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Introduction
0.1 About this document
0.2 Disclaimer
0.3 Copyright
Superficial Stuff
1.1 What's F.R.A.G. Stand for?
1.2 What's a FAQ?
1.3 Why a games club?
1.4 What games do you play?
1.5 When is it?
1.6 Where's the Tamaki Campus Student lounge?
Club Stuff
2.1 Can I join?
2.1.1 ..at what cost?
2.2 Can I contribute..
2.2.1 ..my services?
2.2.2 ..cool Hardware?
2.2.3 ..by linking to your site?
2.3 Do we accept Sponsorship?
2.4 Is it true that we are a bunch of crazed lunatics?
2.5 Can I link to your site?
2.6 Can you link to my site?
Network Stuff
3.1 How can I connect to the network?
3.2 What type of Network card can I use?
3.2.1 Where Can I find the network card driver from??
3.2 Network Stack??
3.3 What's a Collapsed Backbone??
0 Introduction
0.1 About this document
This document was put together to enlighten the masses with useful information that has
been, or is expected to be asked about F.R.A.G.(and to stop people bugging us with the
same questions over and over :)
0.2 Disclaimer
Everything contained in this document is underwritten by the PAPILLA - Peoples Popular
Liberation Front of Judea (slackers), so if you have a gripe have it out with them.
Oh yes, we are told that we can be a bit insensitive at times.
0.3 Copyright
The source of this document may be dissected (in a humane way) for individuals and groups
sympathising with the PAPILLA. Special site licenses may be obtained from the odd little
man who sits in Albert park who thinks he's a spotted pigeon.
1 Superficial Stuff
1.1 What's F.R.A.G. Stand for?
(F)raternity of (R)eprobates (A)ddicted to (G)ames
1.2 What's a FAQ?
It's an acronym meaning; Frequently Asked Questions
1.3 Why a games club?
Why not! More and more people are taking net-games as a serious pursuit.
Take a look around how many people are playing these games until the wee-hours, usually on
a lagged internet line.
This is an opportunity for them to participate in a high-speed Local network and actually
see their opponents.
1.4 What games do we play?
Network ones of course!
If you can find someone else willing to play it, go for it.
1.5 When is it?
We run events about once a month at the Tamaki Campus of Auckland University. The venue
room is the Student Lounge.
1.6 Where's the Tamaki Campus Student lounge?
What am I, a map!!
Tamaki Campus is the old Commonwealth Games Athletes Village sandwiched between Mt.
Wellington and Glen Innes shopping centre. Still don't know where it is? Well we were only
kidding, we do have a map.
The room can cater for up to about 65 players, with an extra area(which has to be
negotiated) which could bring it up to 90.
2 Club Stuff
2.1 Can I join?
If you are an AUSA or affiliated member, no problem.
If you are not, membership has to 70% AUSA membership so contact the secretary to find out what the membership
stands at.
If you have plenty of dosh, I'll see what I can do ;|
2.1.1 ..at what cost?
Well... there's the damage to your reputation, you'll always need to buy a faster machine,
you need to become an insomniac, your mouse and joystick will be worn away to dust, and
then... there's money for us... It's $15 for students to become members and $25 for non
students, once you're a member each event is $5 instead of $10, which is what non-members
pay.
2.2 Can I contribute..
Sure you can ;)
2.2.1 ..my Services
If you have expertise in an area of network configuration and troubleshooting, hardware
configuration, graphic-arts(we like cool logos) really up to date with all the
games(controlling and configuring) or would like to help set the events, give us a buzz on
555-sexy
2.2.2 ..cool Hardware
If you can donate hardware(hubs,switches,cards,cables,multi boxes etc), are in a position
where you can organise loaners of this sort of stuff (computers even) or get the stuff at
below wholesale, we will be your best friends for life bestmate@friends.4eva.org
2.3 Do we accept sponsorship
Sure, why not!
Sponsorship = Cool equipment/signs/T-Shirts for us; exposure for the Sponsors
<sell>
We aim to maintain a high profile within the Network Gaming community in NZ. We will
encourage and help(if we can) new clubs to form and associate with us. We feel that a
group atmosphere will change peoples solo(and disturbing) habit of playing alone in dark
rooms until the wee hours by playing with a group in a bigger dark room until the next
day.
Most of these people strive towards the gruntiest,gnarliest collection of hardware(drool)
they can afford to get maximum performance out of the newer games.
If your product falls in that category
</sell>
2.4 Is it true that we are a bunch of crazed lunatics?
Yup....wanna game then?
2.5 Can I link to your site?
So you want to link your web page to these pages? Well go
ahead. We have no objections whatsoever. If you need a banner - Please use the
Banner at the top of the main page. Email
sidey if you have any problems
There is a button. Just right button mouse click on it and save it as whatever file
name you want to call it for use on your web page(s)
The link to attach to the button should be:
2.6 Can you link to my site?
If you want me to place a link on these pages for you, or if you have any links that would
be useful for network players browsing here, then just drop sidey a line and send him the
details of the link(s) you think we should add.
We will check the link and then add it to our pages (as long as it
is appropriate).
3 Network Stuff
3.1 How can I connect to the network?
At this stage you need to have a Ethernet network card, and a TCP/IP network stack.
coming soon....TCP/IP DOS stack pointer(forget where they are at the moment)
3.2 What type of Network card can I use?
Most of the Network cards around are 802.3 (or Ethernet), just to confuse you some more
there are 3 types of connectors and cables that are used to connect.
10BaseT - Which uses twisted pair cable and RJ45
connectors(similar to the plugs you see connecting a phone handset to the cable) These
plug into Devices called Hubs. The club will have hubs sitting on the tables for you to
plug into.
100BaseT - A faster (100 MBit) version of
10BaseT, which you'll need to ask us in advance to use. We use 100MBit for our servers,
and our 100BaseT ports are limited. We only allow people to put servers on the 100BaseT
ports. It's pointless to have a faster switched backbone, if you then start connecting
each members machine at the backbone speed.
10Base2/10 Base5 - Which uses Coax Cable and BNC
connectors. These are connected together in a daisy chain pattern with a terminator on
each end. The main difference between 10Base2 and 5 is the thickness of the coax, the club
does not support the thicker 10Base5.
AUI - which is commonly called cheapernet, uses
twisted pair cable and connectors which look like Joystick plugs. The club not support
these. If you have one of these, you will need to get a "Media Converter",
sometimes known as an "Ethernet Transceiver". These days, AUI ports are not so
much a port meant to be used by themselves, but more intended to be a basic port to which
you attach whatever converter you need.
Most newer card have both the BNC and RJ45 sockets, they are
commonly called "Combos".
You have to find the driver for your network card if you don't have it already.
We strongly advise buying cards that are "NE2000
Compatible" if you want to keep things simple. There are faster ethernet cards on the
market, but for the purpose of gaming, you won't need a faster card. Not to mention that
we might not be able to help you if you don't have the CORRECT drivers handy. Let us worry
about faster ethernet cards in our servers.
3.2.1 Where Can I find the network card driver from??
Good question, no answer.
Seriously, If you are using windows 95 it has quite a few drivers
as part of the OS, if you get no joy a good place to start is a search engine on the
Internet. Usually the card has the name printed on the side of the card. Also, when all
else fails, if your card is supposed to be Novell NE2000 compatible, you can use the
standard Novell/Anthem NE2000 drivers built into Windows 95.
Other than that, here are a few sites that I have come across;
Microsoft Boca Intel Lexmark Novell Xircom
Another good place to start looking for network drivers is the winfiles.com network
driver page.
3.2 Network Stack??
Yup, a network stack is a collection of software and drivers for your Computer Operating
System to connect to a network via a physical network connection(in this case, the network
card).
The stack works in a layered fashion from the application(some
righteous game), through your operating system to the cable(and eventually finding its way
to your loser opponent). Each layer transmits and sends information, observing the rules
of the receiving layer and being sent information with its rules.
Confused? You will be if you want to know more. The thing is I
won't say any more because I'm not getting paid for this stuff, I don't think you
will necessarily understand and I will probably confuse myself.
3.3 Collapsed Backbone??
2 potential answers to that;
1) Series of LANs(small bunch of computers connected together) connected in a peer to
peer manner, through a device known as an etherswitch. The etherswitch keeps traffic only
on the piece of the LAN that concerns it, which means that collectively, all the pieces
can handle more traffic on average because they are only dealing with the traffic that
concerns them.
2) What happens to your opposition when you crush them }:-]
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