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Memories from old LAN parties

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Re: Memories from old LAN parties

#71

Post by Tomte »

mvkel wrote: post #68
Tomte wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget getting 10BaseT, NetBEUI and IPX to work on all players' computers [1]. Easily half a day was lost every time, but it was part of it, and almost fun. [1] Extra points if a player had participated in another LAN party with other people and had changed some or the other Windows network setting for that LAN party. "It worked last month and I did not change anything!" was always only true until the "and".

Totally. Getting everything to work was so rewarding. The actual playing of the games was icing on the cake

Also the first day was mostly making sure the decentralized backups of MP3s and funny videos were replicated to all machines.

Re: Memories from old LAN parties

#72

Post by tverbeure »

Before consumer LAN parties were a thing, there was xpilot on the university HP 9000 workstations. We’d play from 7pm until 6am. By then, our hands were completely cramped from pressing a million different buttons to navigate the space cave, shoot bullets and activate the ECM system.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPilot

Re: Memories from old LAN parties

#73

Post by zerbinxx »

pluc wrote: post #9

I remember writing a tool that blared a siren wav every time someone connected to your network share. It would be quiet at the start of a round, and then as people died you'd hear sirens going off left and right. Remains one of the few contexts where nerds would do drugs. Speed mostly. You ever played Quake with a bunch of dudes on speed? It's fucking nuts. The smells. Some LANs would go on for a week. Lots spanned s…

Love the story. Would also love the story of how normally non-druggie nerds get amphetamnines in the pre-adderal era.

Re: Memories from old LAN parties

#75

Post by JohnBooty »

CableNinja wrote: post #34
jholman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was great when LCDs came about. Once upon a time, I owned a 19" CRT that weighed less than a typical 17" CRT. Such good fortune. Still, I never did have the courage to carry my tower on one hip and my monitor on the other (and everything else in a backpack), so I guess it didn't really benefit me that much after all. > most lasted upwards of 12 hours. You're damn right. Imagine carting a CRT around and then only…

I found these Coolermaster straps that enabled you to carry your CRT and tower with a handle. SO SO SO useful for lan parties.

The relatively poor man's version: the indestructable yellow or blue IKEA bag

I forget if they actually sold the blue ones back then. I remember taking a few yellow ones (that weren't supposed to leave the store)

Re: Memories from old LAN parties

#76

Post by smabie »

oaththrowaway wrote: post #6

I've only done a few LAN parties in the last handful of years, and they weren't quite as magical as doing it as a teenager where you spend 75% of the time deciding on what to play and then figuring out how to crack it so everyone can play.

I think the key component is you being a teenager

Re: Memories from old LAN parties

#78

Post by amatecha »

cortesoft wrote: post #45

In the early 90s, my LAN parties were going to the school where my dad was principal and playing with my friends in the computer lab. They had a bunch of Mac Classics and we would play Bolo. So much fun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_(1987_video_game)

Oh heck yeah, I put Bolo (and a custom HyperCard stack to circumvent At Ease and launch the game) onto floppy disks for my friends and I and we'd sneak into the Mac lab and play during lunch. We only did so a few times but.. so fun!!

Re: Memories from old LAN parties

#79

Post by cvccvroomvroom »

mesh wrote: post #66

So many found memories of Red Alert 2 and Quake 2 playing at lan parties in the 90s. I was lucky enough in the early 2000's where I could use my love of video games and lan parties as part of my job. I was responsible for the Flash community at Macromedia, and we would set up 4 xboxes with split screen for 8 player Halo 2 and 3 tournaments in conference rooms (which has multiple plasma screens already set up). I quic…

Good times. 768k SDSL from Verio/NTT for $70/month with 8 ms to Stanford from way away in Davis.

Linux PC as a router was the cheaper, more flexible thing to do.

Re: Memories from old LAN parties

#80

Post by JohnBooty »

zerbinxx wrote: post #73
pluc wrote: post #9

I remember writing a tool that blared a siren wav every time someone connected to your network share. It would be quiet at the start of a round, and then as people died you'd hear sirens going off left and right. Remains one of the few contexts where nerds would do drugs. Speed mostly. You ever played Quake with a bunch of dudes on speed? It's fucking nuts. The smells. Some LANs would go on for a week. Lots spanned s…

Love the story. Would also love the story of how normally non-druggie nerds get amphetamnines in the pre-adderal era.

I dunno, I think Adderall was pretty easily available back then

our crew never really did illegal or prescription drugs

But we'd drink booze and/or achieve Adderall-like effects with caffeinated energy drinks. None of us drank coffee so we had like... zero caffeine tolerance. If you have zero caffeine tolerance and you slam multiple energy drinks the effect is NOT subtle

of course, TODAY, my ruined body is so immune to caffeine I can chug coffee directly before a satisfying REM nap lol

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