NES and the Internet

NES and the Internet
by nixon66 on 2005-12-21 (#7593)

I wanted to know what people thought of the feasability of using something like this, the IP Dragon, and the expansion port to creat an ethernet connector to the NES. Add on top of that a port of Contiki and you might get on-line.

Feasible?

by Great Hierophant on 2005-12-21 (#7595)

Is it possible to do multiplayer NES gaming? That requires two way communication. One person would act as the host, the other(s) the clients, but only the host must have a copy of the game. The host's computer will control the flow of the gameplay and must send graphics and sound information to each client NES. In turn, each client NES must send controller data to the host NES. The client NESs must be entirely passive, data must be written to them but they cannot send data. That is essentially what would be required to make existing multiplayer games to work. I believe that modems for the SNES and Genesis exist that must do this, so it is not entirely unfeasible. It may require game-specific setting though.

by bunnyboy on 2005-12-21 (#7597)

Hardware part would be relatively simple. That ethernet module looks like it would connect almost directly to the expansion port. The software would be the hard part. You would need a tcp stack which is a serious undertaking. The code might be ported from other small computer projects like the ethernet for Apple IIe, or the Contiki link.

The Teleplay NES modem was developed and multisystem games are definitely possible. Another way to do multiplayer games is to have the server just send out commands to the clients, instead of sending out graphics/sound data. That way each client does the graphics/sound processing using the commands and the server does not carry the load of every player. The more exact timing you need, the harder it gets to keep everyone synced. Turn based games for the NES would work best.

by LocalH on 2005-12-24 (#7675)

uIP - Code size and RAM usage