The oldest Mac that can "surf"

PowerMac G4 MDD · Aug 12, 2014

tevion5 said:
My Power Macintosh 8600/250 (damn Amelio and his terrible product names...) running Mac OS 9.2.2 can browse pretty well with Classilla. Even loads Facebook and can handle messaging etc.

IE is a meh experience however...

I tried Classilla but it said I didn't have something installed when I tried to open it... I wish I remembered what it was. Did you ever have a similar issue?

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h4lp m3 said:
My PowerBook G3 works comfortably, but my Macintosh SE can't even load a single picture. What do you think is the oldest Mac (with upgrades) that can surf the internet?

A friend of mine has an upgraded Macintosh Color Classic. It can surf the web with images, but obviously it can barely load most things. Sadly the internet is full of junk today. We could still browse simply if things were still simple.

tevion5 · Aug 12, 2014

PowerMac G4 MDD said:
I tried Classilla but it said I didn't have something installed when I tried to open it... I wish I remembered what it was. Did you ever have a similar issue?

I remember it requires quite a lot of RAM for those old Mac's. Something like 100MB. You would do well to enable virtual memory and set it fairly high. It helps overall stability of Mac OS 9 anyway.

Before OSX, if one app crashed, everything crashed. Hard.

PowerMac G4 MDD · Aug 12, 2014

tevion5 said:
I remember it requires quite a lot of RAM for those old Mac's. Something like 100MB. You would do well to enable virtual memory and set it fairly high. It helps overall stability of Mac OS 9 anyway.

Before OSX, if one app crashed, everything crashed. Hard.

I have enough RAM on my machine. It was something I didn't have installed that it wanted... I am forgetting what it was. I should have taken note of that.

desantii · Sep 24, 2014

My Quadra 800 works...very slowly but can get to soem sites

bunnspecial · Sep 24, 2014

My 8500 running OS 9 and Clasilla is useable, but is very slow. I generally use Internet Sharing on my Macbook Pro and connect it via Ethernet, although I suspect that the 10baseT ethernet port on the 8500 is at least some of the bottleneck.

My Beige G3(also with OS 9 and Classilla) is a little bit better, but I think is also somewhat limited by the 10baseT internet. If I were going to do it for anything other than just seeing if it could be done, I'd probably invest in a 100baseT or gigabit ethernet card for both of these systems.

My IMac G3 does very well with Classilla under OS9, and I've found every G4 system that I've used(ranging from a single 533mhz Digital Audio all the way up to a dual 1ghz MDD) to do well with either Classilla, Tenfourfox, or Tiger/Leopard Webkit under their respective operating systems, although obviously the faster computers do a lot better than the slower ones.

tevion5 · Sep 24, 2014

firewood said:
If you don't need the pictures, then a 512Ke could probably connect using MacTerminal via modem to a dial-up remote Unix system (are there any of those left?), and run lynx in VT100 mode for text-mode web surfing. In lieu of a finding a remote Unix dial-up, a serial-to-USB plug on a raspberry pi might work.

I've got myself an RS-422 to USB cable and a Raspberry Pi B+ is ordered!

I have MacTerminal on the 512Ke but so far all I can get it to do is make a bunch of full stops come up on any terminal program on my MacBook Pro.

Jr. Pac · Sep 26, 2014

Trying to get my G3 Bondi online It works through Ethernet, however Safari doesn't render pages well. Firefox is better at rendering modern pages, but makes the computer realllllyyyy sloooow.
Any reccomendations for browser on 10.3?

bunnspecial · Sep 27, 2014

Jr. Pac said:
Trying to get my G3 Bondi online It works through Ethernet, however Safari doesn't render pages well. Firefox is better at rendering modern pages, but makes the computer realllllyyyy sloooow.
Any reccomendations for browser on 10.3?

If it were me, I'd do one of three things

1. Use Xpostfacto to install 10.4 so you can use Tenfourfox

2. Run Classilla in classic mode

3. Boot into OS 9 and run Classilla

I don't know of a good modern browser that will run directly in 10.3

Jr. Pac · Sep 28, 2014

bunnspecial said:
If it were me, I'd do one of three things

1. Use Xpostfacto to install 10.4 so you can use Tenfourfox

2. Run Classilla in classic mode

3. Boot into OS 9 and run Classilla

I don't know of a good modern browser that will run directly in 10.3

Alright, got Classic on. However the Classilla file in a .sit Stuffit format. Any idea how to use this? No clue how to extract it.

bunnspecial · Sep 28, 2014

I thought that OS 9 came with Stuffit already installed...

You should be able to download it, or if not if you boot the computer into OS 9 you can probably extract it directly there.

Jr. Pac · Sep 28, 2014

bunnspecial said:
I thought that OS 9 came with Stuffit already installed...

You should be able to download it, or if not if you boot the computer into OS 9 you can probably extract it directly there.

Just booted into 9.2, and it prompts:
"Macintosh Manager cannot automatically find any servers.

You need to locate the Macintosh Manager Server to use."

Click OK and I am prompted to try and connect with a server URL.... Obviously I have nothing to select so I press Cancel.

It then says:
"Because you did not select a Macintosh Manager Server, you cannot use Macintosh Manager at this time. If you want to go to the Finder, you must enter a Macintosh Manager administrator password on the next screen."

Pressing the only option, OK, asks me for a username and/or password. I have never entered any passwords into the Mac as far as I remember, so I'm stuck here. The only options are OK and Shut Down.

Finder is disabled in this mode so I can't boot back to 10.3.
So looks like I'm stuck?

EDIT: Feeling really dumb. It was supposed to be my main passcode on 10.3. I forgot I ever made one. Thanks guys, sorry to derail the thread.

Hrududu · Sep 29, 2014

Jr. Pac said:
Alright, got Classic on. However the Classilla file in a .sit Stuffit format. Any idea how to use this? No clue how to extract it.

Stuffit Expander is in the Internet Utilities folder located in Applications.

Jr. Pac · Sep 29, 2014

Thanks. I managed to download a version for 10.3 off of Oldapps. For some reason Classic didn't like it when I'd try to boot into it, but the environment ran fine.

Lord Blackadder · Oct 8, 2014

I recently acquired an SE/30 (with a SimasiMac failure, sadly), and once I get it working I'm definitely going to go surfing with it!

The oldest Mac I've ever surfed with was my IIci, which I got from a NASA auction in the mid 1990s. It had been running A/UX but came without a hard drive so I never got to play with Apple's other UNIX OS. I used it as my main machine running OS 7.5.5 till about 1999 when I bought my first new computer, a Rev. C iMac G3. The last time I fired that IIci up it still got by reasonably well with Netscape 2.02.

Before that, waaaaaay back in the day, I did surf with an Apple IIgs (this was probably 1991 or so, when you could count the number of WWW sites on the fingers of one hand

). Among the rows of Apple ][e machines our school computer lab had a single tricked out IIgs with a 1200bps modem and I sat amazed while loading tiny 16 color GIFs from NASA and the Smithsonian. And email!!!

Before that I visited bulletin boards on my father's Tandy TRS-80 with a 300bps modem. Now that is hipster (or just plain nerd).

PowerMac G4 MDD · Oct 8, 2014

Lord Blackadder said:
I recently acquired an SE/30 (with a SimasiMac failure, sadly), and once I get it working I'm definitely going to go surfing with it!

The oldest Mac I've ever surfed with was my IIci, which I got from a NASA auction in the mid 1990s. It had been running A/UX but came without a hard drive so I never got to play with Apple's other UNIX OS. I used it as my main machine running OS 7.5.5 till about 1999 when I bought my first new computer, a Rev. C iMac G3. The last time I fired that IIci up it still got by reasonably well with Netscape 2.02.

Before that, waaaaaay back in the day, I did surf with an Apple IIgs (this was probably 1991 or so, when you could count the number of WWW sites on the fingers of one hand ). Among the rows of Apple ][e machines our school computer lab had a single tricked out IIgs with a 1200bps modem and I sat amazed while loading tiny 16 color GIFs from NASA and the Smithsonian. And email!!!

Before that I visited bulletin boards on my father's Tandy TRS-80 with a 300bps modem. Now that is hipster (or just plain nerd).

Wow, that's awesome! What did you do with only a few WWW sites? xD It's rare to find people who have used the internet since the 'beginning', whether it be a local BBS or the World Wide Web. It would have been fun to visit bulletin boards... I was only born once the WWW started to take off/become more mainstream among consumers (1997).

Lord Blackadder · Oct 9, 2014

PowerMac G4 MDD said:
Wow, that's awesome! What did you do with only a few WWW sites?

It was really just a novelty at the time, most people used bulletin boards and text-based FTP for downloading. I've forgotten most of the skills but I used to go on using NCSA Mosaic and download photos of Lamborghinis or astronauts and so forth.

I also got my first email address around the same time with the Cleveland Freenet. Joining was free (as the name implies) and it gave access to news and downloads from the budding internet, all text-based, of course. But it ran great on the old 8 bit machines like the Apple ][ and TRS-80s. It only had so many phone lines though, so at peak times you got a busy signal and had to keep trying to get on. I miss the Freenet.

PowerMac G4 MDD · Oct 9, 2014

Lord Blackadder said:
It was really just a novelty at the time, most people used bulletin boards and text-based FTP for downloading. I've forgotten most of the skills but I used to go on using NCSA Mosaic and download photos of Lamborghinis or astronauts and so forth.

I also got my first email address around the same time with the Cleveland Freenet. Joining was free (as the name implies) and it gave access to news and downloads from the budding internet, all text-based, of course. But it ran great on the old 8 bit machines like the Apple ][ and TRS-80s. It only had so many phone lines though, so at peak times you got a busy signal and had to keep trying to get on. I miss the Freenet.

That's pretty cool; again, I wish I had been there to see it. By the way, were text-based things (such as Mosaic and Gopher) before the WWW or back when it was just local BB-systems? I understand that the WWW wasn't graphical when it came along, but are you talking about it when you mention Mosaic? I guess the question I have is: How separate were the means of getting onto a BBS vs. connecting to the WWW? From what I have learned, they are two very different things, but what's not as clear to me is how one would connect to early BB-systems versus connecting to the WWW. I do know of very early browsers, such as the ones I just mentioned, but were even the simplest text-based browsers around before the WWW? Or, am I over-thinking this and the WWW is simply the internet that is world-wide instead of local and more readily-available to consumers? (I DO see how a BBS would be more of a hobbyist's thing).

Lord Blackadder · Oct 10, 2014

I'm no expert, but NCSA Mosaic was was (and remains) a WWW browser used exclusively for surfing the early WWW. The internet already existed before the WWW, but was text-based.

Bulletin Boards were visited using a dialup modem and terminal emulation software (or an actual terminal, I once had a DEC VT220 myself and it was great for that). They were text-based though they could have a pretty sophisticated ASCII-graphic appearance in some cases. They were essentially internet forums with limited forms of file sharing, but isolated from the internet itself.

OS X's Terminal app is a terminal emulator and you should be able to go visit BBs with it, many are still around today and new ones are being created.

Anonymous Freak · Oct 10, 2014

There were other methods of navigating the internet before the invention of "the web". Gopher was developed at nearly the same time as http, and achieved higher usage pretty quickly. It was only a few years later that http really took off.

Many of the early web browsers could also browse gopher sites.

The big difference is that gopher is "text only", with little layout controls, so while it was perfect for text terminals (or dial-in to a Unix shell accounts,) http had the benefit of basic layout, even before inline images were introduced. HTTP 1.1's enhancements basically spelled the end for Gopher's dominance.

Before the time of "forums", there was usenet. The giant comment-board in the cloud.

grandM · Oct 10, 2014

and let's all agree it's better now
lol I do remember the taking off of the internet, waiting ages to download a pic like a curtain slowly opening :d
Still remembering that 56k6 modem and drawling over ISDN (128 kbit/s)

SlCKB0Y · Oct 11, 2014

The guy in this article would win this competition

http://gizmodo.com/you-can-actually-browse-the-web-on-a-27-year-old-mac-pl-1483649762

Lord Blackadder · Oct 12, 2014

Anonymous Freak said:
There were other methods of navigating the internet before the invention of "the web". Gopher was developed at nearly the same time as http, and achieved higher usage pretty quickly. It was only a few years later that http really took off.

Many of the early web browsers could also browse gopher sites.

The big difference is that gopher is "text only", with little layout controls, so while it was perfect for text terminals (or dial-in to a Unix shell accounts,) http had the benefit of basic layout, even before inline images were introduced. HTTP 1.1's enhancements basically spelled the end for Gopher's dominance.

Before the time of "forums", there was usenet. The giant comment-board in the cloud.

Ah, I remember gopher! I had a modem-less Apple IIe at home till 1994, so no surfing, but I used it as a student. For a time it was definitely more popular than HTTP, since it was designed for terminals.

HereBeMonsters · Oct 13, 2014

SlCKB0Y said:
The guy in this article would win this competition

http://gizmodo.com/you-can-actually-browse-the-web-on-a-27-year-old-mac-pl-1483649762

Love it.

840quadra · Oct 15, 2014

Almost like a car collector will dust of, and drive some of the cobwebs out of a classic vehicle, I tend to boot up and run a few computers on the WWW about once a year.

If you can find and bookmark the Mobile version of sites, and place them into your favorites, many of them will work okay with an older 68K mac, especially in browsers that you can disable CSS. You can also go back even further with text based browsers inside of linux loaded onto these older machines, however, that is likely not optimal

Quadra 840av
My MacRumors namesake is actually okay at this. While playing MP3 files (granted heavily compressed) I often type up a post for one of the sites I contribute to, and load up a browser to post it. With an old copy of iCab, and a few features disabled, it is capable of browsing and posting to MacRumors as well.

Macintosh LC
It is slow, crippled, but with old copies of Netscape, and iCab I can also browse MacRumors, however posting causes the system to crash. Images and CSS are disabled.

Macintosh LC575
I really want to put in a full 68040 processor, however it can load the front page okay, and crashes sometimes when posting (especially on big threads). I usually have Images and CSS disabled.

Lord Blackadder · Oct 22, 2014

840quadra said:
Macintosh LC575
I really want to put in a full 68040 processor, however it can load the front page okay, and crashes sometimes when posting (especially on big threads). I usually have Images and CSS disabled.

I once had a Performa 575. It was a victim of the Great Collection Downsizing.

Still have my Quadra 610 though, I'll bet it would chug along about the same as your LC575. Only 25Mhz but it's a "full" 68040.

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