First post, by ComputerMD82
- Rank
- Newbie
Hi all,
Discovered this site about a month ago as myself and a few buddies are working on an old school LAN project (4 PCs). We were originally going for 98/XP dual boot systems, but since *almost* all the older games we want to play work just fine on XP or DosBox, we went with the newer systems to try and broaden the range of titles we could play. Some of the older games we will likely run are Shogo, Populous, Command and Conquer titles- namely RA2, Dune 2000, Quake II, CS 1.5. Not entirely sure what else just yet, open to suggestions too!
Hardware is all in-hand except the boards themselves. The hardware list is looking like:
Asus P8Z77-M Pro MATX Board
Intel i5-3570 CPU
XFX Nvidia GTX285 1GB
8GB G-Skill Sniper DDR3-1866
WD Velociraptor 250GB for XP
Samsung 860 Pro 500GB for Win 7
Corsair Obsidian 350D MATX Case
Corsair RM850x PSU
Cooler Master G100M CPU cooler (Open to alternatives on this, I liked the old school design and the RGB without software, but I don't have the boards yet to test GPU clearance)
Anyway, the one request from my buddies, and the reason we were originally pushing for Win98SE systems.. Is Microsoft Hearts, playable over LAN. Like we used to do in the good old days in our HS computer lab on Windows 3.11. There's even a company that makes a Winpopup alternative that will work with the more modern systems.
So, I know that LAN Hearts wasn't designed to work in XP. I've copied over the files from a Win98 build. At first the network options are grayed out, but I also made sure that IPX/SPX/Net Beui are installed. Also started the 2 services for Network DDE, which I've read was the protocol that Network Hearts used. With trying this out, the options are no longer grayed out, but they still refuse to connect to each other.
Did find an old post (https://www.pcreview.co.uk/threads/network-hearts.3676114/) that mentioned compatibility mode (which I tried as well) and services tweaks, but the comment referenced an older post on a defunct website. Did also try using the Win98 PC as the dealer to see if the XP rig could connect, no luck. Also turned off firewall on the XP builds.
I'm able to troubleshoot with 2 C2D XP systems I have already set up, one is a dual boot 98SE/XP rig, so I have all the 98SE files at my disposal. Open to any suggestions!
Thanks!
"There's an old saying: 'Fortune favors the bold'. I guess we're about to find out."