From 1995-1998 I was running a computer business from the front room at my parents' house. In 1996 the other company partner had been moved into the spare bedroom, and we'd hijacked the front room and filled it to the brim with our gear. Five computers shared with part of a three-piece suite, a stonework fireplace and a piano, and any other bit of house furniture that the parents weren't using and had a flat surface that we could put computers on. The piano was generally used as a filing cabinet, at least until I bought a filing cabinet – that was extra handy, we stuck another computer on top of that.

We had a LAN, of course, constructed out of BNC cabling snaked liberally around the edges of the room. Those of you who've only lived with network hubs, RJ45's and Cat5 cable, never having the joy of Thin Ethernet, really don't know what you're missing. That stuff was a bloody nightmare.

Now, imagine that you have to set it up so the spaghetti doesn't
bend through more than 45 degrees per 10 centimetres…

Now, what does any young chap with a room full of computers, no bird and spare Sunday afternoons do? Of course, invite his mates round for Command and Conquer, Quake, Warcraft II and XvT.

Usually there'd be a guest computer or two (for a long while one friend's machine actually lived there permanently). And that's where the problems would start - they had to talk to the LAN. Usually, I got the job of tangling up the cables while everyone else pumped up with caffeine in the kitchen or looned with my dad.

There's an uncanny resemblance between this man and my Dad. At one point
the lads were worried about Dad being charged with war crimes, fortunately, he
didn't fit the ‘Speaks fluent Serbo-Croat' part of the charge sheet. Oh, and he
once autographed a book as Dave Allen, too.

Install network card. (Until we got enough spares to just leave them in). Battle with drivers. Boot disks. Frequently, install the game. Find out we don't have quite enough CD's because one's been left behind and have to burn a copy. Watch the CD writer hang half way through (ah, preproduction sound cards – it took us two years to find that was the reason the CD writer had a 5% chance per minute of locking up).

But Thin Ethernet's favourite surprise to spring upon you was this: you would all be crammed in shoulder-to-shoulder ready to start the game and find that for some baffling reason one PC can't see the game, although everyone else can see that PC in the chat room. Fine. Make another machine the server. OK, now we can all see it. But somebody else can't join. Why? Buggered if I know. Play with cable. Find that somewhere along the line one of the coax cables has got bent around a corner or tied in a knot. Straighten it out. Realise it's too badly kinked. Replace it. Replace the terminator at the end of one of the cables. Add another piece of cable at the end of one of the cables. Add three more bits of cable and more T-pieces. Finally, we can all play! 2 minutes into the game “Sync error.” ARSE!

Coffee time again lads. I'll get it fixed…

Eventually came twisted pair – which looked expensive until you realised how much easier it was. At first a total life saver, but then a disaster due to a tendency to buy cheap network cards with shitty drivers that worked fine for Windows 95 shares and DOS games but randomly played the same kind of silly buggers during Windows 95 games.

But sometimes it did work. Those of you who've never had the fun of single-room LAN gaming with your friends should be ashamed of yourselves (or bask in the glory of your youth), but the feeling that comes closest is playing an RPG: the enchantment is in the cooperation or the enmity, the fun is in the patterns that each different player falls into that reflect their personality, and the true quality of it all is the single, special events that stick in the mind forever.

Like the time I picked up a key in co-op Quake, turned my character around, and shouted cheerfully “I've got the key! I've got the key! What the hell are you shooting at…”. Other players that day say that it was at this point that the chainsaw emerged through the front of my virtual chest.

Hmm… Chainsaw…

Or made Andy storm out with disgust at my misuse of blizzard on Warcraft II. He's a very reasonable chap, but my casual disregard of whether or not my troops were in the firing line as well as his would send him into paroxysms of rage. Every time.

Then there is player character: like the classic Vos-ism of pushing the keyboard away to declare “Right. I'm dead then.” during any strategy game, without having previously given any indication to his team-mates that this was in fact the last of his troops / resources / patience.

Aw, c'mon back chaps. It's not finished yet is it?

We also played Command and Conquer against as many computers as we could, waiting for the moment when the computer players randomly picked one of you to be Johnny-No-Mates and send everything they had at that one person. And the joy of working out it could be easily manipulated. (Run up; poke harvester with one machine gunner; watch computer go “RIGHT! NOW YOU DIE!”).

Then there was the utter lunacy of rare strategy game 7th Legion. As you played, it handed out ‘cards' that you could throw into the battle. Knowing nowt about ‘em, we chucked them in occasionally for a laugh, and all sorts of strange things happened. At one huge four-way battle we all threw in our most dangerous-sounding cards. Lots of things exploded, the screen went black for 10 seconds, and then cleared to reveal us all back at the start of the game. It turned out one of the cards was a kind of ‘reset switch' and we'd just wasted an hour of our lives. Well, an hour and a half: it took that long to stop laughing; we didn't play it again.

Tragic: The Stupid Card Game

Total Annhilation was renamed Total Stalemate after the third time we had a three-hour game with no final result. (Also cue more Mr. Angry from Andy as I nuke a large, but sufficiently surplus to requirements, portion of my base along with his army).

Rob (my brother) brought his mates round to play Carmageddon and – due to my long-time use of ‘Arse' as my machine's network name – it ending up as a competition for who could find the dirtiest name available in 9 letters. (I believe the eventual winner was “Cuntflaps”).

One time we made Colin (The Loon) play X-Wing vs Tie Fighter using Microsoft's comedy tilt-o-matic joypad while we all used expensive joysticks, generating much irritated gibbering. (He had a special Star Wars name: he called himself Flo Makin. We called him a tit.)

Andy's final great strop-off was when I proved able to steal his tanks at a moment's notice in the excellent Z, then when he blows them up the turrets always land on his troops' heads.

And a thousand more. Big things, little things, but all “Me and me mates.” Great fun, great people – and crap networking. Altogether the story of many a late 90's Sunday.

The advent of the internet, our dispersal around the country and indeed the world – and, if I'm being honest, that none of us would want to spend our entire Sunday afternoons carrying PC's about just to have a game of Warcraft III – doesn't seem to make it likely I'll see those days again.

Which isn't to say we didn't get a few excellent sessions in when we finally got a large place that my parents didn't live in. Even the girls would join in with Unreal Tournament sometimes, by then the network always worked properly, and we never needed borrowed PC's.

This is not a rumour. This does happen.

I still miss a good plate of Sunday spaghetti, though.

DIO, October 2004.

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