You will find that in order to play many (but not
all) of the Diablo mods out there without forseen
(by the mod creator) problems you will need to
*gasp* abandon the single player aspect of the game.

You might immediately reject the idea because you
don't want to always have to find one or more other people to play Diablo with.

The fact is: You can play a multiplayer game SOLO.
With one computer not hooked up to any network AT ALL. Just select DIRECT CABLE CONNECTION from
the list when you get to that screen, then CREATE GAME on the next screen.

You will now be playing a multiplayer version of the game which will support any of the multiplayer mods or hacks out there.

Aditionally, at ANY time during the game you can connect one of your free SERIAL PORTS to another computer's SERIAL PORTS with something called a NULL MODEM ADAPTER (i.e. DIRECT CABLE) and, if they select JOIN GAME (using the same version of Diablo with the same mods in place) their character can step into your game! VERY COOL.

In order to get a NULL MODEM cable you can try an electronics store like RADIO SHACK but most people at these types of stores are not intelligent or experienced enough (in my experience) to find what you want right away if at all.

I made my own NULL MODEM cable after studying a book titled COMPU FACTS bought at HSC ELECTRONICS by Ronald J. Duegrenier who works for Computers Etcetera. Copyright Dec '92. I'm sure there are many other books out there since its an old concept.

The way it works, the SERIAL PORT has a number of lines that transmit DATA, GROUND or POWER signals and the way they were designed and used on early computers they were commonly interconnected in a particular pattern in order to allow 2-way communication.

For those "teckkies" out there, the regular lines:
TD - TRANSMIT DATA and
RD - RECIEVE DATA are cross connected
while
RTS - READY TO SEND and
CTS - CLEAR TO SEND are cross connected
these are the main communication lines.
also
DSR - DATA SET READY and
DTR - DATA TERMINAL READY and
DCD - DATA CARRIER DETECT are tied to each other on each side (not cross connected).
these "dummy light" lines recieve power to tell the computer its connected.
last
GND - GROUND must be sent across in order to make sure both power sources are balanced.

The way I have described is called FULL HANDSHACKING and is the BEST way although there are other ways to do it that might also work.

I hope someone out there can be inspired by this to take full advantage of what Diablo has to offer. I know it works because I've alredy done it. When I finally got it to work I was VERY pleased with the results.

L8R