It's that time of year again folks! OCC 2025 is coming in on July

13th. In my quest to make my OCC stranger every year, I think I'm

finally bottomed out. This year we're going way back, all the way

to y2k.



Wasn't last year y2k though? I had that macbook. Well, that macbook

would've cost a fortune, specced out with 512MB of ram like it was.

So in that sense I'm playing stricter this year, in others faster

and looser.



So what's the setup?

Well, this is where we get looser. This year we're calling y2k

approximately, let's say, 1998 to 2002. I already used the Macbook,

so this year my computer is....a Dreamcast! With a roomy 16MB of

memory. How? Well, the Dreamcast had a keyboard for its web browser

and for Typing of the Dead. It had a mouse for...I think also mostly

the browser? And Quake III. It had VGA out because Sega was cool like

that. It had an ethernet adapter. It doesn't have a hard drive. This

is where a secret tool comes in: OCC 2023 hall of famer the Thinkpad

T41. We can burn a CD which will contain a NetBSD bootloader and

a kernel. We can use that bootloader to connect up to the T41 over

nfs and give us a read/write storage medium. We can also use that

medium to add some swap, because 16MB doesn't buy us much these days.

Even with swap you can only really bump yourself up to 48 or 64 MB

before managing swap eats all of your memory though, so we're going

to have to lean on the T41 for some horsepower as well, namely to

compile a smaller kernel to netboot with. I'm hoping to do all of my

actual everyday stuff on the Dreamcast though.



As far as our supporting cast, I ought to be able to use the dumb

phone (I'm actually using it as my main phone already,) as well as

my complement of vaguely era-appropriate toys. My iPod (not 1st gen

but still a classic,) my GBA SP which I've had since childhood. On

top of that I plan on playing my era-appropriate consoles, listening

to CDs, calling/texting my boyfriend, wating tapes. I might use the

PS3 as a DVD player since I don't have one, but probably no games,

too late to fit the aesthetic.



So yeah, that's the plan. See y'all when it kicks off!



PS: my boyfriend might actually be sort of participating this year.

I'll link that if it comes up.

.