$9 PocketCHIP "Great for Doom LANs!"

I was recently informed about this new PocketCHIP Linux based MicroProcessor, it's small enough to fit in your pocket, costs only $9, and works as a wifi-access point to host servers for 90's style Doom LAN parties, so anyone in its wifi range could bring their PC's or laptops and can connect to its wifi network and get right in the game. This one in particular was tested with prboom, but it's perhaps possible to run it with a variety of source ports.

As someone who has had to make friends endure the hassle of setting up a Doom LAN party, buying new routers and ethernet cables and all sorts of noise, plus the long cleanup afterwards, this thing appears to be the answer to all my problems. All the time it takes setting everything up can be mitigated with a few lines of code, and no wires or anything. And it's cheap!

http://blog.nextthing.co/heres-how-to-host-a-90s-style-doom-lan-party-using-pocketc-h-i-p/

I have one of these, it's a pretty nice device, although the keyboard is horrible to type on.



Note that $9 is just the plain CHIP board (like a Raspberry Pi); the full PocketCHIP housing with the screen and keyboard costs more.

40oz said:

and works as a wifi-access point to host servers for 90's style Doom LAN parties, so anyone in its wifi range could bring their PC's or laptops and can connect to its wifi network and get right in the game.

FTR I think you can probably do the same with pretty much any laptop, though maybe it's more convenient to just have a device you can whip out and connect to?

^ I haven't been able to do that successfully with any of the laptops ive ever owned, but I'm also kind of a tech retard too.

I own 2 CHIPs and 2 PocketCHIPs and as fraggle said, they are nice. I installed Chocolate Doom and OpenArena. They recently released a new image with 3D support. The GPU it has supports OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0.

If you have 1 wifi router and 8 PCs wirelessly connected to it, then they are on the same LAN, no?

That's correct. I've used a pocket router before for LAN games. There's the odd hiccup simply due to it being wireless but it works well, however I was using a TP Link device that was about $40. Regardless, it certainly makes hosting and joining LAN games quite simple!

VGA said:

If you have 1 wifi router and 8 PCs wirelessly connected to it, then they are on the same LAN, no?

Usually correct, although some routers can be configured to isolate clients from each other.