Geeking like it's 1995!

[elfs]

Omaha and I switched to VoIP about a month ago, and one of the critical failures of installing VoIP was the TiVo. The onboard modems inside the TiVo are cheap and cannot handle communicating over the VoIP lines. Omaha and I are in an even worse bind; our TiVo is an ancient Dish TiVo with one 30 GB hard drive, a very sad machine indeed. Ever since we've switched over, the TiVo has been complaining about its inability to call the mothership and confirm that Omaha and I are subscribers in good standing. We'd damn well better be after five years.

The problem can be fixed. It took one custom DB9M-to-1/4stereo cable. The stereo jack goes into a plug on the TiVo labeled "command". The DB9M end goes into a DB9F-to-DB25M convertor, which in turn goes into a US Robotics 38k modem. It was a little strange stopping by RePC to buy a modem after I'd actually given them all my modems a few years ago, thinking I would never need one again. The total cost for this repair job was about $35 bucks.

I twiddled with the dip switches on the back of the modem, and it didn't work. After realizing I had twiddled the switches backwards, I reversed them all and, miracle of miracles, after 32 days, the TiVo was finally happy. And the screeching, whining sound of a modem connecting at 38K resounding through the house again after years of DSL did not make me feel nostalgic. Fortunately, there's a volume control on the modem, and we'll be setting it to low.

After that, we put the kids to bed and then Omaha and I went downstairs to frag each other on Quake 4 in our own little LAN party. It was fun. I kicked Omaha's ass on the first round, so for the second I took on a few handicaps: I used only the shotgun, I downed a full glass of wine, and I walked everywhere. Walking's not entirely a handicap; you don't make footsteps. A few times I snuck up behind her and gibbed her with the shotgun, but since she had the rocket launcher she managed to win that round. She hasn't quite got down the coordination of looking sideways while running, and she's not paranoid enough to continually look behind herself. She also stops running to shoot. But the biggest thing is simple: Omaha doesn't play FPS's, whereas I've played every version of Doom, Quake and Half-Life there is, as well as Tron, Bloodrayne, Unreal, Halo, Hexen/Heretic and the Jedi Knight series.

Comments

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

What, no Rise of the Triad? Duke Nukem 3D? Duke Nukem in particular was an excellent game, well worth seeking out if you haven't played it before. "I'm here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I'm all out of gum."

Mmmm, monk meal.

[rapier.livejournal.com]

ROTT! I loved that game.

Where aaaare you? ... Over heeeeere!

TurboNET?

[pendorbound.livejournal.com]

If you've already thrown money at the problem, perhaps you're not looking to throw more, but this works rather nicely:
http://www.9thtee.com/turbonet.htm

You can twiddle the TiVo a bit and get it to call home over your broadband connection.

You mentioned you have a 'Dish' TiVo. Assuming that's DirecTV, you can also (with a bit of work) modify the thing to never need to call home again. You're NOT stealing the service at that point of course since DirecTV still controls the TiVo enabling tier on your smart card. The only 'down' side (if you see it as such) is that your TiVo doesn't send usage stats back, so you're no longer a Nielson family.

If you're not averse to hacking your beloved TiVo a bit (I admit to some guilt every time I've attacked mine with a screwdriver), the network card approach can give you a lot of nice feeps. I've installed TiVoWeb on mine, so I can schedule and do housekeeping from a web browser much more quickly than I can through TiVo's interface. There's an undelete feature that's especially useful for inquisitive children and/or mischievous house guests.

If you've not run into this site in the past, it's an excellent resource for all of the unspeakable things you can do to an otherwise innocent TiVo:
http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/

[solarbird]

Fortunately, there's a volume control on the modem, and we'll be setting it to low.
I'd be tempted to set it to screwdriver, myself.

Other options....

[blaisepascal]

I have a 6-year-old Series 1 TiVo. A couple of years ago, we decided to kill the land-line and go pure cell-phone (I had a cell phone, and my partner had a land-line. We discovered it would cost less to go for 2 cell phones than to keep the landline).

The day they shut off our landline, we remembered that the TiVo had a modem.

We went to the 9thtee.com, an online dealer in TiVo hackery, and bought a NIC for my TiVo. Once I connected the NIC, configured the TiVo to use the NIC to "dial", and hooked it up to my household LAN, it's been virtually trouble-free ever since.

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

She also stops running to shoot.

That was always how I beat meowse at Unreal Tournament. He'd stop moving to track me to fire, and when he stopped moving, he'd get a faceful of whatever weapon I had limited myself to.

[zacs-pet.livejournal.com]

pendorbound uses the very same tactic. I can't manage to run and shoot at the same time. So when I stop running, I die, he gloats and I whine. I hope I'll get better, but it isn't happening. My thirst for Unreal blood didn't until recently.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Omaha and I did a deathmatch last night in one of those places with lots of small corners and ramps, and at one point she was camping, kneeling down just below a ramp, waiting for me to come up to the edge so she could blow me away. I snuck up behind her on a passageway overhead and pointed down at her with a rocket launcher. I said, "Oh, sweetheart..."

"Yeah?"

Boom.

Lesson: if you're doing head-to-head DM and you can't hear the other guy, either he's too far away, in which case you should be moving to find him, he's camping, in which case your camping doesn't do you any good, or he's sneaking, in which case looking around paranoiacally and moving would at least help.

[bolindbergh]

What, no Marathon?

(Hey, you were the one who mentioned 1995...)

[woggie.livejournal.com]

Omaha would still beat me, I'm quite certain.

I like FPS as immersive VR environments, but I'm not paranoid enough, I can't shoot straight even when I'm immobile, and my emotional reactions to being killed is too over-the-top unless you really like hearing someone shriek with surprise, or like watching someone go catatonic.

Just not fun. :(