Sorry guys, I haven't really had much time to work on this lately. I blame it on the new baby.
miker00lz wrote:
has anybody ever looked into the possibility of an ethernet adapter for the NES? i know it's not really practical, but should definitely be possible. it would of course require a custom cart PCB.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Or in this case a functional demo hardware ethernet adapter for the NES. It's called the ENIO (Extended NES IO). It provides ethernet, USB KB and serial connectivity. Yes, it does require a custom cart since signals must be sent over the EXP pins...
http://nesdev.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=7313&highlight=expHere are pictures of the dev board (50-pin cable connects to EXP) as well as the first board that actually mounts under the NES.
A dev board for a 100mb ENIO
http://www.chykn.com/ENIO-DevBoard.jpgBottom shot of the first "mounted" 100mb ENIO
http://www.chykn.com/ENIO-Rev1.jpgclueless wrote:
If I were to do this... I would put the OSI layers 1-4 (physically transceiver through the TCP packet mangler) into a co-processor. The NES would access it as if it were memory mapped IO, or some simple serial protocol.
Yes, that is exactly how it works. The PIC32 offloads the TCP/UDP processing and provides buffering. The NES sends commands to the ENIO telling it where to connect; the ENIO replied with a VCID (virtual channel ID) for the new session. There's still plenty of opportunity for refinement, but the client functionality is there.