On May 6th, the final testing was done for the Quake Mac LAN, and all went rather well. Quake performed like a charm, working rather well even on my slowest iMac. Thus the 6-player LAN is ready to go for the Underdog Chamber. This will include 5 iMacs and a Blue & White tower unit.
(Special thank to the folks who helped with this ‘load’ test – Erica, Greg, Rob, Todd, and Tom)
On the side, I also tried to run a network game of Bungie’s old Abuse. However, I don’t think this game really likes classic Mac OS 9, as it kept crashing the system way too much. Basically, if you ran anything before Abuse, then ran Abuse, it would lock up the entire network. This caused all machines to need a hard-boot. Because of this issue, Abuse is out of the show, for ever! Decent game, but I don’t need system crashes that this game produces. I’m guessing it works better under OS 7 or 8, but I’m not downgrading!
I did a Minotaur test again too though, which is also an even older game by Bungie. This game, however, works like a charm. No crashes and such, just a nice old classic game that is similar to Gauntlet – except the players are out to get each other! I may try to run this at the show, if anyone shows interest.
In video game news, I am still waiting for the installation instructions for the Intellivision video upgrade. I will have to admit that I am getting impatient. Argh! I do have good news in this area, if it hopefully ships in time. The Cuttle Cart III has just been released for the Intellivision. This will hopefully (if it gets to me in time) allow me to run all the INTV games at the show using just the Cuttle Cart III. Fingers crossed on this one!
Meanwhile, while I’m also waiting for the Atari 7800 video upgrade, I will be working on the Cuttle Cart II later this week (hopefully). I’ve had it for years, but only now am getting around to setting it up. Yeah, sometimes I let things sit on the side for too long (don’t we all to some extent).
Oh, my upgraded G7400 (thanks again René) is pretty much done, and should be shipped back to me real soon. I don’t see why this should not get to me before the show, so I can get it and other things ready for the G7400 / Odyssey2 area of the Underdog Chamber.
One last thing here too, I started work on the Apple IIgs. I was going to bring my original unit, but have decided to bring an old backup computer instead. Main reason for this is that the IIgs in mind has a built in HD, so it will take up less table space, and that is what I want. I just need to transfer some cool games over to its huge 20MB hard drive (yeah, amazing how much fit on these old drives, when software wasn’t so damn bloated)!
So, that is it for now. One thing I regret here, is that I totally forgot to take pictures of the Quake LAN in action. Had the camera there and all, and then forgot about it until after I had taken everything apart for my Sunday night D&D game. Oh well…