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Memories from old LAN parties

thomask.sdf.org

211–220 of 267 posts

Re: Memories from old LAN parties

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still dont know how it managed to work, but my buddy had an XP box that he was gonna use for our lan party, but it went sideways. The only thing i had was a win 2k cd. We repaired using the 2k cd, got the system up, in a really fubar hybrid mode, where parts of the system acted like XP, and other parts acted like 2k

The dirty secret was windows XP was just a skinned Win2k and the components were very similar. I remember resisting XP for awhile and instead editing INF files so drivers would install on 2k for me.

Yeah, i suspect thats the only reason it worked. If it had been ME and 2k it probably wouldve burst into flames

Re: Memories from old LAN parties

#212
I lived in a tiny rural Australian town during this era, still at school. We stole a bunch of network cable from our computer lab and had 2-5 person LAN sleepovers.

I got way into case modding, and daydreamed of the day I moved to the big city and could hit the massive LAN parties with my fellow nerds. I even built specific smalk and robust PC for it.

But by the time I made it to the city, broadband was a thing and our city is also pretty small, so the one big LAN event had already stopped.

Still, I think we captures the spirit of it all in our pokey town the best we could.

Re: Memories from old LAN parties

#213

Always check your beer bottle, you never know when someone is going to use it as an ash tray. If you sleep in an aisle or under your desk, you will wake up with dicks drawn on your face. If you ask the guy who draws dicks on peoples' face to not draw one on yours, he will make sure to know your sleeping location, so that when you sleep, he can come by and draw a dick on your face. There is often a "magic room" where…

A friend and I would often sleep in his car at LAN parties in order to avoid the endickening that would otherwise happen.

Re: Memories from old LAN parties

#214
LANs are still a thing! Knew no one 10 years ago when we moved to the Netherlands. Pretty much all friends come from the local LAN group.

Now we still organize them but there's kids running around as well, and we sometimes also go to each other's weddings

Re: Memories from old LAN parties

#215
post #152

My last LAN party was back when everybody was still lugging around CRT's, but despite that being a long time ago, I remember the smell when you'd been inside for several days, pop outside to wake yourself up in the cold outside or to get some drinks when they'd ran out near the end of the event, and then walking back in. I mostly organized events, so a lot of my time was spend on configuring networks and just general…

In the age of slick unibody aluminum slabs inset with a thin black mirror, in the age of fanless battery powered devices that last 10+ hours on a charge... people have forgotten the sound and smell of computing in the bygone age of the LAN party. The heat of too many CRT screens in a room, of pentiums whirring away, their clacking harddrives and big PSUs filling the room with all sorts of olfactory detritus... the sm…

Oh man. I forgot my ~2003 voodoo computer with athlon 1100mhz and a tiny fan (5cm or so?) which spun at 5 or 6k rpm... It was like a jet engine vacuum cleaner to power thay thing on :->. Brutal!

Re: Memories from old LAN parties

#216
These are my favorite HN threads. Personal expenses that double ad historical accounts.

In high school a land center opened up and they would do 24 hour lans once a month. Being 15, we all loved it. So many new people that all loved the same stuff as us. It was a blast. It eventually closed due to lack of profitability but I'm very thankful for them taking that shot on that business.

Re: Memories from old LAN parties

#217
> The cool kids had a Barton Athlon XP 2500+ and a Radeon 9600. The rich kids had a 9800

Oh man. I had the 9800XT with aftermarket Zalman cooling. I didn't know what attention was before I went to a lan with that build. Got called the coolest things and the worst things

Re: Memories from old LAN parties

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I always read this. And my brother is a proponent of the nap technique you mention! BUT: On an empty stomach, or even if I've had a little bit of food, it feels like caffeine works fairly instantly for me? I'm the stereotypical "can't function until I've had a little coffee in the morning" type of guy. Is this purely psychosomatic?

The speed that caffeine starts hitting your body depends very strongly on how full you are when you consume it and how much food/water you’ve already had throughout the day. The timing after a meal will be very different than an empty stomach, which is probably just minutes. People are more used to noticing the same effects with alcohol.

Well, that makes a lot of sense.

Re: Memories from old LAN parties

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, why would you want to do that? I still have my 9800 :)

I think they were trying to modify their 9600 to think it was a 9800.

Hah, that explains it, thanks. I remember of people flashing the Radeons to get them to work on Mac, but I didn’t know this detail.
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