3 ms·
Not quite 10Base5, but my very first network was using 10Base2 coax at home in 1993. I remember the time well because DOOM had just come out on PC and suddenly
by Reason077 6y ago
Not quite 10Base5, but my very first network was using 10Base2 coax at home in 1993. I remember the time well because DOOM had just come out on PC and suddenly there was a compelling reason to have a home network! I believe this was the first well-known PC game to have a multiplayer mode over LAN.
We got the LAN cards, coax cables, and T-connectors for cheap (or free?!) as I guess many businesses were already upgrading to the simpler and more flexible 10Base-T around that time. Terminators were very difficult to get, but we could make them at home by taking a segment of coax and soldering a resistor between the inner and outer conductors!
You loaded a DOS IPX driver for the LAN card before starting up DOOM. I think there was some way to share files and mount drives between PCs without a server, too, but I forget the details of that.
No switch or hub hardware was required - all the nodes on the network were just connected by one big string of coax with our home-made "terminators" at each end.
The whole thing was very fragile as any break on the cable (or disconnection of a terminator) at any point would take the whole network down. But for a home network it was fine. Good times!
- klodolph 6y agoAround that time (1993-ish) we had Macs and used something called PhoneNet. You plugged a dongle into the serial port and connected computers using ordinary telephone cable (you might call it “cat 1 cable” now). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhoneNet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhoneNet There were a few games we played over the network, like Super Maze Wars or Marathon. http://macintoshgarden.org/games/super-maze-wars http://macintoshgarden.org/games/super-maze-wars http://macintoshgarden.org/games/marathon http://macintoshgarden.org/games/marathon It wasn’t long before we switched to 10BASET.
- daniellarusso 6y agoDo you remember ‘Spectre’? http://macintoshgarden.org/games/spectre http://macintoshgarden.org/games/spectre
- krallja 6y agoThe AppleTalk game I remember best was Bolo, which could run on just about any Mac.
- caf 6y agoYeah we got a bunch of 8-bit NE1000 cards for free and did the same thing around that time. I remember the three-step setup process of LSL / NE1000 / IPXODI. The file sharing thing might have been NWLite?
- daniellarusso 6y agoOur PC lab was networked like this, with a row of about 10 computers. I distinctly remember moving the PC desktop forward, which pulled the coax from the t-connector, and all the remaining PCs down the line would lose connectivity. Lots of angry DOOM players losing their network connection.
- rasz 6y agoDooms first networking implementation was very inconsiderate and had a habit of killing whole networks. https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Doom_in_workplaces https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Doom_in_workplaces >The first version of the Doom IPX network code transmitted its data as broadcast data. As a result of this, all machines on a network where a game of Doom was being played would receive the data, even if the machine was not involved in the game. The degrading effect on network performance forced the system administrators for many office networks to ban Doom.
- Zardoz84 6y agoA few years later (1995 or 96 ?) I build my first ethernet network at home using 10base2 with a TV coaxial cable. Works enough well to play DooM with my brother.