I have any and all of my retro machines LAN'd up just so I can play LAN games, and while they technically can browse the web I simply find them too slow to do much of anything useful.

Currently, my Win9x rig is hooked to my home LAN, with also WOL enabled together with VNC service auto-start - so it can surf Internet, but only for nostalgic feelings using Netscape...

My 486 is connected to internet, funny IE30 works better then 5,0.. google is displayed properly and search works, with ie5 it looks up.

it runs Windows 95 has 64Mb of RAM and a AMD DX4 @ 133Mhz CPU

Yes and no. I have a few Ethernet switches connected to old machines but its mostly for in house file swapping then for internet use. I can browse the web using an old 386 or 68k mac if I wanted to, but it is just easier to do it using a more modern machine then dump it to the server and then move it to the machine.

A decade ago I did mess around with a 386 DX/40 on IRC but when more and more people started posting web links I decided to use a real machine for IRC and then just gave IRC up.

Old systems might be vulnerable, but they also contain nothing worth stealing.

The concern with old machines is more that their resources could be used for further attacks, whether on other machines in your network, or against internet targets. (The newer the machine, the more likely this is and that you won't notice it.)

bhtooefr wrote:

The concern with old machines is more that their resources could be used for further attacks, whether on other machines in your network, or against internet targets. (The newer the machine, the more likely this is and that you won't notice it.)

Except of course that part of what I stated earlier... if you're behind a router with a built in firewall, and don't open any ports, then no one can "get in" to "attack" your old machines because there's nothing to connect through.

Which means no matter how old the older systems are, or what software they run, or even if they don't ever install any windows patches at all, they're still safe.

Even if you had ports open you would have to manually map it through the firewall to the older machine to even allow anyone on the outside world to even know it exists in the first place.

Unless, of course, you actually do anything with them online, and then they're attacked through those applications.

What about using RDP to a modern rig and then browse the web from there? Think i saw a RDP client for Win98, but will it work connecting to a Win7 (or later) host? WinXP to Win7 i used last week and that worked great.

bhtooefr wrote:

Unless, of course, you actually do anything with them online, and then they're attacked through those applications.

That was actually what I was curious about; how many ancient IE/Netscape Navigator/etc. exploits there might still be in the wild.

Once I tried to connect Amiga 3000 to the Internet - and succeed in viewing some - It was really amazing to see some sites being loaded on a machine, made in 1990...) A3000 was connectied with a ethernet cable - some friend of mine from St.Petersburg made a ZORROII-ethernet card - so I can transfer data from a modern pc to A3000 through a network...

keenerb wrote:

bhtooefr wrote:

Unless, of course, you actually do anything with them online, and then they're attacked through those applications.

That was actually what I was curious about; how many ancient IE/Netscape Navigator/etc. exploits there might still be in the wild.

bhtooefr wrote:

Unless, of course, you actually do anything with them online, and then they're attacked through those applications.

I have old machines running Windows 3.11, Windows 98 SE, and old Windows XP SP-0 with no service packs. I've used IE, netscape navigator, email programs to read google's pop3 access to gmail to check my email.. I've browsed what few websites I could.. even trying the most recent firefox versions the OS's would allow.. and I've yet to ever experience a single exploit or anything.

I guess it's just a matter of internet experience and knowing what shady websites look like and not visiting there perhaps..

I haven't had any viruses, or exploits, or anything at all negative in my computing experience happen in.. so long ago I can't even remember when it was. At least 10+ years. Nothing's happened.

As long as you're decently smart about what you're doing and just don't go clicking any random website in google all willy nilly there shouldn't be any worries.. and yes I'm behind a firewall here too.

Although I do run Adblock Plus (even an old version) on firefox when ever I can find it and get a version that works with old firefox, that might have something to do with it.

EDIT: Posting this message on vogons with my old dell Inspiron 8100 laptop in Windows ME with firefox at the moment.... on the internet with it as well.

ScoutPilot19 wrote:

Once I tried to connect Amiga 3000 to the Internet - and succeed in viewing some - It was really amazing to see some sites being loaded on a machine, made in 1990...) A3000 was connectied with a ethernet cable - some friend of mine from St.Petersburg made a ZORROII-ethernet card - so I can transfer data from a modern pc to A3000 through a network...

So NICE to ear that... You remind me to put hands on my poor Amiga 600, waiting for some accelerator, IDE2CF and FloppyEmulator 😀

Whenever I have the option to attach an ethernet interface to a computer I rightfully do so. The risk of a system being compromised is pretty low.

Hehehe.

It is currently offline as I don't really want to leave it turned on next to my sofa while I am asleep and can't keep an eye on it. That PSU has been abused and the system itself is an unknown quantity, I don't want to wake up on fire.

I also had an Ethernet card die for no apparent reason.

Nonetheless, this almost certainly qualifies as connecting an old system to the internet and some day it will be there permanently, this was just a proof of concept. I might let people connect to it tomorrow or something just to see if it crashes or anything. I need to set up a scripted reboot as the one I have keeps not working, the server shuts down but instead of executing the program it just dumps me out to the command line.

I am making progress on the site I plan to put on this system some day. Also, I think I just dug out the 8088 version of the server... Tempted to move over to an even weaker machine, but I think I'll stick with the 486

kithylin wrote:

I do it with all of my old machines, Win3.11 dos machines, Win98se machines, XP SP-0 machines

What's the point in using XP RTM, as opposed to SP3?

Performance, I'd guess - XP really did slow down with SP2 and SP3.

(That said, there is always the POSReady patches approach if you want to play with an XP SP3 box on the internet safely. It's not legal, though, unless it really is a point of service system licensed for it.)

Azarien wrote:

kithylin wrote:

I do it with all of my old machines, Win3.11 dos machines, Win98se machines, XP SP-0 machines

What's the point in using XP RTM, as opposed to SP3?

Performance, and compatibility. There were several older games for XP that were "broken" with SP2 and newer. With Windows XP and older machines, the more patches and service packs you install, the slower it makes a machine run. So also benchmarks.. if we can get em to run, XP-SP0 is the fastest for benchmarks too. I have... a lot of time on my hands to try different things and find out these little intricate differences. I've seen as much as +30% faster 3dmark 2001se scores in XP-SP0 vs SP3 on some machines.

Anyway.. The bottom line for the sake of this thread is if you're at home behind a firewall, no there's no more risk running an older machine on the internet than there is with your modern windows 10 thing.