unirule wrote on 2022-07-15, 22:14:
BlackVega wrote on 2022-07-15, 20:43:
Considering surfing the modern web on old hardware then... heh I think you wrote way too much and I think I get the point anyway. However, considering your situation- if you somehow surf the net on DOS (I don't know why would anyone do that anyway) then I can say YES. You are using a 16bit operating system and it flat out rejects 32bit functionality as well as 64bit. Yes you are right but you are one of very few people that take it to another extreme or create a huge workaround. We are not talking about it here. We are talking about browsing the web on 9x or XP that are 32bit and, I will not be surprised if they still give you trouble. They are completely unencrypted and automatically run any kind of scripts you throw at them. Remember how much of a wild west was browsing the internet on Windows XP with IE? I mean you could do it if you want but what's the point? No I'm not keeping and of my confident information on old hardware and this is not my concern. You are still risking getting into some 32bit malware from some shitty script from some shitty website you visited or another tab your browser automatically opened. I wouldn't be surprised if they can still delete some data or system files which could result in a reinstall. Maybe not a big deal but this would be just annoying. Considering how much of a modern web is incompatible from the get go so... again, what's the point? It's just not for me. The best result you can get anyway is looking at some pictures at half the resolution and 40% accuracy or watching youtub videos at 144p 5fps. Seriously I know how this stuff works
My favorite way to browse the net on 9x era computers is to use Retrozilla (a fork of Firefox 2.0 with modern cyphers) and search.marginalia.nu (a search engine that prioritizes pre-html5 sites) to browse the still running ruins of Web 1.0 society. If I find a dead link interesting enough I'll jam it through theoldnet.com, which is a page that allows you to pages from the internet archive wayback machine without the heavy javascript overlay on low spec machines.
It's not like any sane person would use it to try use such machines to browse absurdly heavy sites like modern day facebook unless you're using something like Browservice which is a party trick more than anything else (if you want to be pedantic the old computer isn't even the one rendering the page at that point).
Actually, you'd be surprised, Facebook works fine on my 486 on RetroZilla. It works in low-resource mode (the site detects it). Made a few posts on there before I quit. I also vouch for retrozilla - https://msfn.org/board/topic/181416-retrozill … munity-edition/ - look at that thread and you'll find out how to disable the insecure/outdated protocols in RetroZilla.
Possibly the newest browser I've used in Windows on a vintage system is Firefox 0.58 LTSB on my 486 DX4-100 64MB desktop in Windows 2000 Professional SP4. It's slow as molasses in january, but it works, and it does render modern sites just fine.
I'm beginning to wonder if I should do a retro-PC web browser video/thread.......I'm starting to realize a lot of this is not a common knowledge as I thought. Including the DOS Stuff.
That said, I'm not using it for "nostalgia" so much as I'm using it for a practical purpose - downloading software directly off the internet vs. downloading on a new machine then pushing over using FTPSRV, as well as reading informational pages with lots of text, rather than looking at pictures, or downloading PDF files to read in Acrobat. I also use it to test my website(s) to see how "vintage" friendly they are.