Doom The Way it Was Meant to Be Played - v1.1 Multi-monitor

Doom originally supported multimonitor gameplay through the most overkill method possible by using a separate computer for each monitor. Even if you have the hardware, it's a lot of work to set up, but I've always wanted to give it a shot. So today I finally did!
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[@TechTangents]

For those of you wondering what is going on when I pass in front of the monitors at the end, here is a video on my second channel that explains it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eaKyoIxjpJKdY7M Spoiler, it's just color processing to make the CRTs easier to see.

[@Viewer19]

The right and left monitors are to be at an angle so you look left and right to see without havubg to turn on the main monitor.. It would have been nice if you hasd lowered the room lights a bit. Nice job setting this up. Multi player with no server was a cool fearure.

[@yunodye5788]

sounds like something a ghost would say.

[@spam016]

In regard to the automap type the command iddt when the map is up to cycle through having 3 different map modes. First use: full automap (reveals unexplored areas, including invisible linedefs not shown by the computer area map powerup). Second use: full automap with items, monsters, players, obstacles, and decorations. Third use: the automap is restored to normal. The code can be used in cooperative multiplayer games by first pressing T and then typing the code while holding ALT

[@MustangblueNYC]

I wonder if this can be done by using 3 VM's and have the tree VM's sessions displayed on one wide screen monitor..... :)

[@xys007]

Is it possible with virtual machines ?

[@LGR]

Had no idea this was possible, hell yeah dude! Brilliant to see this going on that small CRT army.

[@danielcarnaval]

"Small CRT army". So true.

[@dh2032]

never heard of it, Back in the AGP slots where new, I still had PCI and being move adventurous than now, what would happen if I put spare PCI card into one of the empty PCI connectors, was expecting, not boot or compline or something, but hooking a monitor, and display a one line text screen message saying waiting window or something to load, and when windows loaded the was an option not a lot defiant to the modem windows display adapter setting panel today showing the second screen, was bit disappointed it still needed the same mouse and keyboard, and that is still the case to day, rhe have been workarounds attempts it still one one mouse/keyborad to all the displays? 😞

[@antdude]

LGR, we can't wait 2 C it. ;)

[@MustangblueNYC]

I wonder if this can be done by using 3 VM's and have the tree VM's sessions displayed on one wide screen monitor..... :)

[@CybershamanX]

@@MustangblueNYC I was JUST wondering the same thing! Curious, indeed! 😉

[@kenormsby6702]

As a 50 year old, this video made me very very happy and nostalgic. I used to work for Ericsson in 1994 in Ireland. We used to play this till the wee hours of the morning on the corporate LAN between 2 different towns (Athlone & Dublin) We were in awe, well at least until Quake arrived.

[@clydemarshall8095]

Still pretty darn cool

[@innerlude]

and Duke Nukem 3D

[@williame2840]

Lol x I'm 54 and it's really a lost world. If only the teens of today knew what we got up to all hours of the morning! And hell yes, everyone were addicted back then. Quite extraordinary for the time x

[@nmac101]

@@williame2840 I'm 13 and I play doom. Pretty good game tbh.

[@pazsion]

Was kinda waiting for him to attempt a rocket jump 😆 Setup quake doom duke hexen in a LAN party with some sound blasters and banshee programmable gpus 😂 Someone’s gonna do a ray traces RTL and we gonna bfg everything 🔥

[@justinsane11]

I feel like this is a once in a lifetime experience. There can’t be more than a dozen people that actually got this to work like this.

[@MikkoRantalainen]

I think this should be pretty easy to do with virtual machines with a single modern PC system.

[@caiogr2386]

@@MikkoRantalainen Não vale

[@WindRipples-]

There can only be so many great ones, grasshopper.

[@robsku1]

@@MikkoRantalainen For sure, provided that the OG DooM v. 1.1 wont run into issues with modern hardware (even well programmed applications have fallen victim to unexpected, maybe even fully unforeseeable issues). BUT - I write this for A) in case this, *OR ANY* old PC game doesn't work on modern hardware, VM or not, and B) for those looking for more authentic experience of how the game ran on hardware from back then!! Even in such case you could do almost the same thing - but using emulation, not virtualization. This makes it possible to choose exactly what kind of hardware you'd like to feel like it was running on, like whether you'd like to experience it on 33Mhz 386 with barely the 4MB's of RAM, or beef it up and experience how fast it ran on a mere 75Mhz Pentium - your modern PC likely will have zero issues emulating that level of hardware - in fact PCem and 86Box shouldn't have issues emulating even early 3D accelerated video cards, like Voodoo 1-3. They must have support for IPX tunneling as well - I wonder if you can do that with VM's? Anyway, I just wanted to mention an alternative to virtualization that may serve someones needs better, or worse depending how well it works and what they are after - and whether it's DooM or some other old retro games on PC you want to run.

[@kz.irudimen]

I'd love to know if ANYONE outside of id software actually tried this back in the day. Making it work now is a lot of work but imagine doing it when you needed multiple current (and therefore not cheap) computers to do it.

[@SuperZardo]

with three CRT monitors arranged in a circle beaming at you, that’s almost a complete radiotherapy unit

[@AngelaTheSephira]

That's not a thing.

[@supra107]

This feels like Carmack being Carmack knew that multi monitor gaming would be the future, he used a 1080p CRT monitor to code Quake back in 1995 after all, but the hardware in the 90's didn't yet allow for it to be possible on a single machine, so he came up with this convoluted way of accomplishing it just for fun, because Carmack.

[@eadweard.]

I think we'd all have used that monitor had it been available to us.

[@supra107]

@@eadweard. And nowadays it is insanely rare, for quite some time it was presumed all the remaining units have been destroyed.

[@sunnohh]

2048x1650 75hz 4:3 but close enuff

[@snoochpounder]

16:9

[@CptJistuce]

@@sunnohh Way better than the 1920x1080@60 that 1080p usually means.

[@DeSinc]

This would have been the most sick setup on the planet, imagine how legendary it would be to see someone with this set up at a LAN way back then

[@livefreeprintguns]

I can't even imagine... not because of the tech but because LAN parties back then involved lugging at least 60lbs of gear to a friends house, and 50lbs of that was just one CRT monitor. Forget three of them lmao!

[@jort93z]

@@livefreeprintguns If you are lucky, your friend will have his old crt still, so you only have to pack the computer, keyboard and mouse.

[@oldfrend]

@@jort93z nah you hype your friends up about TRIPLE MONITOR DOOM and they let you use their's at the lan party just to see it up and running. and you promise to share your porn directory XD

[@RussiaAmericanDream]

Not a LAN party, but I got to play this at a Comdex show back in the day--imagine the poor vendor schlepping this hardware around, and I can't even remember what company it was! 😂

[@gucknachoben7303]

brilliant, decadent, chavvy...you would have been the king, and this heavy weight of the complete setup for setting up and demounting it......muahhhhh

[@GameAce6]

Imagine having 4 projectors set up in a room, each facing a different wall, and you do this same kind of setup. It would be like the ultimate VR experience!

[@Tiosh]

You can now play DOOM on actual VR hardware now

[@ThePoohat]

@@Tiosh when?

[@donotdisturbagain]

@@ThePoohat now now

[@NarfBLAST]

I think that was the idea with the 90 degree thing. Way ahead of its time.

[@christianclark1354]

Omg, Please do this…

[@marcosdiez7263]

I did it back in the day! I didn't have 3 computers on my own, but I remain at the office after hours and rearranged the desks to place the left and righ monitors facing me at the sides, so by turning my head I was seeing their image the way it was supposed to, perpendicular to the front monitor. Room lights turned off, it was super immersive.

[@american-professor]

Almost a vr-like experience

[@marcosdiez7263]

@@american-professor yeah, right. But back then, I think the term wasn't even coined.

[@alfsmith4936]

And everyone clapped

[@XxXMrSisterFisterXxX]

@@marcosdiez7263 the concept of VR has been around almost as long as videogames have existed. Tron came out in '82. VR was definitely well known in the 90's. VR Troopers, ReBoot, Lawnmower Man, Total Recall, The Matrix. even Hackers had a VR scene

[@marcosdiez7263]

@@XxXMrSisterFisterXxX yes, you're probabily right and my memory is playing tricks on me, for I am familiar with all of these. I definately don't recall VR as a thing mentioned in Tron. But then, I recall 3D mode single player Doom (I don't recall it being called VR in the game nor in its doc) as preceeding all of them, perhaps because it was the first implementation of the concept for me. I'm not talking of "virtual reality" as the concept of manufacturing a realm (I used to play table top RPG by the '80s which is the same, relying on your imagination instead of a device, I believe the original Star Trek had a VR episode by the '60), but as the expression to name the immersive experience. I just googled the term to confirm: it was coined in 1982 by Damien Broderick in a sci-fi novel, and the Lawnowner Man is the first movie using the term, in 1992. Doom is from 1993, so it was contemporary for the general adoption of the term.

[@charliebirkner8729]

All the mess, the tablecloth, the non matching shelves, the yellowing cases...every bit of it has me crying. This is just beautiful nostalgia. No one today can possibly appreciate how much work this took (not to mention working on these for a living).

[@phyrr2]

I feel sorry for the people now who never knew what a LAN party was. I remember sometimes friends would drive 6 hours up to San Francisco for certain games (ours was TacOps a Counterstrike clone for Unreal Tournament). Although yes, many of us did start with the null modem cable for just 1 v 1 or the online BBSes with DOORS to get 4 players. It was good to grow up as a gamer in those times :)

[@amoeb81]

@@phyrr2 People don't do LAN parties anymore, and it's a shame. We regularily did it back in the day, Heroes 3, Battlefield 1942, Quake, and so much more. Those memories are not dear to me because of time only, but because it was super fun. Laughing at each other, seeing people's reactions and so on... ah the good old days. Everything was much simpler back at the day.

[@dylanherron3963]

@@amoeb81As much as my heart swells for nostalgia, internet connectivity was always going knock down the LAN party concept. Fact of the matter is, lugging your PC everywhere isn't THAT great for it, and breaking down/resetting your machine back up again (only to remember that you have to RESET everything up once more when you get home) is a pain in the ass. One VERY underutilized featured of the Xbox 360/Xbox 1 was the ability to join consoles via router/ethernet cables (WOW, you mean... LAN!?!?) and play multiplayer games on multiple TVs. It was really nice to enjoy what felt to me like "the last round" of LAN parties... Beers with the lads, Two Xbox's with two 50-inch displays next to each other in a living room, and Halo 3 local multiplayer, with 3 full couches, 4 people sitting on the floor, and a few people standing up behind everyone. We all knew in the back of our minds that "This was the last chance" to enjoy the LAN phenomenon before local play being scrapped entirely by more and more devs in the future. TLDR: LAN was the last of our "social gaming experience" before we went solitary and internet based. Half the fun was being with your mates. I miss it, friend.

[@arespaulson414]

LAN parties were the BEST. You got to enjoy your game, and direct time with your mates. Online multiplayer gaming took us from Bro-time to COD-ur-mom.

[@sleblanc]

@@dylanherron3963 I remember dragging a PC on a plastic luge tied to a bicycle. This was in summer.

[@andrewaird8901]

So as a 22 year old in 1993 I would have totally gone crazy over this build. Now, I can only look back at the younger me's enthusiasm for this level of nerdtech and reminisce about those days. Thanks for bringing them back again!

[@xys007]

It turns out I was playing Doom wrong way in school !

[@oz_jones]

I was 8 in 1993 and I would have been awestruck with this. Still kinda am, since I had no idea this was possible.

[@Dan-di9jd]

Would have been quite expensive though. 4x computers at the time would amount to about $4,000-6,000 on the low end.

[@mikel2283]

@@Dan-di9jd i posted about this very thing a minute ago, up above. I remeber paying $275 for 8mb ram at one point in my early 90's PC building life.

[@jgarner1104]

I was 23 then, and yeah it would have been amazing. Too bad machines at the time would have run you 4K for the three

[@tareva1]

Being a 40 year old man having been lucky enough to always have computers in our home growing up, this made my inner child/nerd so unbelievably satisfied. Amazing job getting this all synchronized! Who knew Doom could do this?!

[@keigezellig]

This is like a super expensive setup in my 90ies 14 year old mind 😅

[@nrdesign1991]

You saved a friend's project! Networking two original retro DOS PCs together to play DooM in multiplayer Co-op. We didnt get BNC working so we replicated your steps with the Ethernet ports. The magic ingredient was the net.cfg config file, setting them both to 802.3 for IPX. Thank you so much!

[@johnmabe3496]

Dude, back in the day you would have been the absolute coolest kid in town to have had something like this going. This is awesome.

[@dylanherron3963]

Man, back in 1998, we were one of maybe six people in the entire neighborhood that had a Desktop PC, one of two that had MULTIPLE PC's and the ONLY ONES who had 2 PC's and a Laptop. Can you Imagine having 4 WORKING PC's in 1995?? Not only that, can you IMAGINE the concept of networking the displays together for directional visuals? You'd be a literal mad scientist, and the vast majority of people would think your project is an expensive, nerdy waste of time.... Little did they know that's exactly what we'd do as fully grown adults. Edit: Wow, should definitely say "We were the only HOUSE" my fractions here get super convoluted if you say "people" lol, *we were one of maybe 6 HOUSES in the neighborhood.*

[@imagitu6409]

@@dylanherron3963 its like that line in back to the future "nobody has two televisions".

[@pilsplease7561]

@@imagitu6409 I have 8 televisions in my house lol

[@imagitu6409]

@@pilsplease7561 I have a dozen cb radios.... among other random electronic and radio gear.... its an addiction.

[@dylanherron3963]

@@imagitu6409 my tech addiction is single board computers. I just love the things. The fact that we have fully functional desktops with emulation/streaming capability that are the size of credit cards just never ceases to amaze me. 8 years into the Raspberry Pi bubble that the RPi foundation popped, I've forced myself to look away the last few years. (they aren't affordable tinker machines like they used to be. I don't need an 8 core, 16g RAM with a mobile GPU and NVME support, cause that makes it $300...)

[@the-bizzy-bee]

Remember when you were defined by your relationship to duraga1, man you have come far!

[@jessestrobel2]

I like Druaga1, what's your issue with him

[@GabrielArruda0]

Love tech tangents, but I miss druaga1, used to be my favorite KZbin channel!

[@jessestrobel2]

@@GabrielArruda0 Same here. Miss that weirdo

[@jameslaidler2152]

The unrestrained joy and literally vibrating energy the man had when it was working was a wonderful thing to see.

[@mattc9598]

2:10 I love how "virtual reality" meant something completely different in the 90's

[@Rondo2ooo]

It didn't mean something different. The hw was just decades from ready so it was less 'immersive', if that makes sense.

[@sluxi]

it meant the same thing and there were even headsets (doom has vr support for the 90s vr headset vfx-1) but due to the hype and lack of tech availability as well as 3d gaming being new it sometimes got applied in contexts that were not strictly correct.

[@Deinonuchus]

Multi-monitor support got dropped when they moved away from using broadcast packets in IPX networks. Computers were slow enough then that broadcast packets would kill the LANs that players were on at the time. Id didn't know this because nobody was trying to do anything else on their LAN when they were testing multiplayer Doom.

[@mycosys]

Yikes, NetDoom indeed. Mind boggles they thought using broadcast mode was a good idea, we all knew so little about networks back then

[@kblectronix]

@@mycosys Yeah, I was a Novell (IPX) network engineer at the time. Everyone wanted to play the network game at work. I loved it, but only after office hours 😀

[@mycosys]

@@kblectronix wow that would have been a fascinating time in networking. I was 15, just had my first computer store job, was running the school multi-terminal system and just becoming aware of networking, FIDOnet, the internet etc. The ease of the NE2000 was just amazing for kids like us, slap in a few cheap clone cards, daisy chain em together an boom you were playing doom multiplayer. Huge kudos to your bosses for making that design open, it really did make networking a commodity as they intended.

[@antisoda]

Yes. This. We absolutely murdered our school's network when we got a hold of the first versions of Doom. Put the network admin into low earth orbit of rage. We tried the multi-monitor stuff too, but we didn't do much with it beyond going "Wow. Look at that!" since the computers were spaced too far apart for this to be practical. The monitors were heavy CRTs and everything was cable-tied down, so we just didn't bother. We were content with playing multiplayer in-between classes and after school. I remember we were very excited when the fixed versions finally arrived, which enabled us to play during class. :) The network admin was on a never-ending Doom file deleting spree. But there was always a zip he didn't find, hidden away in a random user directory on the server somewhere… :)

[@GTXDash]

Doom is just so capable when it comes to its network capabilities. Just as an example, back in 2001, when my friend and I played Doom 2 multiplayer, he was on a 486DX2, I was on a Pentium 3 running Win98se....but we were using the printer/parallel ports using a male to male cable, and it worked just fine. No drivers needed. The computers had almost nothing in common with each other. and yet It still ran perfectly.

[@der.Schtefan]

Simpler times. When Windows came with Parallel port connection as a built-in networking option. You could then have Windows install an IPX driver and play Red Alert

[@MrZillas]

We played in 1994 only on 2 DX486 with printer-cables. No network at all.

[@Thornskade]

Nowadays that sounds like nothing unusual when one person on smartphone, one on Steam Deck and one on a desktop PC can all play Terraria or Minecraft together

[@Etrehumain123]

I know nothing about computer, but I remember using tcp/ip to multiplayer red alert with my brother

[@ChrispyNut]

I did it with serial connection .. after a corrupted transfer of the wads over said serial connection ... which took all evening and (at least some of) night. I can't recall why better connections weren't used, only that we'd resorted to serial in '95-'97 ish.

[@nokbeen3654]

Watching him flawlessly use both keyboards at the same time, was truly beautiful

[@vitalys5076]

That Joma Tech's "if programming was like anime" sketch is not a joke anymore, but a documentary

[@MH-br3th]

I'm fairly positive you're the only person to do this in the last 20 years. Also it's quite possible you are the only person to ever play Doom with this elaborate setup using OG hardware since the first day it was even available to do so.

[@SunCrushr]

Back around 1994 I set up three monitor Doom in one of our computer labs at my High School. Thanks for the memories.

[@Trappy-C]

No you didnt

[@SunCrushr]

​@@Trappy-CYes, I did. My friends and I in our computer club also did a Doom tournament in 1995 in that same lab, which was really fun. I don't fully remember the details, but either one of the other students, or one of the teachers who helped run the club even managed to get in touch with ID and got some prizes to give out, including mouse pads and t-shirts. I got a Doom 2 mouse pad. These were some of my best memories from High School. Denying things you weren't there to witness must make you a really fun person though. Keep it up!

[@andrejrockshox]

@@SunCrushr how did u know about -left -right command parameters/switches? i dont remember seeing it anywhere in documentation.

[@009radix]

@@andrejrockshox it was mentioned in the Doomfaq, which was the ultimate resource back in the day. We used to run this setup at the warehouse during lunch breaks, benefits of working on a desktop refresh, even got the project manager hooked on the game.

[@SunCrushr]

@@andrejrockshox 009radix hit the nail on the head. DoomFAQ was where my friends and I got the info. We also got a ton of weird doom levels and other wad files off of a BBSs back then. We also ran a single line BBS at my house and played a lot of LORD. Such great memories.

[@Kannamoris]

Seeing Shelby waiting with a massive smile on his face while each PC starts up is just incredibly endearing

[@CrisPearson]

Yes, that warmed my heart also. And made me smile.

[@ronaldreardon4891]

I am very impressed at your fortitude in pulling this together. Simply amazing. Plus, the idea that v1.1 had this idea built in is incredible. All kudos to you and thanks for flashing me back to the 90's!

[@jamesfmartinjr]

This is one of the best videos I’ve ever come across. Thank you for taking me way back to being 14 years old and playing multiplayer DOOM on my family’s Packard Bell 😊

[@common_c3nts]

You would have been the coolest kid in 94. This is awesome. I imagine every engineer did this in the mid 90s.

[@tonyquark493]

A friend of mine and I did this in 1993 on two 486 machines. We did it through the serial port. We had to make a special null-modem cable and I have to say it was the most fun in a video game I had had up to that time because of the multiplayer aspect. That game was way ahead of its time!

[@fuzz11111111]

Haha this takes me back, me and my brother used a null modem cable to play multiplayer doom too. Though all we had to run it was two 386sx 16mhz laptops rocking orange monochrome plasma screens. The screens weren't the worst part of those specs - the "sx" 386's had a 16bit bus and performed more like a 286, so at full screen size they took multiple seconds to render each frame. Shrinking to the smallest size and using low detail (pixel double) mode would get it to around 10fps, but resulting resolution was probably around 16x12 (so this was pretty unplayable by any sane standard). There weren't many other games that supported null modem cable unfortunately (I think that descent did but that was more even unplayable on those laptops than doom) though a few years later I found that Windows 98 could actually run a proper network over that null modem cable, so it was time to dig it back out and play duke nukem 3D (on computers that were thankfully capable of running it properly).

[@tonyquark493]

@@fuzz11111111 NICE! God I miss those days. . . . :(

[@CrisPearson]

Oh YES, the old Serial Null modem! In the mid 90's my Dad made one to connect our 486 and 386. Was a 10 meter cable ran between the house and a glorified shed. The 386 was pretty slow for multiplayer games. Luckily a local mate would borrow his Dads 486 laptop(!! at the time) and set up in the shed. We played Decent, Doom, Doom 2 and WarCraft 2, Rise of the triad and Duke Nukem 3d. Mostly Doom 2 and WC. Would have loved to play Syndicate (with the American Revolt add on) but that was IPX only from memory. Good times indeed.

[@CTRIX64]

Yup! Also did this... convinced my folks to let me take our family 486-SX25 to a friends house but then electronics store didn't have the null modem cable in stock. But they did have screw terminal RS232 plugs (just 90s things) So we pooled our pocket money and made one with old telephone wire. Guy in the store even drew us a diagram of how it should hook up. You don't get that anymore!

[@DarkLinkAD]

RS232, still used for tuning vehicles IIRC.

[@Shakespielberg]

Back in 1993, I worked an evening shift at Microsoft in Windows NT 3.1 Support. Bunch of us got ahold of this game and were playing it in right on the corpnet (in between customer calls.. and maybe sometimes during. 😁) The game does flood the network with IPXSPX packets pretty brutally, and since we had guys all over Redmond campus in on it, NetOps would shut down our IPX port about every 15mins or so. Well, that didn't stop us. We would always have a side chat going on an internal version of IRC (Internet Relay Chat ... & btw this is pre-HTTP era), so once our game got shutdown, someone would just call out a new random port#, we'd all reset our protocol binding, reboot, and in a few mins we're back up & running.., till we got shut down again. Then rinse & repeat. I'm sure NetOps hated us... and I'm also sure there were at least a few guys on that team _that were also playing the fking game_ but they had to keep that quiet & just 'do their job'. !!😂😆🤣

[@christianmcneill699]

I actually did this at my college computer lab back in the 90's. I don't know what version I used or what hardware was (i think this was pre-pentium), however I didn't have a great experience. The front screen ran fine, but the right screen was a slower FPS and a little delayed. But the FPS & delay for the left screen was even more pronounced.

[@RussiaAmericanDream]

I saw multi-monitor Doom running at a vendor's display back in the day at Comdex, and always wondered how they did it. A blast from the past.

[@iainh]

This is insane. I've never known this was a feature until now - if I had seen this being demoed back when Doom was released I may have collapsed at the awesomeness. Thank you for showcasing this.

[@quantumIO]

This is what we did at the office 25 years ago. Had a lot of Dell Optiplexes leftover from a new desktop rollout. We did it again when a little game called Quake hit the scene. John Romero was our god in the 90s. Glorious times indeed.

[@InfoRanker]

This is so cool. So much nostalgia just looking at those old computers and I can't believe you actually got doom to work with 4 screens. Amazing work.😀

[@r000tbeer]

This hits right in the nostalgia feels. It put me right back into the 90s, back when I was a NetWare admin. Configuring the network/IPX stack was something I did all the time. What you didn't have to contend with in this video was editing everyone's config.sys/autoexec.bat and himem so all the sound card/network drivers would load high so DOOM had plenty of RAM. Back then, to deal with multiple NICs I had several boot floppies with various NIC drivers on them. You selected your card at boot, it would load the appropriate driver(s) and connect to the network. I miss those times and don't at the same time. It's so much simpler now, obviously. FYI - a LAN is a network of connect computers. The protocol is irrelevant. TCP/IP, IPX, doesn't matter.

[@RowanHawkins]

Or the multiboot test floppies that had all of the common drivers to just try and load everything. If it didn't pass the check for the the card then the TSR wouldn't load so it wasn't an extra memory hit. That was built so we could could better fiddle with things instead of PXE booting a problem system. Mycollege used netware and so that we didn't have to schlep a bunch of copies of media around to play games in the cluster, we just logged all of the machines to the same account and launched the applications one at a time to prevent file lock issues. I remember running Duke Nukem on their Hardware that way. If I had known about multi-monitor Doom then it would have been easy to pull off with their Hardware!

[@EvenTheDogAgrees]

Yup, LAN just stands for Local Area Network, and the protocol (and even physical layer) doesn't matter. Could be Token Ring, IPX, AppleTalk, whatever. As long as it's a network, and it's local.

[@L-in-oleum]

You absolute madman 🫡 I wonder if the folks at id ever got 4 machines going back then? By the way, HPFS in FDISK means that the partitions are either formatted OS/2's HPFS (unlikely, considering these are P4 machines) or NTFS. They share the same filesystem identification number. Either way, it makes sense since these machines are originally servers.

[@buckykattnj]

Worked in a place with OS/2 much of the '90s... had a fleet of OS/2 systems running P3s, and a lesser number that got updated to P4s before my time there ended in '04. Didn't have any issues running on P4s... though, to be honest, I was a OS/2 wizard with hardware by then. I think I have a few servers in my storage with OS/2 on them.

[@CptJistuce]

iD almost certainly got all 4 machines going at once, if only because Carmack stole some machines from other people's desks after-hours. More generally, deathmatch is known to be, shall we say, well-tested by the developers.

[@otto6656]

HPFS and NTFS share the same partition ID (0x07) because Microsoft developed NTFS on top of HPFS after the OS/2 venture with IBM ended. The disks likely had NTFS partitions, but by the time DOS 6.22 was released, the same ID was more likely to designate an HPFS partition.

[@CybershamanX]

Darn it. Beat me to it! Interesting bunch of older machines! 😎🤘

[@darthtrader7605]

This is the coolest thing ever! I grew up patching and piecing these old school MS desktops together for fun, beats having no friends and bored. This is like reliving my childhood watching this.

[@skratchvideos4968]

Whoa, this is really cool. Congrats on all that hard work paying off. You really brings back some 90s memories. Thanks for the great video.

[@UnrealVideoDuke]

A room set up with 3 or 4 projectors would totally be immersive. I wonder if you can find the VR version of ROTT?

[@CujoSR]

Seconded.

[@blairwigley714]

Was going to comment the exact same thing. Could be really cool.

[@Tycho343]

Probably that was the reason for 90 degree views

[@nalinux]

I remember seeing this in a magazine in the 90's, but with Quake 2.

[@bkucenski]

With projectors good enough under $100, it's pretty affordable

[@WishItWas1984]

I'm 48 and never thought I'd have my mind blown by seeing Doom running on DOS again, but here we are. That was genuinely fantastic to see on 3 monitors.

[@someonesusingmyname]

This is one of the greatest things I've ever seen hahaha. Thank you for enriching our lives. I had no idea I needed this in my life, but I'm subbing hard.

[@robokaos69]

I'm always glad when KZbin recommends channels like these. Really high quality, well put together stuff, in a genre I really enjoy. Glad to be a new fan :)

[@FoxMulder78]

7:30 Dude, an S3 ViRGE/DX is an awesome 2D card for MS-DOS gaming. You can even make them faster by using MTRRLFBE, FASTVID or the specific "S3 Speed Up" utilities to accelerate most banked VESA modes and VGA mode 13h, by enabling write combining for the LFB memory range.

[@Novous]

I think i remember my friend in highschool calling his virge a "3d DEcelerator" because it "ran slower than software mode". Might have been a different card but that one definitely reminds me of the conversation

[@tithund]

Also they were what I first got multi-monitor to work with in Win95c or Me.

[@FoxMulder78]

@@Novous Yup, and even though everybody knows it was useless for 3D acceleration and that joke has been told to death, S3 chips are really good and fast for 2D, like Matrox ones, in general.

[@tonyd9394]

@@Novous That's the one. I had that in my first PC as well, it was a Pentium 166mhx MMX with 16MB of Ram and an S3 Virge something 3d "accelerator". Let's just say that it didn't really accelerate anything, but the games that worked in 2D, were beautiful. It took years for my next cards to produce the same kind of 2D and desktop experience, as the first 2d/3d cards had awful 2D and desktop picture quality. This is why Matrox back then was the king of desktop usage, they had amazing desktop and 2D output.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

For that kind of retro setup I would totally take the S3 Virge over Intel's onboard concoction.

[@dutchcanuck7550]

Awesome. Brings back memories of Doom LAN parties in the early 90s, and the lanadmin running Doom packet sniffers to shut down LAN parties. Subscribed.

[@nemesis11fp20]

Been in tech industry for years, and was just commiserating with a co worker about playing Doom back in college on a 486 DX2 and loading mods for it (like Alien... awesome mod!). Anyway, glad I found this channel! Nice work on this, it is so weird and cool and just awesome!

[@SirChristian100]

That was really an amazing video! I really felt it! I really enjoyed watching it full length!

[@GeeFunk84]

Landlord: "Shelby, I see a spike in your power consumpion. What was happening?" Shelby: [awkwardly trying to block the view of the three-CRT+computer setup running the attract mode of Doom 1.1]

[@ChrispyNut]

This came to my mind as well, but more specifically for 4x NetBurst. Though being early / low-mid clocks, I'm really just meme-ing.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@ChrispyNut And Northwood wasn't as bad as later Prescott. Interestingly the 2.4 GHz chips have about 6-8W lower TDP than the 1.8 GHz model. Still around 58-60W

[@KohaAlbert]

... radiators

[@davidbrennan5]

I was in grade 9 when this game came out, we had a cool computer teacher and he used to let us play Doom on the network when the lab was empty. That was the first time I ever played against so many people at one time on the same map. In hindsight this kept us out of trouble. Dad bought me a 486 that year and this was the first game I installed.

[@zfighter3]

What a gem of a channel to find. Great video! Subbed.

[@tiaxanderson9725]

What a journey! I feel the only way to top this is to find a room where the front, left, and right walls are at appropriate distances, white, and you score 3 projectors and just project each screen on their respective wall trying to line up the edges as best as possible xD

[@markromine5103]

I very old, and installed this waaay back when 1.1 came out. Small note: Once you were networked, you could've copied across it instead of separate installs. IIRC, the sound setup requires Soundblaster (16?) emu. Also, I found a way to have a rear view mirror, but can't remember how(too many years under the bridge). Doom was a MONUMENTAL leap forward in PC gaming and the code was genius level. Thanks for the walk down memory lane though! 😁

[@lathans1]

Thank you so much for a trip down memory lane to where I set this up with three computers at my dad's workplace in the '90s. Never thought about using one client for automap, though. Great idea! I placed the monitors (almost) 90 degrees apart so I turned my head to naturally see what's beside me in the game. I think I also used an option for not spawning in multiplayer items, but I might be wrong. I never thought I would see something like this again in my life. Thank you again!

[@lathans1]

I was wondering how I was able to set this up without internet, so I looked up where I might read about it since it is not mentioned in the normal README files. DMFAQ66B.TXT has a section about the -left and -right parameters: -left ++ Sets up a network terminal for the "left view" -right ++ Sets up a network terminal for "right view" ++: If you have a network, try setting up a network game with three players. The three terminals should have the parameters: "doom -devparm -nodes 3 -left" "doom -devparm -nodes 3" "doom -devparm -nodes 3 -right" Then, set up the left and right terminal monitors next to the middle monitor, in a virtual-reality type configuration. When you turn your head, you see the screen turned 90 degrees! This ONLY works with versions 1.0, 1.1, 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6 of DOOM.

[@laus3543]

This is a great video and I love your' enthiasim for it all, the little grin when you booted up the set up haha. Great job got a new subscriber

[@derekchristenson5711]

I vaguely remember being aware that you could do this back in the day, but I wasn't rich! LOL BTW, HPFS is the default file system for OS/2. Makes me curious what they were running on those machines when they were servers!

[@thatsgottahurt]

Thats was awesome. This blows my mind seeing it in 2023, I couldnt imagine seeing that setup in the 90s. The 3 monitor with the 4th being the map is so cool, even with the little issue of the map not working by just leaving it on.

[@Agret]

Battlefield 3 & 4 have support to use the web browser full screen on a 2nd screen as an overview map instead of having to press M to bring up your map

[@AstrumArgenteum]

Damn, that's really cool. I love that smirk on your face. It's genuine excitement.

[@cbw56]

Dude I am so glad your channel is doing well! Just love ya man

[@FarrellMcGovern]

Back in 1994, the Science Fiction convention CAN-CON in Ottawa, Ontario featured a computer room and had three systems set up for doing multi-monitor Doom using a 20" on the primary system with two other systems running 14" monitors. For a sound system, two four foot high DJ speakers being powered by a 500 watt amplifier. Setting it up was not that hard, as I was making a living as at Novell Netware installation specialist, and using Netware Lite. Yes, the sound system was overkill, but it was all I had at the time. :-) borrowing two 14" monitors to use with my 20" monitor was fairly easy. Setting it all up did not take long, and then I spent the next hour "testing" the system to make sure it was ready for the general public. Needless to say, it was a hit! Fond memories.... p.s. Running DOOM in God mode is also lots of fun!!

[@MadPlasmatist]

Very cool, my epic DooM achievement was writing a modem connection routine in qbasic, then dropping to DOS and selecting 'already connected' from the DooM launcher so my buddy and I could play at his house as teenagers =) Keep on keepin on!

[@JelloFluoride]

Omg the literal rabbit hole of hunting down specific drivers. You sir, have the patience of a saint and I appreciate you for going through all of this trouble. Sweet video!

[@lbochtler]

this is one of the amazing setups i have every seen. this is awesome!

[@InfectiousGroovePodcast]

I never had any idea Doom had multimonitor support! Really cool to find that out AND see it in action.

[@Soft15kHz]

The best part is the oldskool "WASD + Cursor Key" play :) Quite fun if used with 3 projectors to fully use the 90° angles.

[@vallorahn]

Yeah, that would be really interesting to see..

[@ezyto]

i actually would really love to see this, imagine it recorded as a 360 video you’d be freaking experiencing doom fr

[@DrakeDaraitis]

@@ezyto you can play doom in VR so even better

[@DoomNerd67200]

Never seen the point of VR for Doom games, maybe for the newer ones yeah why not

[@Wobbothe3rd]

@@DoomNerd67200 actually the older ones are really fun on modern sourceports in VR. So many maps...

[@ridingitlightning1028]

That was fun! Cheers on the hard work you spent to make it happen. Well done!

[@Thaleios]

Brings back a lot of memories. We played this networked in the computer lab in college around '94-'95 and it was a blast. It's so much more fun when your friends are in the same room as you sneak up and blow them away from behind. This helped all those long coding nights go by. Back then we had to go to the lab to use computers to write our code. ;)

[@standardnerd9840]

This brings back so many memories of LAN parties in the mid 90s! We would do a 3 day session where the first night was getting all the machines to network with ipx/spx. Thanks for the memories!

[@goobytron2888]

Getting it to work just in time to tear in all down and go back to school Monday.

[@00Steve007]

This is so cool. Well done. Never thought this was possible. Brought back a lot of memories.

[@walderlopes3372]

Man, I remember reading about this somewhere. My memory wants to say that it was in the "manual.txt" (or whatever it was called) in the DOOM directory, but I'm probably misremembering it. But I know I wanted to do this SO BADLY back in the 90's. It was just not possible, we didn't have 3 computers to play with. I pictured in my head being able to put one monitor to my left, one to my right, and literally turning my head 90 degrees to each side if I wanted to look around. The idea fascinated me! Thanks KZbin algorithm for the recommendation. I've never watched a video from this channel before, but this somehow got to my feed.

[@GYTCommnts]

You are insane to try this as an "easy" production video. However, experiments like this one is why I love this channel! Cheers to retro experiments insanity! 🤣🍻

[@AstroNerdBoy]

THIS was amazing! Back in the day, I would have wanted something like this to play Doom, though I couldn't have afforded it. Awesome job and I have subscribed.

[@mikel2283]

What isn't discussed in this video is the absolutely crushing COST of a single mid-level gaming PC, let-alone a top end build. RAM was insane $$ and CPU's were an investment. The only cheap parts were sound cards. Video cards were not too bad... but building one solid PC for gaming took some thought and savvy buying decisions for most folks who were not spoiled rich kids. For working class 20-somethings like me, it was a challenge!

[@rushthezeppelin]

I would love to see someone actually come up with an inflation adjusted price for this rig....

[@De-M-oN]

@@mikel2283 I remember sound cards being very expensive too

[@timbsm]

I can imagine the exact kind of dude that would have been able to do something like this. Gabe Newell is a good starting canvas.

[@diegor3194]

This is amazing! Keep up the good work. That software collection is impressive too.

[@HikingFeral]

Just discovered your channel the other day and I love your content, the nostalgia feeds me lol.

[@jort93z]

There are probably only a few handful of people that ever played doom like this, and you are one of them! great video.

[@erebostd]

Theoretically this should be possible with 4 VMs and a multi monitor setup.. Man, that would be a fun project 😁

[@dugrodger142]

You not need VM's for this if you hook up 3 Monitors.. use AMD's Eyfinity or nVidia's suround...

[@hiRyan329329]

​@@dugrodger142 He is talking in the terms of the original game using the multiplayer mode. You're just stating standard/simple multi monitor modes

[@WOJCIECHKMIECIK]

had the same idea :D

[@kaptainkoffee5504]

That's amazing! nicely done man, great video, and your commentary is awesome. Super cool!

[@ObiWanBillKenobi]

I am impressed, both by the program being made to do this, and your effort to see it happen! Well done!! 🎉

[@JustWhyFFS]

The fact that you're running three different sized monitors, makes you my hero.

[@blunderingfool]

Finding 3 identical CRTs is rather tricky these days.

[@JustWhyFFS]

@@blunderingfool Finding three working CRT's in the first place, is a feat.

[@TubbyJ420]

That two-floppy Gold Medallion shareware is the version i had back in the day. Seeing that small cardboard box brough back good memories. My dad tried to install the game, but ended up formatting the disks because he didn't know what he was doing haha. Returned it for a new copy, and my brother installed it for us. Years later we would finally get that Ultimate Doom cd with the new chapter for xmas.

[@goeland4585]

the old "oh I formatted the game, my bad" haha.

[@Vile-Flesh]

We had the box with the two demons on it and after fighting my parents to let me buy the game in late 1994 my dad went to install it on our Pionex 486xs25 and it would not execute because our super value PC from Sam's Club had some weird version of DR-DOS so we could not play it. A very depressing week went buy till one day my dad came home with MS-DOS 6.22 and we got to finally fucking play. From that day on for several months I would wake up early before school just to play and it would be the first thing I would do after suffering through school. The music for DOOM episode 1 would play through my head when I was at school and whenever I did play I was finally in a happy place.

[@DanielTojcic]

This is amazing - thanks for taking the time to set this up and share it!!!

[@qshiqshi2958]

Just randomly watched your video in good nostalgia. Great job man!

[@mycosys]

A Novell LAN is still a LAN, heaps of LANs arent TCP/IP (thats more a WAN thing). Microsoft LAN Manager didnt get TCP support til version 2. Never seen doom played that way in all the times we did LAN games, & thanks for the nostalgia of the setup

[@scottnash70]

You haven't lived until you've wired an office with 10-base2 cabling. 😀

[@obd6HsN]

@@scottnash70 thinnet is for wimps. Real people use ... :)

[@scottnash70]

@@obd6HsN Agreed, but when you finish a drop and cap it off, you could say "You're terminated motherf..." 🤣

[@sigmonfury02]

I had non idea this was even possible back then.... had we known, I'm sure my friends and I would have banded together to make it happen. Very cool project!

[@timbsm]

Absolutely ridiculous bro. Subscribed! This all really captures the old school fun of computer tinkering and all it's many frustrations. The good old days with no internet 😱

[@alexanderdavenport1127]

Im actually really happy to see this is one of this guys most viewed videos ... and in two weeks too ! I love finding niche youtubers blow up when theyre just doing what they want to make.

[@mandc20022]

Seeing the joy on your face while explaining why you have the 🚀 rocket launcher and the extra multi-player weapons is priceless ... I could only imagine doing this back in the 90s

[@a.s.h.5774]

This was so awesome to watch! I never would have thought I'd love watching a whole thing on this, but I sure did. You did a great job and do good making the video and brushing over the cool tech and even navigating through the issues that arise.. But it's the utmost cool to watch you go through Dos and the games that I used to LOVE back in the mid 90s (and miss more than I realized)!

[@deetrixreed8961]

I'm so glad I got to experience this as well. Thank you for your hard work and talents.

[@NigelSwan]

That was absolutely nuts!!! Nice work!

[@mshirey]

Friends and I did this back in ‘94 in the computer science lab at Walla Walla Community College. We did the three monitor setup; I didn’t know there was possibility for fourth. As I recall it took us most of a night to get this working. After that, we played multiplayer doom until the sun came up. I wish I could tell you what hardware we had, but as I recall, it ran “OK”.

[@magreger]

This video was sheer joy as are many of your other videos. Thank you thank you for taking the time and effort to share this experience! I know I would have gotten lost during the network config.

[@whismerhilll]

Nice video! Back in the 90s, I used a null-modem to play 1 on 1 with a friend; that was a blast!!!! But hearing all the config juggling we had to do during that period opens the gate to old repressed frustration, anger and joy at the same time 😄

[@mattmorris857]

Thanks youtube for recommending this. So good and brings back a lot of memories! Thanks!

[@jubsy]

This is just awesome and made all the better with the Model M keyboards. Sounds like popping popcorn!

[@twilightofthegods33]

This was alot of fun watching this get set up and then seeing the finished product. Good stuff!

[@ryanchivers]

Brings back so many memories of the days, thanks for the walk down memory lane!!!!

[@reverendzombie72]

Wow this video really brings me back! I can not imagine pulling something like this off. You're an animal! 👍🐺

[@Thunderbuns-il8ri]

Such an awesome video. The memories sparked by seeing these old PC's inside and out. That Creative 52x in one of them took me back to when I bought one from a now gone store called Fry's Electronics. Good times man. Thanx for the trip down memory lane. ❤❤❤

[@thebluelunarmonkey]

I was big on Fry's back in the day. First was one around Hawthorne/Redondo Beach area in Cali and years later Duluth, GA.

[@HomeGuitarMods]

What a cool setup! Hearing those power button springs really took me back.

[@CheMechanical]

Yikes, also brings back memories for me of fixing these kind of computers every single weekend for years. I was the de facto IT department for the entire family. Wore me out. I remember one failure in particular: I built a 386 from the ground up for my brother, and there is no earthly combination of interrupts that would make it all work. Gave it to him, telling him he had to choose between a sound card and Internet access.

[@chrisgude1091]

Geiles Video. Der DOS Sound dieser Maschinen beamt mich direkt zurück in die frühen Neunziger.

[@therealzilch]

Fascinating and charming. I don't have anywhere near the computer expertise to appreciate all the nuances here (studied Fortran back in the day, on the fringes since then), but I get the logic and passion. Subscribed. Cheers from sunny Vienna, Scott

[@midnightfm87]

Watching you boot up all 4 computers was like something out of Serial Experiments Lain. I declare you king of The Wired, sir.