The Sega Saturn NetLink League

title says it all. i found a method that might let us email eachother and our game saves! i'll be back to tell the results

doesnt work....

I've never tried, but I've heard that it works. You'd have to have a compatible ISP to have an internet connection in the first place, then a compatible email server.

i got the idea because i was on a dreamcast forum and someone was complaing that they couldnt send email, and another guy replyed that you need to set your stmp server as your internet provider

i actually think it killed my netlink, it doesnt dial out AT ALL anymore. I'm switching over to dreamcast for online gaming, the netlink has just made me so stressed out -_- i bought pso and quake 3 for peanuts with free shipping on ebay, so i find the dc is a much better online gaming choice! this doesnt mean im giving up on saturn, im keeping my pair forever :p

I'd like PSO a lot more if the models and animations didn't irritate me so much. Thank goodness for all the later Phantasy Star games.

well ill have to play it to judge it, other than runscape this is my first MMO rpg game. I also got the keyboard for 23 dollars and the shipping for first class usps was 1 dollar /:I

I have a keyboard as well... but I got it for Typing of the Dead. =P

Yeah, we'll eventually find a way to use the NetLink at it's maximum.

Dreamcast stuff is really cheap. It's a really good system too. Very good choice.

But what bugs me is, "how" can you experiment stuff like "Something stopped working (by itself?)"
Really. What are you doing? Tell us so we can avoid it please.

never use trial and error, very simple XD. my netlink is working now, it successfully dialed out and i surfed the net. i think it was just an error with the connection the saturn and netlink XD. i always take care of my systems and games, but when im not at home i could just imagine what my brother accidently does to them

Well. For me, when the NetLink refuses to work, generally the Planet Web warns the connection lost (to the device) on the screen.
You need to turn the Saturn off, reinsert the modem, and try again.

I was playing around with sending mail on the Saturn, but in a little different way. I had my Saturn dial in to my computer (PC-DC server style) and I setup "Cmail" a LAN email server to act as an unencrypted mail server. I was able to successfully email game saves to myself, but I had trouble with the MIME type of the attachment.

It would never survive the transition from Saturn to PC back to Saturn, which would have to happen to email saves to one another using this method. The filetype was unrecognized by the Saturn when it was sent back. I could never send a planetweb compatible email attachment to the saturn.

Update:
I believe I can get this to work with the netlink. The planetweb browser requires mail to be sent using a non-encrypted SMTP mail server. Virtually every SMTP server out there now uses encryption which is why we can't send mail directly.

I stated above that I was running my own free mail server. This server has the ability to forward emails to a specified email address using whatever SMTP server you specify. I have successfully sent an email from my Dreamcast (which also needs non-encrypted SMTP) to my gmail account with an attachment. The server can also download from the same gmail account and pass the mail on to the Dreamcast or Saturn.

All of this works because the mail server is setup to provide a basic non-encrypted SMTP server on the LAN for the Saturn or Dreamcast and then use an encrypted SMTP server to send the mail on to the web.

I haven't been able to test it, but this could probably work as an internet mail server if you can't connect your Netlink to your LAN but can connect through traditional dial-up. You would have to specify your own public IP for your broadband connection as the outgoing server.

In combination with the "Save Game Manager" homebrew software, we could exchange ghost files for games such as Daytona USA or Sega Rally and play a pseudo netlink match.

If anyone is interested in more details, let me know.

Success!

I was just able to send an email (with a save attached) to my gmail account and then retrieve the email from gmail to the Saturn with the save file intact and downloadable.

Cool!
Make a tutorial when possible please. Some people will not understand all the things involved.

We can't really trade ghost files because those are available/saved only with the Backup Cartridge inserted, because they use more than the Saturn's full memory. But we can trade other kind of save files.