[atonse]

I remember buying a networking kit at Best Buy in the late 90s and then with 3 of my friends spending hours just trying to get the computers to ping each other.

There was also always someone who would have to reformat and reinstall Windows.

[other_herbert]

I laughed hard at this... The one poor guy who had family computer and required a large amount of work to be playable....

[coenhyde]

Looking back I find it hard to believe it was necessary to format and reinstall windows all the time. But I guess I haven't used Windows in about 10 years either. When everything is a black box and broken as hell there's not much you can do other than wipe the slate clean and start again.

[rvschuilenburg]

> There was also always someone who would have to reformat and reinstall Windows.

Oh god that was me one time. It was at one of those larger LAN-parties with thousands of people. I remember bugging people on IRC (or whatever we used to chat) to see if anyone had an ISO of windows and a CD burner with him. Then looking around the crowd to see where exactly he was located.

Fun times.

[shinymark]

This resonates so much! In our group who started with IPX networks to play Doom there was always one less technical kid whose PC was so loaded with viruses the rest of us would spend a few hours helping troubleshoot his issues. A reformat always came next.

Pat, you were a legend.