Using OS9 (or older) for daily internet tasks in 2017

[ibmxt286]

Classilla seems to be the only web browser that works now that a great majority of websites are enforcing SSL. Without starting any sort of Pro /Anti security debate, I am asking just a few questions and hope to get straight answers without any sort of "Why are you using something that old on the modern internet?" type of lecture.

I want to use Entourage 2001 with GMail but when I try it says it can't enable SSL or something like that. I try without SSL and it seems that Gmail forces SSL for email unfortunately. My Comcast e-mail works great.

I want to aquire older Macs like the SE/30 and run an old netscape on them for my web browsing. I know that the processors won't be able to render modern pages but for downloading from the Macintosh Garden, Netscape 2 should be fine correct?

Like I said I am looking for help, not a security lecture. My interest in vintage computing / collecting is not in just playing vintage games but also in using them for my day to day tasks as one would have when the machines were new. This extends to collecting old PalmOS PDAs for me and syncing them with a vintage Mac.

 

[sstaylor]

I always have trouble with the Macintosh Garden when I try to access it on old computers unfortunately, which is a pity because that's exactly the sort of thing the garden should do well.

I've seen other solutions wherein a newer mac does the actual browsing and heavy lifting, then forwards a rendered page to the older mac.  If I can find a modicum of ambition this morning I'll see if I can find a link 

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

From a security standpoint Mac OS 9 and older are a completely different animal. There's really not a whole lot of security risk there. It's the Unix-derived OS X that's the concern.

And I concur with sstaylor: a lot of people enlist either a newer computer or something like a Raspberry Pi to handle the heavy lifting, then pass their completed work onto the older Mac. What HW are we talking about?

 

[ibmxt286]

We are talking about a Dual 450 G4 (already owned) a Dual 1.25 MDD (Purchasing from a member here) and a Macintosh SE/30 (not yet sourced)

 

[Cory5412]

Heavy lifting is only part of the problem. To put it lightly, it's a Problem™ that so many public ISPs allow some of the connections they do to their mail servers. I don't know exactly how Comcast's servers are configured, but they still have a huge network to allow the almost certainly broken encryption that Entourage supports, or no encryption at all.

The best strategy really is to use an outboard UNIX box, either having it fetch and then rehost your mail for you, or using it the way you would have in the pre-web era: remotely connect to it with macssh or a telnet client and read using alpine or mutt.

As mentioned, it's less of an issue that system 7/8/9 are online, because there's not as much you can do with those remotely as with any version of OS X or with, say, Windows XP, or other linux/UNIX systems. The real "issue" here is that most things require newer encryption.

Although, for the web rendering issue, CPU horsepower and memory are still a concern, perhaps the concern. To put it lightly, even the fastest of dual G4s in OS X are not fast at rendering web pages.

When I'm using my 840 or other vintage Macs for things, I usually keep my Surface or iPad nearby if I need to use email or get on a web site.

 

[johnklos]

Another option is to get any Unix computer (even a $9 C.H.I.P. will do) and use it to run stunnel as a client, with SSL, to your email server. Over the local network, your classic machine would then connect to it without SSL. So long as your local network is relatively secure, this is relatively secure, too.

 

[ibmxt286]

This "stunnel" you speak of, is that something my WRT router could do with say OpenWRT or DD-WRT?

 

[ibmxt286]

Oh and Cory, Im curious, what do you use your 840 / other vintage macs for? Is it solely just games? am I the only one who wants to use vintage computers for day to day modern tasks? Also how could I get another computer to render a page and pass it on to an SE/30? A Proxy?

 

[Unknown_K]

I like the old apps on my vintage systems (don't game on Mac), and they run just as good as they did new (better with faster HDs and more RAM).

I can't see doing web browsing or HD video watching on old gear, it is just too painful assuming the browser can even render it all.

 

[Themk]

As Unknown_K said, the productivity software from the period runs just as well as it did when new. What's even further is that much of the producitivty software still can get today's work done! While older machines can sure be very useful, there are some tasks (e.g. Compiling the latest Linux kernel, watching movies, modern web, manipulating large data sets.) that may require the use of a newer computer.

That being said, when I can do something (which is a lot) with my vintage macs, it is always very enjoyable.

 

[TarableCode]

I was able to do a kind of youtube with the help of a friend, I had written a script to grab youtube urls using youtube-dl and ffmpeg to convert them to a vintage mac friendly format.

She took it and made it so my webserver could take the video url as a parameter from the url and run the script and providing a link/embed to the resulting file.

It works okayish but if Quicktime crashes it takes MacOS down with it so I'd mostly just download the resulting video instead and disable the embed.

Anything is possible if you either care enough, or are bored enough to give it a try.

 

[ibmxt286]

TarableCode, Not everything is possible.  You couldn't, for example, make a SE/30 display grayscale instead of just black and white dithering.  I only kid though.  I'm kind of in a good mood about something and had to jab at you.  but grayscale on an se.30 would be a cool development

 

[TarableCode]

Blink a single pixel off and on at a timed interval and use the CRT's slow phosphor to give the illusion of grays

 

[ibmxt286]

Slow Phosphor?  I remember that!  OMG!  Like when you turn off a SE/30 and you can see the squiggly line?  OMG I so remember that!@

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

I mean...you can make an SE/30 grayscale. Just get a Micron Xceed card.

 

[sstaylor]

OK, here's at least a start:   https://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/2014/03/11/web-rendering-proxy-update/

This is a python script that runs on OS X (earlier versions at least, I don't know about current versions) which renders webpages into a clickable gif or jpeg or something and forwards that to your old computer.  Everyone who ran it in 2014 thought it was the bee's knees; I don't know if it's still useful but it's a start.

 

[johnklos]

This "stunnel" you speak of, is that something my WRT router could do with say OpenWRT or DD-WRT?

Sure, although I have no idea how you'd get a toolchain set up on OpenWRT or whether you could get a pre-build binary for stunnel from somewhere.

I don't have time now, but soon I'll set up stunnel with an $8 or $9 computer and test it, then I'll share the configurations with everyone here.

 

[Themk]

OpenWRT has a cross-compiler, as well as a package system, and stunnel is one of the packages. Most OpenWRT routers are fairly powerful, and direct access to the network switch alleviates another level of hardware.

 

[Innes]

I always have trouble with the Macintosh Garden when I try to access it on old computers unfortunately

How old are we talking? Excluding the marquee on the front page which loads each entry underneath one another, i've found the garden to be very usable on Classilla.

It always struck me as a site that could fall over if given a slight nudge