This thread is a place people can share tips and tricks for doing video or voice communcations on retro systems.

So far I have experimented with Microsoft NetMeeting on the Windows 9x and XP platforms.

For the uninitiated, MS NetMeeting is a fully fledged videoconferencing program distributed by Microsoft with older 32-bit versions of Windows, from 95 to XP. It lets you either make direct calls (to an IP address on the local network) or by using a directory server, over the internet. There is also MS Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server which apparently can be used for conference calls, so that multiple people can join a call at once.

I have a couple of old IBM PC Webcams which use USB. These work in Windows 9x and XP, and require no extra configuration to be used with Microsoft NetMeeting. If you install the drivers you can plug them in to any old computers running Windows 95+ and use them with NetMeeting.

I also have a Creative Video Blaster Webcam III, which plugs into the parallel port. I have only tested it with my Thinkpad 365X so far (Pentium 120), and it is too slow to be of any use... NetMeeting grinds to a halt unless you use the lowest resolution setting, and even then it stutters quite a bit. But it does work. I suspect it would work better with a newer computer but anything newer has USB anyway.

My next project is to try to spin up a VM with the MS directory server for NetMeeting, and MS Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server for conference calls. Maybe I will try to make this a public thing that people can test out.