Oh, no! The bus is slowing down... we're gonna go under 55... ahhh!

well, we could always watch Con Air on the flight, Mike. ;)

Well...I think we may be running a few P133's...so my suggestion of UT2003 was out :D

???
 

I've been admining LANs (10+ people) for a while. Even a small LAN wouldn't work on the plane.

First, you can't use WiFi. I have no interest in landing in the Gulf.

Two, wires get really messy. You put them in the aisles, the drink cart rips out everyone's network ports at once.

Three, hubs generally require AC power. Without a hub, you're limitted to two people.

Four, you can't have a quiet LAN. The pilot couldn't hear the tower over us.

The list goes on.... this assumes that you get the network running in the first place. I've been doing LAN Party's roughly once a month for a year and a half, and we have had only one LAN party where one computer didnt refuse to talk to the others. That leaves 17 where I've spent the first 1/2 hour or so troubleshooting one or two computers. Also, by the time you get the software installed on all the computers, a decent portion of the flight will be done.

It's not worth the hassle. A laptop and a few DivX's \ DVD's, and a few headphone splitters, no problem, but a full-fledged network of more than 2 computers won't happen.

The only way that this could possibly work is FireWire. I haven't used it for LANs, but I think that you can get hubs powered off batteries / the port itself. You could even bridge computers w/o FireWire into it with crossover cables. Or you could daisy chain firewire -> firewire -> crossover -> crossover -> firewire.... Good luck.

bonding with my teammates for 18 hours on a chartered bus... not among my favorite things to do... you know, small space, some loud members...hopefully we don't get to houston with a few less members...
i plan on sleeping most of the time... so i can be all rested for the lack of sleep i'll be getting while at nationals...
plus movies and food... and if i'm feeling productive, maybe a little hw, but thats highly unlikely

Re: ???
 

This would probably be like 3 or 4 people. I have never run into networking problems when I network...and I've put all different things together.

Also, wouldn't it be possible to get 2 NIC's for each computer and just use a cross-over between all of the computers? Anyways, I don't think 4 cables or so going to a central source would be that hard. The cables would only have to be about 2-3' in length. I have a whole mess of short cat5 cables.

And...we can get the needed DC power from batteries. Portable power sources are cool. Also, we would preinstall the software. And anyways, I don't think Quake1 takes hours to install :) Especially if we get a network...just copy from one to another.

I don't think it would be hard to do...I just don't know if we would be _allowed_ to do it.

Heh. Charter buses have bathrooms. Charter bus bathrooms can hold in people...probably about 5. The doors to the charter bus bathrooms can be blocked from the outside. Get my drift? :) And if you play RHPS and MP: Holy Grail repeatedly, people won't get bored.

Another thing to think about. After 9/11 not many people still trust safety on planes. A bunch of teenagers and college kids running wiring to little boxes with blinky lights might scare some of the passengers. Especially the ones who don't know a mouse form a microprocessor. After all how would you feel if you saw a bunch of strangers wiring strange equipment on a plane? I can't imagine the flight crew would jive with making their passengers think they are gonna die.

i say we have apple and orange races down the airplane. See which one makes it to the cabin first, or maybe some TP

Ummm...safety? Apples and oranges in the aisles? Oh no!

how about making a couple of video cds with a bunch of Gundam Wing on them for the flight and watch them on a laptop. I was going to do this but my friend with the laptop didn't have a battery that would work.

In my humble but accurate opnion ;) , you will have no problems. Legally, as long as there are no radio transmissions, you are fine. Technically, you can use a power inverter either going to the in seat power or a gel cell. All computers would need network cards (duh!) and you would either need to supply a router or set each comp to a static ip address. Either way, all could be done before hand so that while on the plane, the system would be 'plug and play.'

Bill B.