And the story continues...

So we had made the RS-232 cable we needed in the LRGS technology labs with 4 core wire, two sockets we chanced upon in a "electrical bits and bobs" draw and some solder. It was the beginning of an era of my life. Problem was, what to do with it. It was no good. We knew nothing about anything to do with making 2 computers talk to one another.

For a while it seemed futile. Windows 98 was new and exciting and SE was a mere twinkle of an eye and things weren't as easy as they seem to be now. We knew what should be happening. Then one day someone gave me a floppy disk, the contents of which a .txt file named Null_Modem_Know_How, or something like that. It described the method one needs to follow in order to obtained what seemed like a break through. It worked. The exact date eludes my memory but back in the Summer of 1999 we did it! Drivers installed and hardware settings tweaked, our computers could talk! But what to do? Why was this any better than before? Suddenly a barrier was broken down, a door opened, through the floodgates gushed forth a torrent of excitement.... We could play against one another. The only game we knew which supported this... GTA (download here). Not GTA II nor III, not Vice City nor San Andreas, just good old fashioned GTA! (which incedentally is now abandonware).

To some of you now wondering, why is that so good? Well let me put it like this. You could play computer games with one another, but you had to be enjoying two separate games and showing on another the amusing occurances in the run of the mill yadda yadda kill him, steal this, blow this up, complete with cut scenes, with lots of pre programmed sprites and fairly basic AI. You come within a certain range and they chase you and ultimately have one goal, to destroy your alter-ego on the screen. However with another person playing they can do much more amazing things like run away, or chase after you, climb on a roof and taunt you, fire rockets randomly into the abyss making driving peculiarly enthralling and to top it all off they're sat just a metre away screaming and shouting at you. Jeering and laughing. Offering cups of tea. And so from the small beginnings of a Null modem suddenly computers became a social occasion, much more than can be said for you reading this!