Won't work, even Cello and NCSA Mosaic already required a Win 3.x running on a 386 in enhanced mode.
Better try DOSLynx or maybe Arachne.

No web browser that runs on hardware that old is going to be pleasant to use because the web standards they would support have largely be replaced. You might find some very old web pages still online that you can view without issue, but for the most part you're not going to like what you see (or don't see as the case may be). If you need internet access for downloading files to an older machine like that, you might be better off using a newer machine that can still run a reasonably recent browser and transferring files by network or by floppy/CD. In the days before networking we used to use what's called a null modem cable and terminal software for transferring files between computers. You would connect the serial ports of the two machines with the cable then set the terminal software on one machine to upload the file and the terminal software on the other machine to download the file at the same time. It's a bit cumbersome compared to real networking, but another possibility to consider.

I remembered this vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Nn0eDF9X0 😜

You can still use the Dos web browsers like lynx and arachne (not sure about that one? specs may be higher than a 286?), above, to do basic online searches and downloads. Just don't set your sites too high and you won't be dissapointed.

I often use text-mode browsers (lynx, elinks) on the Unix systems I maintain at work - it's sometimes convenient to do a little text mode browsing or search google and download patches/code/utilities directly.

Hi all. Apologies for waking up an old thread but I thought I'd add to this thread my recent experience with getting a 286 on the internet with Arachne. My 286 system specs are as follows:

ZENITH data systems Z-286LP Plus

286/12 cpu
256k vga, IDE, FDD, two com ports and one parallel port
8 megs of ram.
49 megs usable on 52 meg hdd on internal controller
3.5" 1.44 meg fdd on internal controller
IBM P97 18" monitor
Genius Easy Track on com2
Generic AT enhance keyboard
Parallel port LS120 drive
Sound Blaster CT 1740 sound card
GE2000 (KYE)Genius Lan nic with rj45 and bnc connectors. Set to auto
detect media type.

Software installed:

MS Dos 5a
Nic packet driver
Driver for the LS120
XTree Gold
GeoWorks Ensemble 2.0
Arachne 1.97;GPL.286-
mTCP suite
Norton SI
NeoPaint

No Windows or Linux required or needed 😉

All I did was fit a nic, load a packet driver, then install install Arachne 1.97;GPL.286-. Ran though the set up routine manually setting addresses, gateway etc, Worked right off the bat. Connected to the router through an old hub I had laying about.

Never really thought I'd ever see a 286 on the internet with a graphical web browser myself. Might encourage others to give it a shot for the hell of it.

Caluser2000 wrote:

Hi all. Apologies for waking up an old thread but I thought I'd add to this thread my recent experience with getting a 286 on th […]
Show full quote

Hi all. Apologies for waking up an old thread but I thought I'd add to this thread my recent experience with getting a 286 on the internet with Arachne. My 286 system specs are as follows:

ZENITH data systems Z-286LP Plus

286/12 cpu
256k vga, IDE, FDD, two com ports and one parallel port
8 megs of ram.
49 megs usable on 52 meg hdd on internal controller
3.5" 1.44 meg fdd on internal controller
IBM P97 18" monitor
Genius Easy Track on com2
Generic AT enhance keyboard
Parallel port LS120 drive
Sound Blaster CT 1740 sound card
GE2000 (KYE)Genius Lan nic with rj45 and bnc connectors. Set to auto
detect media type.

Software installed:

MS Dos 5a
Nic packet driver
Driver for the LS120
XTree Gold
GeoWorks Ensemble 2.0
Arachne 1.97;GPL.286-
mTCP suite
Norton SI
NeoPaint

No Windows or Linux required or needed 😉

All I did was fit a nic, load a packet driver, then install install Arachne 1.97;GPL.286-. Ran though the set up routine manually setting addresses, gateway etc, Worked right off the bat. Connected to the router through an old hub I had laying about.

Never really thought I'd ever see a 286 on the internet with a graphical web browser myself. Might encourage others to give it a shot for the hell of it.

mmm
That must be the definition of painful. Arachne is sluggish on my 486. I would not even want to think of a 286

Slow for sure but speed is relative.I'ts certainly not as bad as I thought it'd be and the prompt says you can go and get a coffee.These 286LP plus machines are quite peppy for a 286/12. Need to track down a windows browser for the 486 now, just loaed the 32b tcpip slack on that and it's running sweet.

Caluser2000 wrote:

Slow for sure but speed is relative.I'ts certainly not as bad as I thought it'd be and the prompt says you can go and get a coffee.These 286LP plus machines are quite peppy for a 286/12. Need to track down a windows browser for the 486 now.

Opera 3.60 if you are running Windows 3.1
If you are running Windows 9x and have a lot of RAM Opera 8.5-9.6

I'll stay with wfw 3.11 and stick Calmira on the 486 in the last pic. For some reason non of the true 32 bit OSs don't seem to like that box now. I suspect a ram issue. Seems really picky with only two slicks in my simm stash actually allowing it to boot. With 64 megs available it's going to have a big ram drive. Use to run Red Hat 6.x on it some time back until the hdd died.

I've got another 486 with OS/2 v3 and the network client from OS/2 v4 server on that. Plenty of older systems to play with as you know 😉

Caluser2000:

Nice effort... and I like the screenshots 😁

Cheers. Was really just one of those things one has to have a go at just for the hell/fun of it. And to be quite honest didn't take much effort at all. Now i can tick that box off so to speak.

Holy crap! That's sounds about as bad as when I tried surfing the internet on a VAX terminal in college (that's how I learned I DESPISE programming).

I forget what it's called, but there was a very minimalistic browser than *might* work, but I wouldn't bet money on it. If I can remember the name, I'll post it later. It'll be ugly, and mostly text (no pics or videos), but it might work. Sort of, kind of.

I had an Accton HUB back in the day: cool stuff!

Hi Pete. Got the hub from a thrift shop a few years ago primarily because it had a bnc connector it's quite good for testing old nics. At times I find it easiier just hooking up a !0BaseT connection. Works fine for transfering files and certainly faster than parralel or serial file transfers. Have plenty of Ts, cable and terminators on hand. No tcpip required of course netbui works fine.

FWIW even making a post of Vogons is a very trivial exercise. On the
Zenith now. In fact Vogons seems to be quite retro freindly in this
regard. Good work people:) It's a great resource.

Caluser2000 wrote:

FWIW even making a post of Vogons is a very trivial exercise. On the
Zenith now. In fact Vogons seems to be quite retro freindly in this
regard. Good work people:) It's a great resource.

Yeah I found Vogons seems to even work better than VCF on old machines
which makes no sense since VCF looks simpler

Another observation is that Bing is more useful than Google on this ol
girl as far as a search engine goes.

A bit more playing around on the 286 shows the arachne executable needs to be
be run from within the directory it is setup in otherwise you get a core.exe
error. This happens even though that directory is in the path statement
in the autoexec.bat.

Anyone know why that occurs at all? Does the same thing happen on 386s
up?

Caluser2000 wrote:

A bit more playing around on the 286 shows the arachne executable needs to be be run from within the directory it is setup in ot […]
Show full quote

A bit more playing around on the 286 shows the arachne executable needs to be
be run from within the directory it is setup in otherwise you get a core.exe
error. This happens even though that directory is in the path statement
in the autoexec.bat.

Anyone know why that occurs at all? Does the same thing happen on 386s
up?

Arachne is actually a batch file that sets some things up then calls core.exe. I think you need to be in the arachne directory for it to work