There is this thing being sold for the Sega Saturn called the "Satiator". It's basically a little card that you slide into the back of a completely unmodified Saturn, and then you slide in a standard memory card into the Satiator with Saturn games on it. And then the Saturn can play these as if they were physical discs. It emulates the optical disc drive for when it has stopped working.
No soldering or anything like that needed.
For the PlayStation, the main competitor of the Saturn at the time, there are similar devices that I know of, but all of them seem to require soldering and major scary modifications of the console.
Is it technically impossible to create a solderless such thing for the PS? Is there something about that console which prevents this, even though it works on the Saturn?
I'm frankly surprised that it works on the Saturn. But the PS also had an "expansion port" similar to the one used for the Saturn, so with that in mind, it seems like it would be possible?