On 10/4/2011 10:32 AM, [email protected] wrote:
<snip>
About the only thing you can do with a compact Mac running sys 6 or
early 7 is to use a modem and send text messages.
I have quite good luck using my Classic for telnet, IRC, and some very
basic web browsing.
AOL 2.7 is no longer availble or supported which allowed you to have
some decent emailing.
The last AOL available is AOL 4.0 and that runs on up to system 7.6
This wouldn't help for a non-AOL user as far as I know. The original
poster doesn't appear to have AOL and wouldn't likely want to sign up
for this :)
But there is NO BROWER THAT FUNCTIONS under 7.6 or in AOL 4.0
It is simply not workable. I have tried it.
I've had good luck under all forms of 7 (on a 68030/68040) with various
versions of Netscape and the last iCab for 68k. My favorite vintage Mac
surfing system is a LC475 overclocked to 33mhz with a very heavily
modified System 7.1 - I've added Open Transport and a lot of other
support libs that get most everything working. iCab is fairly functional
even today for stuff, Netscape with javascript and stylesheets off is
functional for news sites and the like.
This all isn't relevant to a Classic though as it won't run 7.6 or
software needing more than a 68000.
My current basic Mac that I use for EVERYTING BUT INTERNET is a Mac
7300/200 with an accerlator. Launch AOL 4.0 works and I can do E MAIL
but NO INTERNET. The browser does not work.
I haven't used AOL since the mid-80s; does AOL 4.0 provide a TCP/IP
connection in the 4.0 era or is it limited to the program's Walled
Garden? If it's TCP/IP there's no reason a browser shouldn't work.
Even ICAB in system 7.6 WILL NOT WORK.
I can relaunch from a different hard drive on my Mac 7300/200 with
accelerator (to 233mhz) that has system 8.1 installed on it and under
system 8.1 using ICAB I am able to passively access the internet, but
AGAIN - a lot of websites don't work well under Icab or even INet
explorer which I never use and don't remember which version that is on
my Mac (v. 4 or 5).
I've had pretty good luck browsing the web on PPC boxes - you might try
Classilla as it's a fairly modern Geckoish browser, though it needs 8.6.
Still not relevant as we're talking about a Classic here.
AND IT IS PAINFULLY SLOW. Accessingsome websites is a 1 hour affair
which I link to it and go away and com back an hour later.
Hmm, 1 hour sounds high, but I've had some complex sites take 5-10
minutes to load on my LC475 + iCab. Turning off Javascript is a huge
help to speed, and most of it will be broken anyway.
WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO BEAT YOURSELF ON THIS idea - it is NOT going to
work.
Sure it will. As to why, probably just for fun.
<snip>
Save yourself a lot of heartache. Get a modern Mac running LION or
just buy an old PC (they are all over the place for $100-$200) and run
XP on a DSL connection (verizon or whatever) and for now that is the
cheapets solution. Imagine - Mac Plus ran $2000 in late 80s.......you
can buy very decent Mac for well under $2000 today - see
http://store.apple.com/us
I really doubt someone asking about connecting a Classic is interested
in buying a new Mac. I could be wrong, but I think that's sort of the
idea, not buying new equipment.
Here's how I have mine. Originally, I did a Localtalk bridge using
IPNetRouter through an old Powerbook with both a serial and an Ethernet
connection on it. This worked great and I was even given an old,
no-longer-in-use serial code by a buddy of mine so I could use it
properly. Worked great and worked under System 6. Only caveat here is
they dropped support for MacIP in MacOS 9.1, so you'll need a properly
old version of Mac OS for the bridgebox if you go this route. It does
need a second Mac though, which I got tired of dealing with;.
Later on I got my SCSI->Ethernet adapter which lets me access the
network directly on the Classic. I was never able to get it to work
reliably under System 6, only 7.x, but most of the software I wanted to
run required 7 anyway so it wasn't a big deal. It's a Dayna Pocket
SCSI/Link and works well.
Software-wise is a little trickier. I use System 7.1 - it's a nice
compromise between the noticeably-heavier 7.5.5 and the faster System 6.
We're only dealing with 4 megs of RAM here, after all, so every little
bit counts.
Then there's internet software.
I have good luck using NCSA Telnet to connect to my various Linux boxes.
One thing is I've yet to find an SSH client compatible, but I kind of
feel like the encryption would choke things a bit. It already takes a
good 20-30 seconds on my 100mhz 486 to negotiate the connection, I'd
hate to think what an 8mhz 6800 would do.
MacLynx runs but is incredibly slow. I'm not sure why but it's actually
slower than some of the graphical clients. Maybe it's the display code
or whatever bridge they did between the text mode to Mac's graphics, but
it was just bad.
MacWeb is probably the best compromise - it works fairly well as these
sort of things go and was actually vaguely usable in a nostalgic sort of
way. I kept both version 1.00A3.2 and 2.0 around; 2.0 worked better for
rendering but some websites caused it to blow up. Does good though.
I wasn't able to use it for email as I use an IMAP mail server and don't
want to mess it up with POP access. I found a couple hints at IMAP mail
clients such as Mulberry that should run on a 68000 but never found a
copy. I'd still like to find a copy, but the maker seems to have
disappeared and every page I've found that talks about it is linking
back to the maker's site.
Anyway, don't expect to get much actual use out of it. You'll be able to
do some extremely limited web work, and stuff like email and chat. It's
more an exercise of having such an old computer talking to the internet
at large than actually being able to use it for real work.
Scott
If IRC is your think, old versions of Ircle work fine. It's functional,
IRC hasn't changed a lot since the Classic was new.
Anyway, there's a nice list of software that's compatible at
http://lowendmac.com/compact/68ksoftware.shtml . There's a lot of broken
links there but most of those should be easily Googleable. I've even had
no trouble multitasking NCSA Telnet, MacWeb, and such, though it does
freeze up now and then. I also installed MacInTalk just for funsies so I
could have the talking dialog boxes and such - it's fun demonstrating
such an old computer doing speech synthesis.
Scott
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