First post, by Master_Shifu
HI Guys!
Sorry to drop in like this, not sure if i'm at the right topic 😀 i need your advice and help if possible.
I'll try to make a brief introduction, i'm Sonny, just like most here a retro loving computing hobbyist keeping the machines alive that i grew up with. 😀 I have my own IT company and on the side like to take on the odd challenging project!
Only one thing holds my hobby back, in the modern world we lack one use. a decent usable web page to provide the basic stuff you want. Like reading the news, chatting with other retro fanatics, using a web mail client or just browsing the ftp for programs / demo's/ shareware / freeware, you know. the legal stuff that we can distribute 😀
Now, with alot of struggle we are actually already building and working on a new platform that hopefully will partially fullfill this gap, with live news atricles, updates and blogs. all usable and viewable on our Mac System 6-7 machines and our Windows 3.1-95-98 machines. Ofcourse taking into account the difference between the B/W systems and the color versions!
We're working hard to make it work with the HTML 2 standard with as much as we can, and one of the experimental features is offer some sort of on demand streaming. either through regular software like the first versions of quicktime or winvideo etc. or, even better. through the website itself.
Now, one of my questions that i hope you guys can help me awnser is, what kind of options were there back in the day? sadly i wasn't old enough to remember what we had, but i do remember that there were some sort of streaming alternatives, i think from Realplayer and quicktime. think like the stuff they did with that famous coffeepot cam 😀
Would be nice to look back to for example, episodes of the Computer Chronicles on your vintage machine! we're already testing out different downstream codecs like the Cinepack and possible Bink Video formats. the resolution will be somewhere around the old VHS format, 320-480 max. but probably we'll offer it smaller as well, for the less powerfull systems!
Any tips are welcome 😀 sory for the whole story! we're looking forward to hosting a new retro alternative on our server so we can revive the old days and drag the machines into the 21st century! 😀