Porting Doom to an Ethernet-to-Serial converter

Yo DW, ssup?

So, for those of you that don't know it, one of my hobbies is collecting old gear from thrift stores/junk sellers on da street. Most of the time there's just literal junk to be found, but sometimes there's something interesting, like an original model Walkman, a working Minidisk recorder, an -almost- fully functioning Amstrad CPC, and the eNet EP-132X TCP/IP converter, which I got for a few Euros.

Look at the specs:

• CPU: 32 Bit (I think it's an ARM7 @ 25 MHz).
  
• RAM: 2MB (1M x 16bits) (also has 128 KB of onboard ROM).
  
• Interface: RS485 / RS232 / RJ45
  

Basically it's an embedded system which interfaces "legacy" devices with serial ports to an Ethernet network. It contains a small web server as part of its firmware to provide a management interface.

However, I think it has barely enough computrons to run a port of Doom. The onboard RAM of 2 MB may appear limited plus it has no A/V facilities, but don't forget that it could be made to load its resources off the network (a server would be required to provide storage for the game data, as well as the main executable. The onboard ROM can only store a bootstrap software and web server functionality for I/O), and only cache them temporarily. Also, output could be provided from a web page with a "video widget" of sorts.

Are there any known instances of Doom ports running on such unusual hardware? That would make for truly portable, networked Doom entertainment O_o

I'm not convinced! First of all, can you flash its firmware?

VGA said:

I'm not convinced! First of all, can you flash its firmware?

You should, in theory. The manufacturer claimed it was "easy to upgrade firmware online", but finding new ROM images (or even the original management/detection software that came with it) is hard.

I guess it's always possible to extract the small WinBond-type Flash IC from its chip carrier socket, and program it elsewhere, or swap it with another one in order not to lose the original firmware *shrug*