PS1 Netplay Dongle for Controller Port 2 (Idea)

[Markhoss]

(Writing for phone I am in a hospital for months now so there may be errors I cant work with a phone well)

Here is an idea for a project for you hardware people.

The dongle hardware would have an ethernet port and in software a simple GUI client between the two as the middle for both hosts, players (create game - join game) The hosts would make the room and the player would signal the start of the game with the join.
I realized that the console might also need a pc to passthrough the connection otherwise anyone could join anytime and players wouldn't know who is online for each client, with the pc you could do more have battle history, usernames, score exetera. Who knows the client could be programmed into a specially burned disc but without the pc it would be sort of a problem because while it would still work you would have to play in the same time and talk it out while the pc client would help with all that.

This is of course for two players or more games only where there are two horizontal or vertical screen on both televisions split.

The dongle also has wifi & bluetooth and an extra simcard slot which might help those with no access to anything else.

Host & Player or more players are both hardware-wise slot 2 but in reality in software the host chooses first while the player is second.

[gwald]

Interesting idea! In theory it should work, I think the hard part would be sync'ing the games.
Hope you get better in hospital!

[Markhoss]

A microprocessor or microcontroller could handle the syncing kind of like some raspberry pi project or risc-v for the input between the two they would also talk together between two consoles and manage it that way even while online globally on a different country, everything csn be soldered these days and after there are even softmods if it can be done through emulation it must be possible through real hardware, thanks for reading and wishing me to get well.

[gwald]

Emulators cheat because they can do anything via software


I'm not a hardware guy or do any low level stuff but memcard/controller port does have a timing signal for light guns, so the device could just count those.
This is what software receives from the hardware
https://problemkaputt.de/psx-spx.htm#co ... emorycards

There's also the picomemcard project which use the same port.
https://github.com/dangiu/PicoMemcard


I don't think there's any point to connecting to a computer, it's just as easy writing a PSX program that creates a memcard save with settings, (ie IP:port) that the memcard/controller device would read.
Or it could be a launcher program via CDROM or cheat cart.

I think it's very doable and I think people would use it

[nocash]

On a SNES, that would be done via hardware like X-Band Modem. That is, not a simple thing, and with handcrafted time-sync patches for each game, and with the hardware supporting to automatically install those patches, but how would you do that via controller port???

And the SNES is a system with relative robust timings: With ROM cartridge loading, and without major hardware revisions. On the PSX, the CDROM loading speeds are adding a bit more randomness, and there are two GPU versions with different rendering times. I am sure that the timings would derail before anything.