The Sega Saturn NetLink League

I've read how posts are often only every few days or less, but joining a community where the netlink was discussed intrigued me. I've been buying retro games since they were new in 94 but never used the network aspects of sega's consoles, even though they were and still are my main focus.

So after seeing a youtube video about how to set up netlink and it mentioning this place, I decided it was well worth checking out. With any luck I'll be able to set up the netlink and maybe even actually use it in matches.

Hello there, and welcome!

The NetLink is trivially easy to set up. (That's true at least for NetLink games - it's harder if you want to try to use the PlanetWeb browser.) The challenge lies in finding people with the free time, the equipment, the games, and the critically-important analog phone line to connect to. Many of us here have the equipment and the games, but analog phone lines are getting harder to come by these days (as are people willing to pay the bills for them), and many newcomers mistake their digital lines for analog.

It would certainly be nice to see another match happen!

Hello!

Welcome!!!

Yeah... we are failing hard at mantaining the passion here.

And we are supposed to be the Main World League of NetLink Saviours!!!

I hope that we try hard this year to make the curiosity come alive like never before.

Apologies for the late reply, life has been crazy lately.

However, I did want to double-check to see if the best way to find out if you have an analog line was by calling your provider.

I currently have the netlink modem and such, and even if I can't use it I'm fine with it being a collector's item, but hopefully I can make use of it. I have some background in IT as I'm currently working on classes to be a computer support technician, so I think I can figure out the deal with the virtual machine connection if I have some help.

If nothing else, I may still try to get my dreamcast online.

Well, a "virtual machine connection" as you call it is only really needed if you're setting up your own dial-up ISP in order to use the NetLink browser. The NetLink games dial up your opponent directly; the internet is never touched at all. I'll warn you - it's not the nineties anymore. Those ended fifteen years ago. The internet has moved on, and most of today's sites won't display well in the browser, if at all.

As for finding out whether you have an analog phone connection or not - contacting your phone service provider may be the best method. Ask about POTS, standing for Plain Old Telephone System (if I recall correctly). I can tell you this - if your phone is connected to a box which is connected to a router, or is connected directly to an internet router - you're almost definitely on digital rather than analog. Another, less surefire way to check is if you have cheap, unlimited long-distance calling. That's usually only a feature of digital phone service. Analog long-distance calls, in my experience, aren't so inexpensive.

I'm aware that most sites won't work with netlink anymore, I wasn't kidding when I said I was in school for IT so I am aware of what most of this needs to work.

Unfortunately I've discovered that my service uses VOIP, so I won't be able to use netlink it seems. I'll most likely turn my efforts to the dreamcast for now as a result until if when I move in about 8 months or so I can get a hold of analogue service.