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RetroNap

RetroNap is a P2P mp3 file sharing server that works with the Napster 2.0 beta 6 client.

It's aimed at those who would like to relive those early times of P2P file sharing.

How to Connect

  1. Download the Napster 2.0 beta 6 client. One place where it's available is the oldversion.com website.

  2. You will need to modify your computer's hosts file to redirect the original Napster server address to the RetroNap server. This usually requires administrator privileges.

    The hosts file is a plain text file located at:

    • Windows 10/11/XP/Vista/7: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
    • Windows 98: C:\WINDOWS\hosts or C:\WINDOWS\hosts.sam
    • macOS: /private/etc/hosts
    • Linux: /etc/hosts

  3. Open the hosts file with a text editor (like Notepad on Windows, run as Administrator) and add the following line to the end of the file: 

    142.93.29.185 server.napster.com
  4. Save the file and start the Napster client. It should now connect to the RetroNap server.

A Note for Windows 98 Users

Unfortunately, the Napster client for Windows 98 rewrites the hosts file every time it starts, undoing the changes. To work around this, you can use a Python script to patch the napster.exe file directly. This will replace the original server address with the new RetroNap server IP.

You can download the script here: patch_napster.py.

To use it, first install Napster normally, and then run the script from your command line, providing the path to your napster.exe file, the old server address, and the new server IP as arguments: 

python patch_napster.py "C:\Program Files\Napster\napster.exe" server.napster.com 142.93.29.185

The script will create a new file named napster.exe.patched. You should use this patched executable to run Napster.

DISCLAIMER: A Note on Connectivity

For P2P connections to work, both peers need to be able to connect to each other. This means that if both peers are behind a Carrier-Grade NAT (CGNAT) or have their ports closed by a firewall, direct connections between them will not be possible. In such cases, file transfers will fail.