Post AqEOLZD301fuRKTObo by schrockwell@mastodon.social
 (DIR) More posts by schrockwell@mastodon.social
 (DIR) Post #AqEOLZD301fuRKTObo by schrockwell@mastodon.social
       2025-01-18T20:30:59Z
       
       3 likes, 4 repeats
       
       I’ve made an incredible discovery. I installed Monopoly CD-ROM (1995) on my XP machine. It came with a program called WCHAT, a chat client for several Westwood games. Imagine my surprise when it connected right up to the server!Time to install wireshark… (1/n) #vintagecomputing
       
 (DIR) Post #AqEOLeSTU5zCicjHqi by schrockwell@mastodon.social
       2025-01-18T20:41:21Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       I installed Wireshark 1.10.14, the last version to support XP SP2. One capture later, and another welcome surprise… Westwood Chat is just an IRC client! The server is 172.31.255.201:6667 (2/n) #vintagecomputing
       
 (DIR) Post #AqEOLjsBLwWLVnnO76 by schrockwell@mastodon.social
       2025-01-18T20:52:56Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       It’s some nonstandard IRC protocol. mIRC sort of works, as in you can join channels and chat, but no user or channel listing. Supposedly there are 3 other folks connected, but I don’t know how to find them. (3/n) #vintagecomputing
       
 (DIR) Post #AqEOLpGpHkCkFgMdii by schrockwell@mastodon.social
       2025-01-18T20:57:05Z
       
       0 likes, 1 repeats
       
       This is the server for https://xwis.net, the official server for lots of Westwood games. And, through a lucky guess, I determined the hostname is, in fact, chat.xwis.netDoes anyone know if this still actively used? (4/n) #vintagecomputing #xwis
       
 (DIR) Post #AqFa7MQ59EP7KKWRVI by shalien@mastodon.projetretro.io
       2025-01-19T19:57:20Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @schrockwell I think a lot of Westwood folks still maintain part of the old infra like for red alert and so on.
       
 (DIR) Post #AqFoUEWE5WOYqECGTw by xinit@mastodon.coffee
       2025-01-19T06:45:20Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @schrockwell that's amazing. Likely running on a machine that's been plastered into a wall at some point, or that's running under a desk in an office that became a storage closet when the guy retired.
       
 (DIR) Post #AqFoUFmZOF3wlCqpay by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
       2025-01-19T22:38:21Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @xinitThe once-large chat server is now a tiny app idling in the corner of some lowly virtual machine....@schrockwell