DaveDDS wrote on 2026-04-11, 02:45:

And... if you truly want to get "the experience" right.... no emulating Cable, Fiber or any sort of Broadband access... You need something like a "TalkSwitch" (small Analog phone system) and some 14.4 modems.

Hey... this was the 90s ... 14.4was incredibly fast - I still recall the first time I got "online" (to a university mainframe) using a D.C. Hayes 80-103A modem S100 card (Probably the first "Hayes" modem - no AT commands etc.) in my Altair - in the early 1980s at a whopping 300baud speed! (not really something I care to experience again)

My first computer back in 1993 was a Intel 486xd-33 CPU with 4mb of ram, 2x CDROM, Sound blaster. and SVGA video card.
with 14.4 modem.
My friend helped me order it pre-built after reviewing computer magazines and products.
We thought it would be fast enough and could last for years.
We were wrong.
The 14.4 modem was painfully slow.
it would take forever to download files over the phoneline.
I quickly upgrades the modem t0 33.3 and then 56k
that was the BIG thing back then was to have a fast dial modem and good phone lines.
With cable modems you could use ethernet cards and get 100mb/s download speeds
back around 1998 in my area.

Fortunately in the 90s most web sites used limited/small graphics. Web pages were fairly plain HTML which is a text basic language and pages could be loaded in fairly short order.

Today it's not uncommon to get huge graphics, tons of javascript and other bloat in site pages. But most everyone has some sort of "high speed" connection.
Even at 10baseT (10mbps) most pages will load in reasonable time.

I can't imagine trying to access "the net" today via modem! (Does anyone even still use modem?)

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2026-04-15, 06:15:

My first computer back in 1993 was a Intel 486xd-33 CPU with 4mb of ram, 2x CDROM, Sound blaster. and SVGA video card. with 14.4 […]
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DaveDDS wrote on 2026-04-11, 02:45:

And... if you truly want to get "the experience" right.... no emulating Cable, Fiber or any sort of Broadband access... You need something like a "TalkSwitch" (small Analog phone system) and some 14.4 modems.

Hey... this was the 90s ... 14.4was incredibly fast - I still recall the first time I got "online" (to a university mainframe) using a D.C. Hayes 80-103A modem S100 card (Probably the first "Hayes" modem - no AT commands etc.) in my Altair - in the early 1980s at a whopping 300baud speed! (not really something I care to experience again)

My first computer back in 1993 was a Intel 486xd-33 CPU with 4mb of ram, 2x CDROM, Sound blaster. and SVGA video card.
with 14.4 modem.
My friend helped me order it pre-built after reviewing computer magazines and products.
We thought it would be fast enough and could last for years.
We were wrong.
The 14.4 modem was painfully slow.
it would take forever to download files over the phoneline.
I quickly upgrades the modem t0 33.3 and then 56k
that was the BIG thing back then was to have a fast dial modem and good phone lines.
With cable modems you could use ethernet cards and get 100mb/s download speeds
back around 1998 in my area.

If you quickly upgraded to 33.6k and 56k, then really, you are talking about the late nineties, possibly doing web related stuff. Yes, if you were on the web then, having those speeds were amazing and plenty for casual use the time. (pre-cable broadband)

The 14.4k modem was what people used in the early nineties, which was not so much for the web, but for the BBS and early online service era. If you wanted to spend money for that speed, you were a very serious in your online use.

DaveDDS wrote on 2026-04-11, 21:26:

Trust me ... after you've spend a few years with a 300 baud modem, 2400 is amazingly fast!

Indeed, 2400 baud was decent for terminal, or what I did, dial up a BBS, and sending messages, etc. There isn't a whole lot of reason to go faster, except when programs got bigger, downloading/uploading, who wants to sit for an hour and wait for the transfer? 😀 so compared to 300, or even 1200, having at least 2400 was a nice speed for interaction, you didn't have to wait long to get a screen of text.

Joakim wrote on 2026-04-09, 13:56:

Just ask AI to produce a lot of websites with information like: "my name is Jack, I like fishing. Fishing is fun. Here are three good things about fishing: It is nice. I like fish. No women allowed, hahaha, 🤣." add a bunch if broken liks to his favorite mp3s and finally an animated under construction sign to finish it off. True 90s vibe.

Lol the animated "under construction"!

Kind of forgot to post about this as soon as it happened but I managed to pull it off somewhat.

It involved myself cooking up a Linux VM with nginx as the web server, dnsmasq as the DNS server and squid as the Proxy server so I don't have to constantly change the DNS server in the network adapter settings. The next part is downloading copies of various websites while throwing in some fictional ones for future videos and demonstrations. ^^

THEBaratusII wrote on 2026-04-20, 08:17:

Kind of forgot to post about this as soon as it happened but I managed to pull it off somewhat.

that's great! its a time machine 😀

Your post reminded me of this video by The Science Elf and the WaybackProxy project

THEBaratusII wrote on 2026-04-20, 08:17:

It involved myself cooking up a Linux VM with nginx as the web server, dnsmasq as the DNS server and squid as the Proxy server

This is a cheat code 😀

I think it is possible to make a completely local solution using "custom" HTTP proxy server running on Win9x.

The information consumption side of the PC experience is reproducible because back when modems were slow and expensive we actually accessed information from CDs (e.g. Encarta or other encyclopaedias) - the Internet didn't make Encarta obsolete until broadband went mainstream, and Archive.org picks up before that happened.

My next suggestion is possibly a rabbit hole: I once browsed Freecycle.org and discovered an already old listing offering "CDs for art projects". I actually browsed the photos looking for driver disks and saw some titled, "Microsoft Internet Resource." I'd never heard of that so I asked the bot. According to ChatGPT, the CD was a product from the early 1990s and contained curated snapshots of the Internet for people who didn't have modems. When I reached out to get the CDs, they had already been taken to the tip. I cannot verify the bot's claim and it could be inferred rubbish as screenshots from sellers of those CDs don't look anywhere near as exciting - just MS apps to create/view web pages, but the disks are dated and look like monthly releases rather than version releases - and isn't that a bit odd?

ott wrote on 2026-04-20, 17:27:

THEBaratusII wrote on 2026-04-20, 08:17:

It involved myself cooking up a Linux VM with nginx as the web server, dnsmasq as the DNS server and squid as the Proxy server

This is a cheat code 😀

I think it is possible to make a completely local solution using "custom" HTTP proxy server running on Win9x.

Speaking of Linux and Win9x.. There's a new project that runs Linux kernel on 9x. Maybe that's helpful somehow?
https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/22/wsl_windows95/

MattRocks wrote on 2026-04-24, 05:59:

... we actually accessed information from CDs ...

I still have a fairly good sized box with many 100s of "commercial" CD/DVDs in it from "way back when"

And... I used to buy 100packs of CD/DVD-Rs which came in round (disc sized) towers stacked 100 high.
and over the years, I started storing ones I'd written back in those same towers...

I have probably 8-10 of those filled towers left (the most important stuff).

I rarely need to pull one out these days (and finding the "right" one can be a chore) as most anything I need to know can be found easiler on "the web". but occationally I still do...
One big (for me) thing the web doesn't have much of is backups of the early editions of all the software I created over the years... Again, almost never want to look up such old source code, but when I do ... these DVDs still get used! (Thankfully almost all of my systems have working DVD-ROM drives)

Surprisingly, in all this ... I have never encounter optical media that "went bad" - even after all these years!

DaveDDS wrote on 2026-04-24, 10:28:

I still have a fairly good sized box with many 100s of "commercial" CD/DVDs in it from "way back when" […]
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MattRocks wrote on 2026-04-24, 05:59:

... we actually accessed information from CDs ...

I still have a fairly good sized box with many 100s of "commercial" CD/DVDs in it from "way back when"

And... I used to buy 100packs of CD/DVD-Rs which came in round (disc sized) towers stacked 100 high.
and over the years, I started storing ones I'd written back in those same towers...

I have probably 8-10 of those filled towers left (the most important stuff).

I rarely need to pull one out these days (and finding the "right" one can be a chore) as most anything I need to know can be found easiler on "the web". but occationally I still do...
One big (for me) thing the web doesn't have much of is backups of the early editions of all the software I created over the years... Again, almost never want to look up such old source code, but when I do ... these DVDs still get used! (Thankfully almost all of my systems have working DVD-ROM drives)

Surprisingly, in all this ... I have never encounter optical media that "went bad" - even after all these years!

I agree the pretty light reflecting optical media is the most robust, until the kids find them. And, I feel pre-1998 magazine FDs/CDs have more value than most people give them credit for.

In the early Internet binary downloads were actually expensive so the pages were intentionally simple poster pages for content that shipped on CDs, and the archivers only had text/markup to focus on. When sites transitioned to having multiple channels (website for binaries and CD for binaries) the end users and archivists assumed... and assumptions are...

Weird, but I don't think I was using HTML nearly as much then (circa '95 to '99). It was mostly other protocols (FTP, USENET relays, maybe Gopher, IRC) being used over the Internet. Before everything became a subscription service.

Those protocols all still exist and work; it's just that no one uses them. Nothing lonelier than idling in an empty IRC server.

Most of the actual webpages were along the lines of an advertisement or a "Hey! I like a thing! Here's my thoughts on it and some links to other thing likers!". Some of these weren't actually HTML and were just README.TXT somewhere in an FTP server.

Recreating a psudo-Internet from the 90's is neat though. Go full rose-tint with those glasses and make it the best Internet that never was 😀

Inhibit wrote on 2026-04-24, 14:03:

Weird, but I don't think I was using HTML nearly as much then (circa '95 to '99). It was mostly other protocols (FTP, USENET relays, maybe Gopher, IRC) being used ...

In the "early" days, I was really "into" BBSs, FidoNet (with FidoNet relays etc.) - mostly via dial-up modems- I don't think much back them was based on/using IP (Internet Protocol), most forums were text based, if there were downloads, it was Xmodem, Ymodem, Zmodem etc. I even wrote my own BBS software and ran one for a while...

But once I got "internet connected", I do recall most everything being HTML with a few text files sprinkled in places. and FTP being the was to "get stuff".

I do vaguely recall usenet, gopher, IRC chats etc.- but at least for me there were more of "in passing" between direct-dialing BBSs and online forums like this one, Classiccmp etc.
I guess it really depends on where your interests lie and which (of several) routes you undertook to engage with others about them.

DaveDDS wrote on 2026-04-24, 16:11:

In the "early" days, I was really "into" BBSs, FidoNet (with FidoNet relays etc.) - mostly via dial-up modems- I don't think muc […]
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Inhibit wrote on 2026-04-24, 14:03:

Weird, but I don't think I was using HTML nearly as much then (circa '95 to '99). It was mostly other protocols (FTP, USENET relays, maybe Gopher, IRC) being used ...

In the "early" days, I was really "into" BBSs, FidoNet (with FidoNet relays etc.) - mostly via dial-up modems- I don't think much back them was based on/using IP (Internet Protocol), most forums were text based, if there were downloads, it was Xmodem, Ymodem, Zmodem etc. I even wrote my own BBS software and ran one for a while...

But once I got "internet connected", I do recall most everything being HTML with a few text files sprinkled in places. and FTP being the was to "get stuff".

I do vaguely recall usenet, gopher, IRC chats etc.- but at least for me there were more of "in passing" between direct-dialing BBSs and online forums like this one, Classiccmp etc.
I guess it really depends on where your interests lie and which (of several) routes you undertook to engage with others about them.

Life was simpler when it was mostly DHTML, ICQ, IRC-like game lobbies, and an occasional detour into 3D VRML.