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email

juan123

Well-known member
Hey guys!
So today I fired up my 6200 PPC to email myself a file through gmail only to find classilla is no longer supported by gmail...not even the basic html version.

My question is... anybody know of a free email service that could work with classila? Preferably Web based.
Thanks in advance!
-JP
 

volvo242gt

Well-known member
I wonder if Eudora or Claris Emailer could be configured to do IMAP with gmail. Gmail will obviously complain about security, like it does with Apple Mail on iOS devices, but it might be worth a shot.
 

juan123

Well-known member
I've tried with eudora and the classilla email client... Even if you enable SSL connections, it stil won't let you receive email
 

Hopfenholz

Well-known member
I find this the biggest frustration of the whole classic mac scene. At the end of the day email is just text and images and the machines can handle it, just not the security. Email is such a big part of my life, I love the idea of being able to have a classic mac that could do email but not web.

how hard is it to set up a home email server running on Linux that could offer an unsecured service but only accessible to machines on the local network?
 

CircuitBored

Well-known member
how hard is it to set up a home email server running on Linux that could offer an unsecured service but only accessible to machines on the local network?

I have attempted this with Nginx before with mixed results. I was able to connect an old 68K email client to the proxy server but ran up against client verification issues that I didn't know how to get past. I really should get back to this at some point.

I am almost certain that Nginx (possibly in tandem with another tool) can do what you're asking but it is definitely not an easy route to follow. That said, there are sadly no easy routes in this area.

I have a vague memory of a user here on the MLA having set up an email proxy for classic Macs but will need to rummage around to verify. It's possible that that thread was lost in "the event" and never resurfaced.
 

juan123

Well-known member
I find this the biggest frustration of the whole classic mac scene. At the end of the day email is just text and images and the machines can handle it, just not the security. Email is such a big part of my life, I love the idea of being able to have a classic mac that could do email but not web.

how hard is it to set up a home email server running on Linux that could offer an unsecured service but only accessible to machines on the local network?
Omg yes it's so frustrating... even web browsing, so many sites could load just fine but the dumb SSL stuff and certificates kill it all
 

Cory5412

Daring Pioneer of the Future
Staff member
That's real neat to see more people are getting into the idea.

I was going to run a dedicated vintage oriented email server on the domain vtools.68kmla.org but at least with AppleShare IP 6, there's no way to require or ask for authentication of any kind on sending, so it immediately got used as a spam relay and also filled the service's logs, so I had to turn off the service. I haven't yet made time and sat down with the manuals to OS X Server 10.4 to see what might be possible there.

Though, really what's probably a better idea is turning on insecure access on a more modern server, so that's a set of decisions for Future Cory, or someone else.

The other concern I have, and the main reason I wouldn't even suggest anything like trying to use your modern email account, is email volume is potentially hundreds of times what it was in the '90s. I'm not confident any mail software on Classic Mac OS could handle, say, my work or personal email, each of which get over 100 messages a day.

A G4 with OS X software and an SSL proxy or an appropriately security-lowered server might be able to handle that mail volume, but the question is kind of... "and then what?"

At work, very close to 100% of the email I get is either advertisements i don't want or an automated notification with a call to go click on a link and handle something in a ticket. At home, the bulk of the volume I get is notifications from web sites (e.g. you got a DM on twitter, someone mentioned you on the forum) or advertisements from shops where I have accounts or rewards cards.

I can see maybe making a mailing list account.

<joke about how much I want to run a listserv, even though most people I know wouldn't want to be on mailing lists, even a peer to peer discussion list>


For beige Macs, I don't really mind. "beige' and "internet" only really crossed over for a couple years for me (personally, I know it was longer for others) and the interaction model at the time was webmail and IRC.

We do have an IRC channel for the site, so that's an option. I know there's plenty of plain HTML and no-HTTPS options for things like news, proxying other web sites, etc etc, so there's some choices and this will all be a personal goals and style thought process.

I don't know much about it but I know Cameron Kaiser (the tenfourfox/classilla guy) was running a gopher system and maybe a gopher proxy? That's contemporary with most beige macs so may be worth looking at. There's also links to some BBSes that pop up in The Lounge from time to time!
 

Skate323k137

Well-known member
I worked in web hosting for over a decade, the switch to stricter TLS standards is definitely a huge pain. On the web browsing side, Chrome is already making it a multi step pain in the ass to download anything from a normal HTTP server.

I don't even remember if the stable version of Exim and it's daemons on cPanel (Linux hosting control panel) will let you do unencrypted email client connections anymore. But, if you're in the business of routing mail to your own domain(s) I can't see it being that hard to stand up an email server for personal use using Linux that still allows acceptable POP3 options at the least. But, running an SMTP server almost always has to be done outside the home, as dynamic IP ranges are permanently spam blacklisted and usually have port 25 blocked or restricted in some fashion. Cheap VPS ought to be fine though.

Nowadays I use Gmail for everything, I have it retrieve my other mail from my personal server using IMAP, and it ends up tagged in my main Gmail inbox.
 

Skate323k137

Well-known member
There is the Macintosh Garden email tunnel. However, it does require a level of trust in the service when it comes to security, as the page about it on System 7 Today describes:


Just don't use it for your work mail or anything top secret ;)
You should actually be able to set up something like this on a mac/nix system in your own home. I might mess with it.


In order to let your local e-mail client connect to a TLS-enabled imapd service on another server, configure the e-mail client to connect to localhost on port 119 and use:

[imap]
client = yes
accept = 143
connect = servername:993
 
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