Why not make a new modem?

Former Xbanders on SNES or Genesis can get in touch with each other here. Also for people who wish to help with the Xband revival project.
Post Reply
User avatar
NWA
Posts: 249
Joined: Sat Aug 13, 2011 3:18 am
Location: Gatineau, Quebec, Canada

Why not make a new modem?

Post by NWA »

why not start from scratch and take a modem apart analyse the data on the chips then make a very similar modem to it, or just take off which ever chips tell it to dial out to the xband server and replace them with new chips with data telling the modem to dial out to another server?
Better run home to momma now!
User avatar
Warp2063
League Veteran
League Veteran
Posts: 1594
Joined: Mon Mar 03, 2008 4:28 am
Location: Virginia, USA

Re: Why not make a new modem?

Post by Warp2063 »

You have no idea how large the project you just proposed is.

It took a whole team of people at Catapult to devise and construct the XBAND, and then for every game, a group of people had to reverse-engineer the games and create a patch for it. We'd need electrical engineering specialists, programmers, people skilled with 68k assembly, people knowledgeable about the inner workings of the Genesis, and people to reverse-engineer the games and create new patches. After months or years of development of a prototype, you'd then have to find the funding to have a company mass-produce these "new modems". Then you'd have to find enough people to want them and buy them in order to recoup the cost of developing and producing them. THEN you'd have to develop and pay to maintain a dial-up server with the capability of matchmaking.

I don't think you'll have an easy time finding that community. Even with the completely free XBAND 2.0, the community never got larger than maybe 100 accounts, only a small handful of which played regularly, and within several weeks, the number of active players had dwindled to almost nothing. You'd have to find quite a few very interested investors for this.

As for the "pulling the chips" method... you'd first have to figure out exactly which chips contained this code. It's going to be in one of two... either the ROM or the FRED. If the data is stored on the ROM, you'd have to dump and reverse-engineer it. If it's on the FRED... you'd have to reverse-engineer the entire chip, then design a whole new one and have it fabricated. You'd need some microelectronic engineers for that. There's virtually no documentation on that chip or how it works. I've tried to dump the Genesis XBAND ROM before and never been successful. I suspect I'd need a very specialized dumping tool, and I'd probably have to gut my XBAND modem to do it. I suspect that the FRED is blocking me from getting a complete dump of the ROM.

IF the data was on the ROM, it's theoretically relatively easy to burn a new one... assuming you reverse-engineered it properly and then wrote a replacement ROM that would work... a process that would take a ton of testing and be extremely difficult to do as you'd have to test it on the actual XBAND hardware and have a working server... which we don't. We don't even have the code for the original server, let alone the correct hardware.

Once you had working replacement chips, you'd have to desolder the original chips from EVERY XBAND you wanted to work with the new system, and then solder on new ones, by hand. It's extremely difficult with such small traces, and even more difficult as it's a surface-mount type chip - normally you have a machine containing a high-temp oven and a wave table of liquid solder... the machine would place solder on all of the pads, then all the surface mount chips would be pressed onto the board at once... impossible to do by hand with a soldering iron. Even if you were skilled enough to remove the old chips and solder new chips to the board without destroying the XBAND, it would still be incredibly time-consuming to do for every single chip that would need replacing. Oh - you'd also have to find enough XBANDs to reconfigure.

Finally, the maintenance. You'd have to have people reverse-engineering games and writing patches for every game you wanted to work with the new XBAND system, and people maintaining the server. Besides paying the people maintaining this network, you'd also have to pay for the telephone service for this server. A whole company - Catapult - was devoted to all these tasks, and they collected fees for every game you played. So the project you've proposed... you'd basically need a whole new company for it. It's not a hobby at that point. It's a business venture. And there just isn't enough demand for this service to run a whole company off of it anymore. It's why Catapult stopped supporting the systems and why the company no longer exists today.
I have my Saturns, I have some of my games, I have a RasPi. Gotta put all this stuff together!
User avatar
Warp2063
League Veteran
League Veteran
Posts: 1594
Joined: Mon Mar 03, 2008 4:28 am
Location: Virginia, USA

Re: Why not make a new modem?

Post by Warp2063 »

I apologize for my sharpness. You're far from the first person who has suggested a plan like this, and I've often produced textdumps like this for their suggestions as well. I even independently came up with and considered a plan like this for several minutes, until I'd thought through the obstacles for that method.

It's easy to come up with an idea or concept. However, you need to come up with a method or methods to achieve your goal. Then you have to think through the feasibility of each of those methods... then be prepared to put in the amount of effort required for the method you settle on. Catapult did design and construct a working remote multiplayer system, showing that it was possible. They put in the effort required for the method they settled on. They had or were able to obtain the resources they needed for their project.

This community is not a business venture. We don't have pools of capital from investors to hire a team to do this. We only have the money out of our own pockets. We only have our own talents. If you have the talent to recruit a team to do what would be required to duplicate Catapult's method or even design the modifications for individual cartridges... if you have the talent to find and convince investors to get the needed funding for whatever method you settle on, or have the money to put into the project yourself... then you could tackle the project almost any way you wanted. But lacking one or more of those things... you'll have to think of a different method.

Reviving the XBAND is not a very high priority for me. The payoff would not be very large, as I believe the XBAND 2.0 project showed. It's a lot of time and materials to invest in a project that there is almost no demand for. Really, these days it's easier to find an emulator that offers a netplay feature and find a friend to play with. Sure, you don't get automatic matchmaking or mail features, but there are plenty of forums out there that can aid you in finding other players, and the forums also take care of the other social aspects.

This isn't to say that I don't care about the XBAND at all. I think that the preservation of the XBAND is a good idea, even if it's not used by many. I was working on an XBAND project at one point, and I haven't completely given up on it. I'm just not actively working on it right now. Someday I might go back to it - but right now I'm working on other projects that I think are more important and more useful.
I have my Saturns, I have some of my games, I have a RasPi. Gotta put all this stuff together!
User avatar
NWA
Posts: 249
Joined: Sat Aug 13, 2011 3:18 am
Location: Gatineau, Quebec, Canada

Re: Why not make a new modem?

Post by NWA »

yeah, i get what you mean. A big reson why I'd like to see XBAND back is to not only play it to death, but to rub it in my brothers face that a retro game system goes online and aven has servers because he cant talk enough smack about my collecting of retro game systems even though I was nice enough to give him an xbox 360 which he plays 15 hours a day (I'm actually not allowed to use our internet all day because he lags and complains lol) and this modem is something he would really have to bow down to because xband is where it all started and people would still be playing it, and because it all started here I dont think gaming would be what it is today, well, atleast online. Not to say I only collect retro systems, I've owned 3 xbox 360's in my time :D
Better run home to momma now!
Post Reply