Now that I have a workbench again, I'm getting back into old projects. My first XBox 360 died with the classic Red Ring of Death some time ago and has been sitting in a storage locker in the form of a pile of parts since then. When it died, I had already voided the warranty some months earlier by opening the unit to install padding under the lid of the DVD drive - to stop it from scratching discs. That repair had been a complete success, but then the RRoD happened. I would have been able to send the unit back to Microsoft for warranty repair if I hadn't opened it because they extended the warranty to three years specifically for RRoD issues.

The TPU server is now running on new hardware. If you notice any problems, please let me know. In particular, I'd like to know whether or not performance has improved. Are there any new lag issues? Has lag increased or decreased?

Old server (Claude):
Pentium IV 2GHz
512MB RAM

New server (Hubie):
Pentium IV 2.8GHz
2GB RAM

Sigh. I bought my second XBox 360 after my first died of the horrible 'Red Ring of Death.' I had successfully modified that 360 a few months earlier, installing padding (under the lid of the DVD drive) that prevented the drive from scratching my game discs. Unfortunately, opening the 360 had also eliminated the possibility of returning it for repair/replace as part of the extended 3 year coverage specific to RRoD issues. Oh well. That 360 is now a pile of parts in a box. I tried one of the X-clamp fixes on it with no success and plan to keep trying at some point, but meanwhile I bit the bullet and bought another 360.

Schedule changes completed. Here's how it works now:

Mon/Wed/Fri/Sun:
* Axis mornings (6am-noon) & evenings (6pm-midnight)
* Allies early mornings (midnight-6am) & afternoons (noon-6pm)
Tue/Thu/Sat:
* Allies mornings (6am-noon) & evenings (6pm-midnight)
* Axis early mornings (midnight-6am) & afternoons (noon-6pm)

The Tanks 'n Planes Unlimited server is back online in Burnaby, British Columbia. The new IP address for the server is 24.87.160.136. Hopefully it will start showing up on in-game server browsers soon. Otherwise you should be able to connect directly via IP. Let me know if you have any trouble connecting.

I'm not sure what's going on, but the TPU stats page is currently down. I'm looking into it and hope to have it sorted out within the next day or so.

UPDATE: it's fixed. My provider (A Small Orange) moved this site and its subdomain http://tpu.jdrgaming.com - home of the TPU stats - to a different (and better) server. This involved a version change for MySQL that necessitated a small configuration change in the stats software. They fixed the problem for me (gasp!) and let me know about it today. It's fixed, and their explanation made sense. I like these guys!

The TPU server is going down at about 7am PST on June 7. Since I'm moving, it's hard to predict when it will be back up, but hopefully it will be running again by June 10. The server IP will probably change, so you may need to update your in-game server list.

There have been a few reports of lag on the TPU server lately. Anyone who can verify this: please leave a comment to this post or send email to jrivett AT jrdgaming DOT com.

Thanks!

Jeff

FIXED. The lesson: a three parter:

1. Don't upgrade router firmware unless there is a good reason to do so.
2. If you do upgrade router firmware, make sure you can revert to the previous version before you start. If you can't, there had better be a REALLY good reason for upgrading.
3. If you're going to upgrade, make sure that you use the correct version for the hardware revision.

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UPDATE: if you can't see the TPU server in your in-game browser, you can still connect to it directly at this IP: 96.49.55.176.

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DarkRyda reports that some users are unable to see the TPU server in their in-game server browser. Apparently this may have been going on for some time. I did notice a drop-off in player numbers in the past few weeks.

I checked a few third-party tools, including Game-Monitor, which shows accurate, up to date information on the TPU server. Other tools show it as well. I added a Game-Monitor block to this site as well, which you can see to the right.

On my own game machine, the BF1942 in-game browser doesn't show the TPU server, but I'm not sure that's a useful test, since I'm on the same LAN as the server and subject to the same router port forwarding rules.

I would appreciate feedback from anyone who uses TPU or has tried to use it: does the TPU server appear in your in-game server browser? Let me know either way, by adding a comment here, posting to the related thread in the discussion forums, or by sending email to me directly:

Send email to Jeff

Oh boy, here we go again. When will game publishers finally realize that copy protection is a waste of money. It doesn't prevent games from being cracked and distributed worldwide to those who don't want to pay for them, but it does annoy the hell out of paying customers, such as myself. If a game publisher persists in using particularly lousy protection, I tend to do one of two things: avoid buying their games in the future, or download a version without copy protection for free from just about anywhere.