Can I connect to Aardwolf?

[Robuck]

Hello everyone,

I have a sick gateway 2000 PC that can run any MS-DOS game, but i guess the processing power of it doesn't matter very much. It has a later version of ProComm installed, and a networking card that has a telephone line connector and what looks like an ethernet connector. I am fascinated by vintage computers used by my family members long ago, and I absolutely love everything about MMO's and online games. Would it be possible to connect to Aardwolf, or maybe something similar to it from my ms dos pc? I am 17, so I have no experience with dial up or modems or anything like them, just easy breezy WiFi that autoconnects to all my devices- But that does not mean I am not tech-savvy. What should I do? Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Mark

 

[jafir]

Do you still have a land line? If not, I wouldn't worry about the modem. It's not wort $20 a month for dialing a BBS, in my opinion. I'm 21 years older than you, and I've never had a land line in my house. It's probably been 15 years that I've only used a mobile phone.

If you've got ethernet and telnet, that should work for most BBS that are still online. Does the ethernet work, like is everything setup to use it? See if you've got a c:\net directory on the hard drive. I just spent a couple of hours a couple of days ago to get my 3c509b card working on my IBM AT under DOS 6.22. It was like going back in time and a lot of fun. If it's not configured right now, you should be able to figure out what the card is, find some packet drivers, and configure mTCP or maybe even the Microsoft TCP stack pretty easily.

 

[Trixter]

Welcome to the hobby. If you're just starting out, it might be easier to work with standard TCP/IP networking (ie. the ethernet jack on a network card) in your DOS system. You can download a packet driver for the network card, then the mTCP suite to give you common commands like telnet, ping, etc., and then you can telnet to port 4000 on the Aardwolf servers to play the game. Another advantage of using a network card is that you can use it to transfer games to/from the computer's hard drive more easily. I use the FTP server in the mTCP suite to make my DOS system an FTP server that I can then copy stuff to/from.

I would not recommend trying to connect to things with modems in this day and age -- the speed will be shockingly slow to those who never grew up with it, and almost nothing is connected to actual phone lines any more. Also, more and more VoIP systems are becoming incompatible (or at least very unfriendly) with modem operation.

There is a hybrid of these two: "WIFI modems". These are devices that connect to the serial port and look like a modem to the computer, but they're actually wifi clients and can connect to the internet. This is another option for connecting to things online, but an actual network card is way faster. I haven't played with any of these.

If you get stuck, feel free to reply back with more targeted questions, but I hope this is enough to get you started.