peer-to-peer

the black arts of networking ;-)

Here's a guide to set up your very own on-line gaming haven at home.

Word of warning: This is just a guide. Lazydog will not be responsible for PCs spontaneously combusting following his general instructions. Besides, there's lots of packaged mini network setups out there. Your local PC store most proly has them. Ask for Home LANs or the one from Bay Networks tailored for home use.

By scrolling downwards, I take full responsibility on whatever happens to my/our PC and any damage this may cause to life, limb and property in the process of acquiring my/our gaming nirvana at home.

What u need:

• 2 network cards or what is known as NIC(Network Internet Cards). I use 3Com cards(3C5X9 model). These are old ones btw, and there's proly newer cards out there by now. They're the best. Never any problems with them

• 1 length of LAN UTP(Unshielded Twisted Pair) cable with both ends terminating in a phone jack. Make sure the one u get from the store has a jack that fits your Network card ports. Heck, bring yo cards along jus to be sure. We had a Lan guy from the office help us out on this, especially to crimp both ends so they fit in the 3 com cards

• The 3Com or whatever card u use, drivers. Windows95 comes with these drivers, else there's some on the W95 cd.

• An extra slot for the NIC, on your motherboard. Take out that useless Mpeg card!

What To do:

• Turn off all PCs
• Open the cover and stick the NIC of your choice into one of the vacant slots. Do same for other PC
• Connect to other PC using length of UTP cable.
• Start PCs and Windows will automatically detect the NICs.
• Insert yo Win95 cd, when prompted for the Network Card driver. In my case it's the "3C5X9 3 Com ISA" driver
• Windows will proly ask if u need to restart. Don't yet.
• First, make sure that under Start/Settings/Control Panel/Network you are in the same Workgroup name e.g. Home_Network, but your id, can be anything you want.
• And, make sure you enable file sharing. Still in Network, Click on File and Printer sharing. And check the two boxes there.
• You might want to check if windows actually implemented the correct protocol settings
• Go to Start/Settings/Control Panel/Network and check the properties for Adapters which should include bindings to IPX/SPX and TCP/IP
• Restart your PC

To test if you're connected:

• You can click on Network Neighborhood and Windows will try and locate your other PC
• if connection is successful, you can now actually access your friends hard drive and check out all those "confidential" files of his!
• You can also try and "ping" your buddy's PC. Before that, under Network adapter, create your own IP address, where it says specify your own IP. I just type in 1.1.1.1 and my housemate's is 1.1.1.2
• Restart both PCs
• So go to your DOS box, and at the prompt ping your buddy's IP like this
• Ping 1.1.1.2
• And it should return some messages saying bla bla bla return in 15 ms, bla bla bla
• If you're not connected, the ping will fail with a "message timeout"

Time to kick ass:

• Ok that done, start up your games, in this case Dark Omen
• Go to Multplayer/Play
• Click where it says, "Internet TCP/IP connection for Directplay"
• A box will pop up asking for the IP of your other PC.
• You can either type it in or just click OK to let it search for you.
• If all goes well. enjoy! If not uhh...get one of those LAN for Dummies handbooks ;-)

If Disaster Strikes. Nothing works. Lazydog's a liar. I'm getting all sort of crap interrupt errors now. You can simply goto :

• Start/Settings/Control Panel/Network and remove the Network adapters. DONT remove your dial up adapter! Thas for your internet connection senor
• Goto Start/Settings/Control Panel/System/Device Manager and Remove the NIC
• Retstart your PC.

Why LAN or Network gaming rules:

• The transfer rate is wayyyyy faster than say modem or internet or serial cable connections
• There is never any lag. Which reminds me the only lag free game I've ever played via Internet -Diablo
• If you're really pissed cos u keep losing to a gaming god, you can always walk across the room and physically kick his butt!
• ..or grovel before his august presence, altho my housemate still has to do this to me :-)
• Likewise you can use ur Office LAN! Just don'rt let the boss or system admin dominatrix catch you. They caught us once playing Quake CTF. Different guys from differnt floors of the building blowing the crap out of each other! YeeehAaaaa!
• But seriously, you can share PC resources, like files and stuff and any transfer is almost instantenous, except for biger files ofcors.

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