If model 1 is anything like model 2 then comms may not work too well anyway as it expects 0 latency between transmitting/receiving packets which it seems is near impossible over a PC network. I tried it with model 2 emu with pretty poor results.
That said I have a feeling this was down to the refresh being borked in m2emu v1.0. Actually more the audio running too fast at 60hz while the main CPU runs at 57.5 or there abouts. I had no sound skipping so I've no doubt the CPU was skipping causing sync issues. I've not had a chance to test that theory yet. Seems the audio system in v1.0 is pretty broken in lots of ways actually.
Back to model 1 though, is the network board at all similar to model 2? I believe someone in MAMEdev had ElSemi's source to improve MAME's driver though I'd imagine the network code wasn't suitable for MAME anyway.
Did MESS gain network capabilities yet? I remember hearing that'd pave the way for similar things in MAME at some point.
Quote: I even hooked up the LEDs in MAME itself, which wasn't a big deal in the end.
Anything committable? It'd be great to see lamp outputs in Virtua Racing etc.