- I was lucky enough to be able to play Doom 0.9 when it had just come out as shareware (before the retail release) over IPX (on 10BASE2 cabling) across three machines so as to enable the 3-monitor-single-view mode.
IIRC, you set the middle one up as the server and launched the left and right machines/monitors with the -left or -right parameter accordingly.
It is with some wry amusement that I recently noticed that a few YouTubers over the past few months have only just 'discovered' this 'hidden' feature in Doom. ;)
Darnit, I'm old...
- jgrahamc 343 days agoDon't worry about being old. You're very welcome here :-) I too played Doom over IPX with 10BASE2.
- I wish there was something like this for the UK.
- Author here, thanks for posting this!
I had an email about my LCP work a few days ago; turns out that in my desire to shoehorn everything onto a single floppy image, I removed the file 'Disk-Validator' which the Amiga uses to, um, validate disks. I thought It only needed it if there were problems with the disk structure, but apparently altering the contents of the 'Brain' file triggers a need for the disk to be revalidated. Which it can't do by itself anymore.
The workaround for now is to boot to Workbench and then insert the NewLCP disk into DF1: and let the Amiga validate the disk for you.
I'll be uploading a fixed version in the near future.
- Author here, thanks for posting this! AMA.
- Amstrad PCW 8256 and PCW 8512, along with Amstrad CPC 664/6128, and the Spectrum +3 (made by Amstrad), all sported 3" disks.
- I've bookmarked this. I am going to explore them properly later at some point - probably via my Amiga 500.
What I think puts people off casual browsing of old-school BBSs is that almost all of them require 'user registration' before you can actually log on.
These days, I think 'guest' access is mandatory.
- How are you getting your Amiga 500 online? I've been working on a restoration and am about ready to boot it .. next step is going to be giving it a 21st Century upgrade ..
- [TL;DR - skip to the last paragraph!]
I'm a strange person, I won't use 'modern' gadgets like the PLIP box[1] to get my Amigas online. For me, Retro is about re-enjoying the classic machines along with the era-appropriate peripherals (where possible).
What I've been doing for a while now is using a Null-Modem cable to my main PC and running a custom 'BBS' type app that effectively offers file browsing of a local folder on the PC along with XModem upload/download. This is a good stop-gap to get stuff on/off my Amiga's hard drive. I use JComm on the Amiga as the terminal client.
Lately, I've been playing with AmigaNOS[2], which is an all-in-one TCP/IP over serial application that runs on the Amiga. Connecting to a Linux machine (again over the null-modem) with slattach[3] running on the Linux box gives me a point-to-point TCP/IP connection. Googling AmigaNOS instructions on how to do this has shown that the knowledge has been lost over time, so I'm documenting it heavily for a future blog post.
The downside of slattach is that it doesn't work with iptables so I can't route the amiga traffic to the outside world. So the next thing is a cheap old Cisco Router with a serial port on it that will route serial-to-network properly. I'm waiting for that to arrive at the moment. End goal on this is multiple serial ports to ethernet for all my retro machines.
I love Kickstart/Workbench 1.3, but bigger TCP/IP stacks like AmiTCP or Miami don't play well (if at all) with it. Hence exploring this esoteric method with AmigaNOS.
OK, this probably isn't the answer you were looking for :) So... for less crazy people, the answer is: A PLIP Box, Kickstart 3.x, and Miami or AmiTCP.
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[1] https://amitopia.com/plipbox-deluxe-is-a-really-great-soluti.../
[2] https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/amiga/networking/74-AmigaNOSFla...
I prefer to load up the proper packet drivers and MS LanMan client...