The preamble of a LAN party
From about 2000 to 2010, LAN parties were a real trend. Every other weekend, gamers disassembled their computers and hauled them into the car.
Mom or Dad would drive the computer to a friend’s house. There, the PC would be set up again for a night or two. At LAN parties, the computers were connected, and they played Warcraft 3, Diablo 2, Blobby Volley, or Counter Strike without pause.
But does anyone still remember all the preparations needed to make the LAN happen adequately?
To ensure that the various computers could communicate in the home network, IP addresses had to be assigned manually, and various settings had to be made.
It was not uncommon for 3 or 4 hours at LAN parties to be spent installing network drivers or completely reinstalling Windows because you simply couldn’t connect with some players at all.
What exactly didn’t work is hard to say in hindsight. It was probably just a kind of computer magic that no one can comprehend today.
In any case, it was nothing compared to today’s “plug it in and it works.” Every LAN party was a nail-biting experience, wondering if everything would run smoothly this time. And usually, it didn’t. Luckily, we never got tired of watching “A gamer’s day” during a LAN…
On the next page, we talk about the horror that a memory card could cause …
