I've played with myself... and I liked it!

[hubbabubba]

Don't get any ideas, you perverts.

I'm talking here of multiplayer sessions with a TCP/IP connection between two home computers actually standing side-by-side.

Apart from the fun of seeing yourself from a perspective that recall FS98 "Tower View", it can be very useful for designers like some of us.

But a word first on how I did it. A year or two ago, I bought a few tools for crimping cables. The crimper itself can do the job on phone RJ-11 jacks and on RJ-45 Ethernet cables. At the time, this was to be useful in my "build a workplace" project that had to be put on standby due to uncontrollable circumstances. I did used the crimper on a few phone lines that had broken jacks and, to practice on Ethernet cables, I did a 6-8 inches long crossover cable with a cheap cable bought in a dollar shop.

All that stuff (crimper, jacks, cables, wire cutter and stripper) went into a plastic bag when I had no time for it. My PC (W7 home 64 bits) fried its power supply, one of my brother gave me his old laptop to get by (a W7 home 64 bits machine), I bought a second hand PC from a classified adds site (a W7 professional 32 bits) and had my first PC PS repaired. Then, not long ago, the laptop quietly died without warning and without any chance of saving what was worth saving - which was, fortunately, very little.

Up until the laptop demise, I had only enough place left for one monitor/mouse/kb on my tiny desk. My only option was to switch them once a day from one PC to the other to make updates. The silver lining of the laptop sudden death was that both PC could now have their own dedicated peripherals.

My two desktop PC are almost identical. Both are Dell Dimension towers and, as I could now have a more permanent installation, the crimping tool was out of the bag to make shorter phone lines going from the wall to the surge protection bar to the 32 bits machine to the 64 bits machine to the phone itself in a serial connection network.

And while at it, why not install that crossover? The idea was to create my own little LAN, a work still in progress as I have difficulties having both machines recognize the other.

But CFS had no problem creating a multiplayer session like in the good old days of AAF. Don't even have to stop the firewall or create exception!

Ivan had once told me that I could use a NULL-modem cable, but they are rare and pricey, for my budget anyway. I could have made my own using some left behind printers' cables, but I'm lazy. The crossover was a cheaper, solder-less solution. It connects both PC through a TCP/IP mode, just like multiplayer games over the internet.


For those interested in crimping their own, I've included a pinning diagram. In most modern PC, a straight cable would do OK as they have auto-sensing that detects the wiring but, not knowing for sure the age og my second-hand machines, why take the risk of frying them?

For years, the only way I could experiment was by asking someone to enter into a multiplayer session and perform some tedious and repetitive tests. I had a few good fellows to do that but, by a very large margin, smilo was my most willing guinea pig. Thanks again and again smilo!

Apart from having fun with this mini-LAN, you can do useful things. For starter; ever wonder what the numbers in brackets, on the right of the label, really means in term of distance?

To figure out, I placed a jeep at sea level (+ 3 feet exactly), saved that flight and, in slew mode, went a thousand feet high (+1003 feet to be precise) and saved the second flight. I transferred the second flight (.FLT file) to the other PC and placed it in the "Pilots" sub-folder.

Starting a multiplayer game and having both PC load the two previously saved flights, I simply had to look up to see that the number in brackets was 305. Note here that, in multiplayer mode, you can't enter in slew mode but you can load a flight that was saved in that mode, practical!


Taking any half-decent distance converter, you will note that 1000ft = 304.8m. So meter it is!

In a game that constantly uses foot, yards, miles and knots, it is a bit of a surprise, don't you think?

In future posts, here or in different threads, I will report the results of my little experiments.

[Priller]

The cheaper version of making yourself a LAN party, but hey, everything that cuts costs is helpful!

Priller

[Ivan]

Ivan had once told me that I could use a NULL-modem cable, but they are rare and pricey, for my budget anyway. I could have made my own using some left behind printers' cables, but I'm lazy. The crossover was a cheaper, solder-less solution. It connects both PC through a TCP/IP mode, just like multiplayer games over the internet.

Hello Hubbabubba,
The Null Modem Serial adapter that fits onto the end of a normal serial cable actually isn't expensive. I figure it was about $3 or so and definitely under $5. The reason I went that way was because at the time, the computers I was assembling tended to use serial ports for the Mouse and there were typically a second serial port that was not used.
A Serial Port was a pretty common thing to find on a Motherboard but an Ethernet adapter was not, so I would have to buy and additional adapter if I wanted to go that way. These days I have lots of spare Ethernet adapters, so that should no longer be a problem.... except that some machines don't have extra expansion slots.

The second Game Machine had a hard drive failure years back and I recently repurposed it as my new Development Machine.
The first Game Machine also had a hard drive failure but the drive was replaced a while back and it works again.
This was the setup I was using to test Collision Bubbles many years ago to figure out what the numbers inside the MDL file meant.
My kids still remember the setup because sometimes they would try to fly against each other but that was many years ago.

We have been crimping our own CAT-5 UTP (Unshielded Twisted Pair) cables for a couple decades now.
I bought the tool to use about the time when we were trying to make custom length cables for a computer lab at work back about 1995 or so.
My Son actually made his own Crossover Cable to use so that he could share his Laptop wireless to his Xbox 360.
Most of the cables and spares got lost when the basement had a water leak a couple years ago.
These days, for a straight through cable, we just buy them because you can get a nice CAT-6 cable for pretty cheap from Walmart and the ends are moulded in place so they don't snag on anything.

Your idea for a head-to-head gaming setup sounds possible again for us too because there is a spare Windows XP machine that isn't really doing anything at the moment. I also picked up another copy of CFS which hasn't been installed on any machine yet.

Nice Setup you have there!
- Ivan.

[hubbabubba]

When you came with the idea of a null-modem cable, my usual go-to was selling one at ±25$ (Canadian). Soldering one with spares lying around was possible, but, again, laziness and time played against it.

Today, at Amazon, prices are down to ±10$, but you have shipping and taxes to take into account.

My crossover is made of cheap aluminum/copper-plated wires that probably does not even fulfill cat3 specs.

But it cost me around 1$, jacks included. And it works!

Who could ask for anything more?

[Ivan]

Hello Hubbabubba,

The cables I was using were just regular straight through serial cables.
When doing a lot of experimenting, it helps to have a good selection of gender changers and such.
The Null modem looked just like another gender changer except that the connections inside were different.
At computer shows, these items tend to be pretty inexpensive and I just about always had a spare or two or three just sitting around.
Even today, I still have a break out box for DB 25 connections sitting in my tool box though I have actually never used it.
It actually didn't cost me anything. A departing employee left it and folks were just going to throw it out, but I advised the manager to keep it because I knew how to use it. It got to be mine because no one else knew what to do with it.

The Game Machines I had were just sitting next to each other and a serial cable was a reasonable solution, especially since none of the machines had an Ethernet adapter. These days if I had do move the machines further apart, an Ethernet cable would make more sense. I had a LOT of working Ethernet cables at one point, but am not sure if they got thrown out or just packed away.
In a computer lab, when a cable has a failure, no one bothers trying to repair it. They just throw out the original and replace it, so it is pretty common to find an otherwise perfectly good cable with just a broken clip or one that shows some obvious damage that does not prevent cutting off the damage and re-crimping it.
When our bunch was making custom length cables for a lab, sometimes they would get the measurement wrong and be short by a couple feet. When that happened, they would just coil up the cable and toss it into the junk pile and just pull another length from the spool. I actually never trusted their work, but there was nothing wrong with the cable if I clipped off both ends and crimped some new ends on.

I believe you are correct. Just about anything, even phone wires or paper clips are good enough to run 10 MB/s. I have used some really weird cables for the purpose when nothing else was available because all it was costing me was a couple RJ-45 connectors.

One thing I would suggest about making cables is that if there is something unusual about the cable, mark it.
I use very small coloured Zip Ties near the ends or use a cable with an odd colour instead of white, black or gray.
Weird colour Nail Polish from the dollar store would work about as well.
An unmarked cable of that type getting back into the spares box could cause some serious headaches later.
The serial Null modem adapter is also marked pretty obviously because at a casual glance, it looks about like another other gender changer.

- Ivan.

[hubbabubba]

Hello,

Using the same method used to determine distance unit being used, I measured Pas de Calais airstrip. The width is 80 m and the length 2000 m. By the way, this is the same length and width as any other custom airstrips.

I already knew that by other methods but, curiously, the length was giving me 1999 from one side and 2001 from the other. If any one has an idea of how this would happens, feel free to comment here. The width was 80-80 from both sides.

This is a small discrepancy, but an annoying one for sticklers like me.