on your (x86) PC, assuming the program was already
  designed to run on an x86 platform.
• “Last but not least, I haven’t found any articles describing
  the set of steps I summarized above–so, I wanted to be the
  first…!”

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