A couple of weeks ago, some friends and I got together and came up with a variant of poker that we called, "Geek Poker." Geek Poker is like regular poker, except it's played with PCMCIA, CardBus, and ExpressCard cards instead of a standard paper deck. The deck is created by pooling all the geeks' cards, and several categories are chosen appropriately. If there's a category with only one card, then it's permissible to make that category a wildcard (for instance, our wildcard was a TV tuner). Here's an example hand:
The cards are:
- Megahertz 14.4k V.32bis fax modem
- Zoom Telephonics 14.4k cellular modem
- IBM 10/100 Etherjet LAN controller
- 3Com 3C574-TX Fast EtherLink LAN controller
- Xircom CreditCard Ethernet Adapter IIps LAN controller
That gives me a full house - three LAN controllers and two modems.
There are a couple of disadvantages: some LAN and WLAN controllers give themselves away by sticking out from the top, and occasionally the manufacturer will put their name on the back in addition to the regulatory compliance notices.
Maybe next I should write a networked game for this, that scans the system's PCMCIA bus for cards and plays with those.