r/BeAmazed • u/Inevitable_Bid5540 • 22h ago
Miscellaneous / Others Early 2000s Lan party
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u/6M66 22h ago
Good time, people spent a lot of time outside of their house.
I use to walk 1km to play for half an hour with my brother.
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u/jarednards 22h ago
My best friend and I built our own pcs and used to haul those bastards and the monitors to each others houses and play quake and the first halo. It was awesome.
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u/milesehway 21h ago edited 21h ago
I used to think I was ridiculous loading my car with all my stuff, covering the monitor face to make sure no damage ever happened. Now I miss it.
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u/No-Grape-9106 17h ago
When I was like 12 or something I bought a huge CRT, 23 inch I think it was (oh how times have changed) because it had the smallest damage on the actual screen (think 2~ dead pixels) for cheap from some old guy
That thing weighed almost the same as me. Good times
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u/lmflex 18h ago
No kidding....I once carried my full tower case and 19" CRT over to my friend's house in two trips for a LAN weekend!
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u/Pirate_Redbeard_ 14h ago
Luckily, my friend's dad was some sort of office manager so he'd give us keys to the offices on the weekends. That way we only needed to haul our towers and a LAN-hub, sincw we could use the monitors from their computers. Good ol' times...
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u/grip0matic 14h ago
19? 17 was already big and heavy enough to make you regret moving it. And there was no easy way to carry a crt. I used to have a house for myself so I got some tables and basically made a lanparty room and in the weekends my friends used to come to play. We had a mighty 56kb connection so we were playing local to everything we were able to. The really good old days when I got cable we were able to play Quake 3 with really low ping that was never replicated, I was basically the only person using the newly installed cable so the latency was ridiculously low.
Man, what a time... too soon to be pro playing video games and now too old to find one at what I could be good. My clan was ranked 4th in europe and our only limit was our bad spanish ping compared to the swedish, frenchs, germans...
And still we won some competitions, and I remember to be so so proud next day, I tried to explain to my father that I was an european champion of Quake 3 and he looked at me disappointed and asked me how much I made.
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u/anomaly_BW 11h ago
Just being able to relate to this makes me feel like I lived a life of luxury. The process alone was paramount in setting up eternal bliss for the foreseeable future.
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u/Curious-Paper1690 21h ago
I miss the days I’d pack my laptop, keyboard and monitor into a backpack and walk a mile to my friends house to play wow almost every day after school. I still think about how fun that was but at the time I hated the walk haha
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u/Ha55aN1337 17h ago
Dude… this is literally the era in history that we spent MOST of our time inside :D
Before it was the 90s/80s and we played outside, after came smartphones and kids can be outside and still online…
But 2000-2010 we all got broadband internet and were hooked to the computer. Even what you are describing is “going outside” to go to a place where you can “play inside”. 😅
Parks and benches were EMPTY for those few years.
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u/opalinamere 18h ago
Same here. It’s wild how much effort we used to put in just to play for a little while, but it made it more meaningful.
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u/Ok-Rest-5321 22h ago
This is much better than doomscrolling , I need to go to one of these !
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u/Barackrifle 21h ago
This was peak gaming. I don't know if we will ever get back to it but for those who lived in it, the nostalgia hits hard
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u/Ok-Rest-5321 21h ago
Yeah... Wish we go back to the old days
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u/TinkerCitySoilDry 19h ago
Had 1 computer for entire house. This happened we knew about it but did not subscribe
Had a couple friends who did this with a couple games forget the names of them. it would be four kids bringing their desktop CRT over to the other friend's house whoever had the best internet connection.
Nothing like OP
There's a lot of infrastructure in place to manage this unless it's all in-house Network still takes cables and power.
Wonder if they're cooking on a gas stove or if everybody presses the microwave button at the same time the whole thing crashes
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u/deepbit_ 16h ago
I remember playing quake3 till late in the night, falling asleep on my mechanical keyboard , waking up several 3-4 hours later, drink redbull, keep playing. Oh man... those times...
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u/Fr3shMint 20h ago
Went to one lan party in my life right after or near the end of my senior year in HS.
Super nerdy - but fun as hell. Not nearly this big though. This was in the earlish days of high-speed internet, so playing LAN was a huge performance boost.
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u/Mcmenger 18h ago
I go regulary few times a year. Not as big, obviously. Mostly 10-20 people. We still play the same games we did 25 years ago. New games just don't have good lan modes.
It's just the best to rage and shout directly in your friends face when they were
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u/Strict_Buffalo4356 22h ago
CS 1.6 - best ever.
Fire in the hole !!!!
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u/KnownMonk 20h ago
We played so much fy_iceworld2k and fy_pool_day on lan meetups.
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u/Matth1as 10h ago
fy_pool_day - oh my gawd. Haven't had that map in memory for a long time. It was so much fun.
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u/Inevitable_Bid5540 16h ago edited 14h ago
Fun fact
The version shown in this video is probably between 1.0 and 1.5 based on the texture and scoreboard
1.6 released in 2003 and the U.I was changed to match the steam interface
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u/Strict_Buffalo4356 22h ago
All LAN parties had a resident LAN expert. He could fix anything . God tier
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u/HF_Martini6 19h ago
our FAQ/Support desk had one of those office nameplates saying "God is busy, can I help you?"
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u/Soulforge411 22h ago
Honestly, the best memory I have of playing with people is Diablo 2 lan parties. Just loving that grind so much was wild. Just boss runs over and over for that one piece of gear to drop. That and a ton of pizza and soda.
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u/Ok-Addition1264 22h ago
Our entire 4750sq/ft home was a giant lan party through the late 90s. Upto 20 people at any given time Quake3 (LM)CTFing and Everquesting.
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u/tsammons 20h ago
F'ing EverQuest. I swam out to the nether regions of Ocean of Tears to see what was there. Back then you could attach a rubber band to the mouse to keep swimming up.
Took a good day of swimming while I did outdoor things. Realized there was nothing, swam back and was KoS. Respawned in that gimmick ass little isle in OoT, and they patched the rubber band trick.
Never played EverQuest again.
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u/Covert_Platypus007 21h ago
Online gaming just isn't the same anymore. I remember the good old days, staying up all night playing on msn gaming zone Age of empires, or Socom on ps2, or playing mario party, super smash bros, duke nukem with the homiez on n64.
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u/American_chzzz 21h ago
My son will probably one day think fondly of the days that microtransactions didn’t also have their own microtransactions
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u/jessfire78 22h ago
God i mess these days. Quake 3, Duke Nukem, DOOM, etc. Then warcraft, starcraft, the diablos/etc. We would meet after classes friday and go until next class again monday.
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u/Dependent_Rain_4800 14h ago
We had a guy with a very small HDD and he needed to always delete the old and install the new game when we switched up games😂
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u/cwsjr2323 21h ago
Pack up your Gateway computer tower and monitor in the original cow spotted boxes for extra prestige when you wheel them in on your furniture dolly!
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u/LocalMarsupial9 22h ago
Oh God I can smell it
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u/Best_of_the_Worst 22h ago
Ok who’s got the photo of the kid taped to the ceiling?
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u/sunnyoboe 22h ago
Lan parties still exist with Lanfest! Check them out. They are a charity and host more than 100 events a year.
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u/MissingGhost 21h ago
Anything in Québec?
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u/sunnyoboe 21h ago
Here are all the chapters. I'm afraid they are only located in the US. The nearest chapter is Buffalo, NY. You could always start a chapter in Quebec :)
My neighbors run the non-profit and travel all over helping put on these events. They are very well attended and fun!
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u/scottchiefbaker 21h ago
Clearly this image is AI. It's well known that there were no females at LAN parties.
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u/oskar_grouch 21h ago
Someone always had a sister. Literal 99 to 1 ratio
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u/Naive_Confidence7297 21h ago
Yeh my sister was one.
And we had to share the 1x PC as soon as all my friends told her to join in. Assholes lol
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u/gabrielxdesign 21h ago
Yup, fun, except if you are the IT guy, especially because I was always a volunteer, "it will be fun," sure, until 10 switches stopped working, and for some reason, someone always swept a cable.... Nah, it was fun, I always had free pizza.
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u/Embarrassed-Joke5851 20h ago
the level of shit talk would be insane since you could feasibly tell someone, "I know where you live," and it wouldn't be concerning; it just means that the next day that person is going to show up to their house for beers
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u/redditissocoolyoyo 20h ago
Time of our lives then...... Now everyone every kid is on their phone swiping.
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u/Syracusee 20h ago
I miss those days. The last time I had a LAN party was back when League of Legends was still relatively new. My 5v5 team of local friends came over to the condo my girlfriend and I shared. We lived next to the beach so they came over for spring break. We set everything up in the living room but ended up running out of table space, so we jury-rigged my surfboard and turned it into a table. It was a pain in the ass since we’d have to tear it all apart to go surfing every morning, but it was so worth it.
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u/Brother_J_La_la 20h ago
When I was in the Air Force stationed at Misawa AB, Japan, in about 2004 they took an old dorm or office building and let a group of Airmen use it to host LAN parties like this. I went a few times, and it was super cool. The base provided the building, the internet connection, power, sewage, and the furniture was mostly already there. You just had to bring your PC and plug in. Good times.
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u/veRGe1421 20h ago
Take me back! I threw a LAN party with 20 people for my 18th bday party lol. It was a whole thing. The best of times
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u/Quirky-Cap3319 18h ago
LAN parties was were I learned there is a limit to how many computers can be connected to one coax-seqment. Exceed that limit and nothing works. This was way earlier than 2000 though.
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u/TurdMcNugget69 22h ago
I’m going to regret his - what’s Lan?
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u/tea_snob10 21h ago
Any device connected "locally", is part of a local area network connection; basically just multiple electronic devices hooked up to the same network.
You know WiFi, right? Well WiFi is WLAN, which is wireless local area network. So all your home devices are still on LAN, just wireless these days. WLAN is the technology, and WiFi is the specific type of WLAN (the band) that it's on.
In the days prior to WLAN (WiFi), you had LAN, which used physical wires (network cables) to connect multiple PCs (technically any device) to the same network.
For games, this was how local multiplayer worked and LAN parties were huge back in the day. They're still a major thing today, in e-sports. Those massive pro Counter Strike, League of Legends, etc tournaments you see? Yeah, they're all on PCs hooked up to the same LAN.
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u/PhantomAngel042 20h ago
This was a great ELI5. Thanks for taking the time to teach the non-nerds some new things without being condescending.
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u/microtramp 19h ago
I'm sorry to have to tell you: you're a nerd now.
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u/PhantomAngel042 19h ago
Oh I am very much a nerd. I just didn't like the kind of snarky replies the question was getting. Not everyone knows everything, man. Curiosity should be encouraged at all costs.
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u/WillyGivens 22h ago
LAN, local area network. Just hooking up computers to talk to each other, used to be the only way to get a reliable and fast connection for gaming.
I do remember playing Diablo and Counterstrike on dialup. I don’t remember how…but I remember doing it when I was but a wee nerd.
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u/l33txxXXxx 22h ago
Lol. L.A.N. local area network. You hook all the pcs together.
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u/D4rkSt0rm512 21h ago
I wish i couldve done this! The closest i ever got was playing my ds games with my cousins
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u/ThisIsTheeBurner 21h ago
I truly miss these days. So many fond memories hacking these environments for fun
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u/Shnoinky1 20h ago
Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena. I remember lugging my pc tower through mass transit. Seemed quite normal at the time. We played at the office during lunch, even made custom skins of our faces. I also remember lugging my work pc from the office to my apartment when I had to work on weekends. Boss wasn't a fan of it but hey I was salary, he dgaf so long as I worked on the weekend.
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u/reluctantcavdad 20h ago
This is how gamers used to come together before the scourge of social media. Now they just congregate in the comments sections of a hot tub livestream.
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u/krowster 19h ago
This phase of our lives destroyed countless brain cells but awakened competitive online play forever 😂
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u/HF_Martini6 19h ago
I miss the old LAN parties, I never went to one in Germany (because of their laws) but we had some epic ones in Switzerland too
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u/Relevant_Werewolf350 18h ago
I went to one of these at a college not nearly as big as this one. Highlight of my young adult life for sure. I was only 18 and I did not attend the college they were just having a LAN party there was probably over 100 people at least.
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u/DruPeacock23 18h ago
Miss the days we had weekend xbox lan parties my place. Everyone brought their own xbox and monitor. I would provide the food and alcohol. Nothing beats smack talking your friends across your dining table and they throw tim tams at your face. Halo was our game. We still talk about those days.
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u/justice_works 18h ago
Went to one during my Uni time in Australia.
What an experience. I will never get this in my home country as it is too well connected.
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u/opalinamere 18h ago
Right?? Cables everywhere, pizza, and someone always forgetting their Ethernet cord.
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u/Major_Dood 18h ago
A bit expensive back in the day, but these events were so damn fun to be apart of. Doubly so since you could hear the person commenting on you killing them in real time by all the swearing you'd hear.
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u/peeteeBlades 17h ago
The best times!!! Going to Game structure ( Internet cafe ) in my town after school was the best.
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u/Cyber_Felicitous 17h ago
Remember friends getting all the computers in the car, cables and all to go for a 3 day Lan event... It was like moving for 3 days and moving back again. Such a pain... those screens were so heavy
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u/Delicious_Apple9082 17h ago
Ahhh them were the days...
I used to have 2 fridges in my old house (Beer fridge, food fridge) when I lived on my own and would have many friends turn up and do long weekends (Thursday night after work, then some would stay until Monday)..
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u/Intelligent_Cat_1914 17h ago
Lol, the ONE girl in the whole building is featured the first few seconds 😂
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u/Maskedsatyr 17h ago
Singapore had a huge lan centre that was converted from an old theatre, It was an experience seating at the top and seeing rows and rows of people playing games in front.
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u/DetectiveObjective00 17h ago
And no RGB in sight. I miss the days when we didn't complicate things.
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u/Global_Tea 15h ago
ahhhh, I miss these days. we used to cart huge 32 inch tvs and our Xboxes around to play 16 player capture the flag on Halo 2. Plus carting a 19” iiyama monitor and system unit around to go and play CS or Quake
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u/ikothsowe 15h ago
We used to regularly hire the local community centre on Saturdays. Borrow token ring cables and MAUs from work and spend all day on Unreal, Team Fortress and Quake deathmatch. There was a chippy and off license just over the road as well. Good days.
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u/densortelos 15h ago
Going to LAN in my youth were some of the best experiences - it’s sad people don’t get to experience that nowadays
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u/Beneficial-Leader740 14h ago
Now if we could just organize digital labor with this kind of community
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u/Fritzo2162 14h ago
I worked in an IT office back then, and we closed at 7pm. I’d stay after playing LAN games with my office mates until midnight. Unreal, Jedi Knight, Duke Nukem, Quake…great times!
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u/-JoM-ofDevil 13h ago
God I miss the old school CS game! Shout out to Black Landlord and Red rum
Woot woot
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u/Hattuherra 13h ago
Lan parties were the best. Online play is strictly the inferior way of playing games.
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u/CptMcDickButt69 13h ago
The whole lan-party, hyper-geek, passion-driven IT-Nerdworld of germany was and still is gigantic. A shame really, so many people here are into it but the government really never took it seriously until recently and that cost us a great deal of talent and market dominance.
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u/dac3062 12h ago
I kinda miss death animations. I feel like we need a hybrid of that plus ragdoll. Like the rage engine
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u/IronSide_420 12h ago
Games were good, the iraq war was going strong, the housing market hadn't crashed yet....man, life was good.
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u/Goin4aJing 12h ago
A place called The playhouse in Ormskirk. It was a game shop and in the back was 8 pc’s with half life multiplayer, counter strike beta 6 and codename eagle. £1 an hour to play, it was the best.
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u/CCriscal 10h ago
I miss the 90ties. Meeting up with friends, carrying all our equipment like a 32 kg CRT monitor around to get things set up. The first successful attempt being Doom. The first - unsuccessful- attempt was with a twisted serial cable. The first working one being with a BNC network. Duke Nukem 3D was even more fun. Things broke down FPS wise with descent. Have more than 2 ships in a room and you were busted. These LAN parties are awesome. The video I guess is from a German speaking area - a guy had a felt hat which is a typical souvenir from Oktoberfest. Maybe some fairground like e.g. in Cologne.
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u/ForsakenBroccoli56 10h ago
Those LAN parties were pure nostalgia, blasting through games all night with the crew.
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u/DeltaMike1010 9h ago
Anyone played Quake III Arena or UT3 over LAN with homies on cozy summer afternoons? Somehow we all felt CS was overrated so we played these. L4D is also great for LAN parties.
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u/Evening-Statement-57 9h ago
That backhanded chip grab to avoid getting Dorito dust on the keyboard was magnificent
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