[HN Gopher] Browsing like it's 1994: Integrating a Mac SE, Image...
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Browsing like it's 1994: Integrating a Mac SE, ImageWriter II into
a modern LAN
Author : blakespot
Score : 94 points
Date : 2023-09-17 16:20 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (connor.zip)
(TXT) w3m dump (connor.zip)
| stockerta wrote:
| Is the site itself hosted on a Mac SE? It's slow as hell.
| prynhart wrote:
| Running perfectly fine for me - loads fast.
| johnklos wrote:
| You say that like it's a bad thing.
| stockerta wrote:
| Yes it is, if half the images load only partialy or not at
| all.
| johnklos wrote:
| Well, that's another matter. Slowness might come as a
| result of brokenness, but slowness by itself doesn't mean
| anything.
|
| I host a web site on an LC III+ which is often compiling
| and multiple tens of megabytes in to swap, so I know what
| slow looks like:
|
| http://elsie.zia.io/
|
| (the page is about an LC II, but currently it's hosted by
| an LC III+)
| blakespot wrote:
| It loads fast and fine for me in the DC area of the states.
| cptaffe wrote:
| I run it out of my closet. The blog is a small Go program
| deployed to a k8s cluster across a few ESXi VMs on an HP DL380
| G7, behind a pfSense router also running as a VM and using
| HAProxy for TLS offloading. My connection is 1gbps symmetric.
|
| With no cache on my local network, Chrome reports the page
| loads fully in ~500ms, using the "slow 3G connection"
| performance tab preset it takes ~4s.
|
| If you're nowhere near Little Rock, Arkansas; that might be the
| issue. I don't yet use a CDN and it always loads the same
| resolution image ("high" quality JPEG, ~200kb apiece).
| rodgerd wrote:
| I mean I'm in New Zealand and it's fine for me.
| Marvo99 wrote:
| It's not cloud hosted, I'll tell you that. LMAO
| spacecadet wrote:
| Nice write up! I also have a Mac SE, but I found an Asente
| Ethernet card and installed that. Then ran ethernet to a small
| custom pcb that bridges to wireless, all tucked inside the
| original case.
|
| PS, Then run this on a rpi or something, kudos to this repo for
| dialing back the entire web :) https://github.com/tghw/macproxy
| ralphc wrote:
| There's the PiSCSI which is a board that hooks in to a Pi's
| GPIO pins and acts like a SCSI interface to Macs. I have one
| and in addition to SCSI drives it can emulate a DynaTalk
| SCSI/Ethernet interface and use the Pi's wifi to talk to the
| Internet. I've done this with a Mac SE.
|
| It also will act like a AppleTalk file server using netatalk,
| it's an easy way to share files with other Macs on your local
| network.
| gattilorenz wrote:
| https://github.com/tenox7/wrp allows you to use modern js as
| well, as long as you can render images
| lolive wrote:
| Would this middleware be relevant with Links [1]? I mean,
| could we browse heavy-on-js websites such as gmail, facebook
| ? [1]: http://links.twibright.com/
| gattilorenz wrote:
| I don't have a first-hand account here, but it should work
| as long as you run Links in graphics mode (but which
| machine runs Links in graphic mode and not another more
| enjoyable browser like, say, Netscape?)
| blakespot wrote:
| I have a Mac Plus I've expanded to 4MB and expanded with a
| 512MB SCSI HD and an Asante SCSI-to-Ethernet adapter by which
| it's wired to my LAN. I use an FTP programs to browse my Mac
| Studio via a little FTP server I've got running on it, if I
| want to install something new on the Mac Plus. Works pretty
| well.
|
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/blakespot/albums/7215760433593...
|
| I also have an Imagewriter II hooked to my Apple IIgs, but I
| did attach it to the Mac briefly for a test print.
| jdblair wrote:
| Localtalk was great, RS-422 is a low-cost long-distance serial
| transport, and Apple took advantage of that to build networking
| into the Macintosh. Our computer lab in high school used Farallon
| PhoneNET transceivers, which made it easy to daisy chain
| computers using low-cost Category 1 RJ-11 phone wiring.
|
| In college (Miami University), our computer lab also used
| PhoneNET (it really simplified wiring) combined with a Cayman
| Gatorbox to bridge to the campus TCP/IP backbone. By modern
| standards, painfully slow, but in 1992 the whole university was
| connected over a single 56K uplink to Columbus, so we hardly
| noticed.
|
| I have fond memories of playing Spectre with networked opponents
| over LocalTalk.
|
| To get online from our dorm rooms or offcampus, the only option
| was dial-up to the university phonebank, a 2400 baud terminal.
| Using the LocalTalk connection from a lab was much more
| responsive.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| > I have fond memories of playing Spectre with networked
| opponents over LocalTalk.
|
| I was in a gifted programme in primary school in the early
| 1990s. The teachers running it weren't very computer-literate
| and expected the Macs in the classroom to only be used as a
| support for whatever non-computer-related intellectual
| activities. I got sent out of the programme back to the non-
| gifted classes for setting up networked Spectre and Bolo. They
| saw it as time-wasting gaming, but what fascinated me was that
| computers could be networked. I think that if I had been left
| to explore, I would have eventually been on the path to a
| computer science or IT education (and a much better salary).
| rodgerd wrote:
| > Localtalk was great
|
| Over the other side of the Atlantic, Acorn had an example of
| parallel evolution in the form of Econet, which used the same
| serial protocol, but over bigger connectors (the same 5 pin DIN
| that you see used in DMX networks and MIDI interfaces); as with
| AppleTalk the goal was simplicity.
| jdblair wrote:
| A few links to references in the above post:
|
| PhoneNet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhoneNET
|
| GatorBox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GatorBox
|
| Spectre:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(1991_video_game)
| retrac wrote:
| It was always some version of Phonenet (Localtalk over RJ-11
| phone cabling) in my experience; I don't think I ever saw real
| Apple Localtalk hardware!
|
| The Appletalk protocols were excellent for small networks. It
| was truly plug-and-play. From the late 1980s, if there was more
| than one Mac in the same building, they were probably networked
| together. It really was as easy as connecting a cable between
| them. They would auto-configure, and off you went, sharing
| files or playing multi-user games. This was the same era of
| recompiling UNIX kernels to tweak NFS buffer parameters, and
| when the DOS world was mired in a nightmare of TSR packet
| drivers and Netware servers. Very ahead of its time. I do
| remember the impression however, that the protocols did not
| scale well beyond a small LAN.
| spitfire wrote:
| This is something worth looking into.What would a modern
| system built in 2023 with auto-configured everything look
| like?
|
| I don't mean take Linux with some added magic - that's MacOS.
| I mean a full modern distributed auto-configured, plug'n'play
| system. Sort of a modern AS/400 meets Macintosh.
| blakespot wrote:
| I had an Apple IIgs and a PowerMac G5 across the room from each
| other (still have the GS, but in the G5's spot sits a Mac
| Studio, now). To get files from the net onto the IIgs, I
| attached a Keyspan USB to serial adapter to the Mac, with the
| Mac-style miniDIN RS-422 connectors, and connected the GS to
| the Mac's serial port via RJ-11 using phoneNet adapters on each
| end. Worked great for filesharing to the GS. (I've got an
| ethernet card in the IIgs now, so I just FTP to the Mac (or
| wherever) to get files I want.)
| johnklos wrote:
| This is awesome. I still keep around an ImageWriter II I found in
| a dumpster two decades ago because they're incredibly reliable
| and will print no matter what. Ribbons are plentiful and cheap,
| the printer doesn't care about the kind of paper, and even
| detailed QR codes and barcodes work fine if you blow them up a
| bit.
|
| But what's better than a printer that can work with almost any
| computer made in the last four decades?
|
| I just recently got a LocalTalk card for my ImageWriter II, and
| between this article and a recent one about custom ROMs for Macs
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37471321), I'm considering
| having a dedicated m68k machine that can bridge AppleTalk on
| ethernet with LocalTalk.
|
| Good article!
| trimbo wrote:
| > I attempted to use Netscape Navigator and iCab based on the
| list from here to no avail, Netscape Navigator crashed and iCab
| reported that it didn't have enough memory
|
| Well the SE is like 1986 technology that predates the web. NCSA
| Mosaic came out in 1993.
|
| I can't find the min spec for Mac Mosaic 1.x other than "System
| 7" but you could give it a try. Even Mosaic would have been
| mostly targeting Macs in wide deployment at the time. Those would
| be more like Mac II, Centris and Quadra machines with 68030s or
| 68040s with more RAM and built-in HDDs.
|
| Fun project!
| cptaffe wrote:
| Thanks for the advice. I found a copy of NCSA Mosaic 1.0.3 and
| it works on the Macintosh SE running System 7! The next
| version, Mosaic 2.0.1, needs 5MB of free memory. Mosaic does a
| better job handling larger pages like this blog post, and even
| chews through the inline SVG diagrams and renders just the
| text.
|
| My only complaint is that Mosaic uses the serif default font
| we're all used to, instead of the sans-serif default used by
| MacWeb, which makes it a little harder to read at such a low
| resolution.
|
| Added a section on it to the bottom of the article :)
| eschneider wrote:
| Without a doubt, Microsoft Word for Mac v5.1 is the best version
| of word, barn none.
| rwmj wrote:
| MS Word 6 for Windows was a bit of a sweet spot. Enough
| features for a word processor without any extra fluff.
| blakespot wrote:
| I didn't use a Windows PC for very long at home, but I did
| from 1994 to 1998, and I had Word 6 during that time. It was
| pretty nice.
|
| I've certainly use a number of more basic word processors in
| my time. :-)
|
| https://bytecellar.com/2016/06/05/a-look-back-at-three-
| decad...
| intvocoder wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| blakespot wrote:
| This was the first domain I'd ever seen with a .zip extension
| -- I didn't know it was on offer.
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(page generated 2023-09-17 23:00 UTC)