Hotline 1.9.2 client banners
The original Hotline 1.9.2 client has an annoying quirk where upon connecting to a server it leaves an incomplete task "Loading banner image...".
Observing the network traffic shows that the client is sending the following HTTP request to www.developingnetwork.com:
GET /zipads/zip-hot.asp?c=82&h=69 HTTP/1.1
Connection: Keep-Alive
User-Agent: Hotline/1.9
Pragma: no-cache
Host: www.developingnetwork.com
Accept: text/*, image/*, */*
Accept-Language: en
Accept-Charset: iso-8859-1,*,utf-8
This is presumably some long defunct advertising partner from the early 2000's.
By creating a hosts file entry one could redirect this request to a web server under their control, but it's not clear what kind of response payload the 1.9 client is expecting. It could be anything really. Maybe XML defining a bunch of banners to rotate through? If anyone knows, please reach out!
- Create the Hosts plain text file and put it in the System Folder > Preferences (or pretty much anywhere you want where it won't get deleted).
- Go to the Control Panels > TCP/IP
- Go to the Edit menu and choose User Mode. Then pick either Advanced or Administration - it doesn't matter which. (Administration just allows you to set a password and lock the Control Panel from being changed by other people.)
- Back in the TCP/IP window there is now a new Select Hosts File button in the top-right corner. Click on that and find your Hosts file and Open it.
- Close the TCP/IP Control Panel and click Save
www.developingnetwork.com A 24.5.48.99