(Mostly) Working Browser For W9x

[OldbieOne]

Caution: Always keep in mind that there are elevated security risks involved
in taking any vintage machine online, so please do not use a vintage machine
for personal business, banking, etc.

The following browser supports TLS 1.2 and will allow a vintage W9x PC to
connect to most modern websites (for now) until TLS 1.3 is forced.

http://kmeleonbrowser.org/wiki/InstallerForWindows98


--
OldbieOne

The One Who Tells It Like It Is (TM)
Brought to you by RetroPC w/Windows v4.0.950B

[Grant Taylor]

On 7/12/22 1:35 PM, OldbieOne wrote:
> Caution: Always keep in mind that there are elevated security risks
> involved in taking any vintage machine online, so please do not use
> a vintage machine for personal business, banking, etc.

Good and accurate reminder.

> The following browser supports TLS 1.2 and will allow a vintage W9x PC
> to connect to most modern websites (for now) until TLS 1.3 is forced.
>
> http://kmeleonbrowser.org/wiki/InstallerForWindows98

I've gone a different route. I have a local Squid caching proxy that
does SSL / TLS bump-in-the-wire SSL/TLS decryption. So it will quite
happily talk to the older SSL / TLS clients and speak newer /
contemporary TLS 1.2 ~ 1.3 to sites.

This also allows me to filter / cache traffic that's otherwise encrypted.

All I need to do on the retro system is install my Squid server's TLS
public root certificate so that software trusts what Squid does.

Admittedly, the Internet is starting to change enough that really old
web browsers are not able to handle the newer web technologies like AJAX
(XML HTTP Requests) and contemporary CSS.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

[OldbieOne]

"Grant Taylor" <gta...@tnetconsulting.net> wrote in message
news:takg1l$vc2$1...@tncsrv09.home.tnetconsulting.net...

> On 7/12/22 1:35 PM, OldbieOne wrote:
> > Caution: Always keep in mind that there are elevated security risks
> > involved in taking any vintage machine online, so please do not use
> > a vintage machine for personal business, banking, etc.
>
> Good and accurate reminder.
>
> > The following browser supports TLS 1.2 and will allow a vintage W9x PC
> > to connect to most modern websites (for now) until TLS 1.3 is forced.
> >
> > http://kmeleonbrowser.org/wiki/InstallerForWindows98
>
> I've gone a different route. I have a local Squid caching proxy that
> does SSL / TLS bump-in-the-wire SSL/TLS decryption. So it will quite
> happily talk to the older SSL / TLS clients and speak newer /
> contemporary TLS 1.2 ~ 1.3 to sites.
>
> This also allows me to filter / cache traffic that's otherwise encrypted.

This is a great idea. Especially with the ability to filter content before
it hits the machine.

> All I need to do on the retro system is install my Squid server's TLS
> public root certificate so that software trusts what Squid does.
>
> Admittedly, the Internet is starting to change enough that really old
> web browsers are not able to handle the newer web technologies like AJAX
> (XML HTTP Requests) and contemporary CSS.

True. It's only a matter of time, the clock is definitely about to strike on
vintage computing and connectivity. So far I've managed to take a Sinclair
Spetrum 48, C64, and W9x platform "online," and every day the window of
opportunity is getting smaller. Less and less sites convert cleanly to plain
text after stripping CSS and active scripted components.

I've predominantly been using two websites that do a lot of the conversion
before a site gets presented to my desktop. The browser http://frogfind.com
and news site http://68k.news. My vintage machines are all DMZ'd with no
interconnectivity between them and anything else on my network, ans swapping
media is sometimes a chore, so I browse directly to other websites only for
a download link for drivers/game maps as needed, as it's more convenient to
download to the machine they're intended for than move the files with the
setup I have here.

I'm currently rethinking this strategy, especially with the knowledge that
you've had success with Squid, especially as I'm assuming that it should be
possible to set it up on a machine that has a VPN connection......

Thank you for the tip!

[Grant Taylor]

On 7/13/22 1:11 PM, OldbieOne wrote:
> This is a great idea. Especially with the ability to filter content
> before it hits the machine.

Yep. That's one of the reasons that I do it.

> True. It's only a matter of time, the clock is definitely about to
> strike on vintage computing and connectivity. So far I've managed
> to take a Sinclair Spetrum 48, C64, and W9x platform "online," and
> every day the window of opportunity is getting smaller. Less and less
> sites convert cleanly to plain text after stripping CSS and active
> scripted components.

I believe there are some fancy monkey in the middle type proxies that
will go out, fetch the page in question, and render it as a graphic
which is then served to the less capable client. It's an interesting
concept. It's definitely better than nothing.

> I've predominantly been using two websites that do a lot of the
> conversion before a site gets presented to my desktop. The browser
> http://frogfind.com and news site http://68k.news.

I'll have to check them out. Thank you for the pointer.

> My vintage machines are all DMZ'd with no interconnectivity between
> them and anything else on my network, ans swapping media is sometimes
> a chore, so I browse directly to other websites only for a download
> link for drivers/game maps as needed, as it's more convenient to
> download to the machine they're intended for than move the files with
> the setup I have here.

Yep.

I tend to use a local file server that's multi-homed in my main home
network as well as my lab network where the machines are connected. So
I can download the files on my workstation on my main home network and
save them to the common local server. Then I go over to the retro
system and retrieve the files off of the common local file server.

> I'm currently rethinking this strategy, especially with the knowledge
> that you've had success with Squid, especially as I'm assuming
> that it should be possible to set it up on a machine that has a VPN
> connection......

You can do a lot of different things.

Please feel free to ask if you would like any clarification or to
discuss ideas.

> Thank you for the tip!

You're welcome. :-)

[Sail Fisherman]

On Wed, 13 Jul 2022 13:37:08 -0600, Grant Taylor
<gta...@tnetconsulting.net> scrit:

> I believe there are some fancy monkey in the middle type proxies that
> will go out, fetch the page in question, and render it as a graphic
> which is then served to the less capable client. It's an interesting
> concept. It's definitely better than nothing.

That's a great idear!

[Nokiamies]

I personally prefer to use Retrozilla instead. My method is to use Frogfind
for searching results and view them on that and if some article fails to
render on it viewer (failed to load article error) I open it directly on
retrozilla

Some sites that wont view proper (for example background is white and text
is light grey due broken css, just use view>no style and it will show only
text which is better than unreadable text. This works for 98%
OldbieOne <m...@here.com> kirjoitti viestissä:takia5$d6u$1...@gioia.aioe.org...