It's interesting that Windows CE of the time was offered as an SDK option. I actually wonder if the Katana SDK option had any multi-tasking capabilities? Presumably for communicating with the memory card maybe? I never had a Dreamcast but the memory card always seemed cool.
It's interesting to see how consoles have evolved, this era has no builtin storage, very little I/O to speak of (consoles in this generation did start getting internet connectivity), and I wonder just how much multitasking consoles in this generation (or before it) could do in terms of running anything other than the game in the background. The Xbox was a big leap towards current consoles in that it had a x86 CPU and built-in hard drive storage, the PS2 had a USB port and HDD. After this generation everyone had hard drive storage, functional USB ports/expandable storage, and things like background downloads.