__ __ __ ___ / // /__ _____/ /__ ___ _ / _ \___ ___ __ / _ / _ `/ __/ '_/ / _ `/ / // / _ `/ // / /_//_/\_,_/\__/_/\_\ \_,_/ /____/\_,_/\_, / retro edition /___/First person that loads this with a 4004 gets a t-shirt
[cnlohr], the guy who made his own electron microscope and can manufacture glass PCBs at home, found an old green screen CRT while cleaning out a friend's place. He hooked it up to one of his glass PCB AVR microcontroller things and did the usual text terminal fare; ASCII Star Wars and using lynx to load up the retro site. It's only a 48-column display, but the retro edition is surprisingly readable. Very cool.
[Kyle] has a really cool box on his hands. It's a Compaq 486SX overclocked from 25MHz to 33MHz. 20 Megabytes of RAM, network card, and a Soundblaster 16 make this computer from 1993 a very respectable box for old DOS gaming. It can also browse the web with Arachne.
Here's a weird one: it's a Siemens interactive display originally used for a building management display. It has a 10 inch touch screen display at 640x480 resolution and runs Windows CE 5.0. After fiddling with some files, [Nick] managed to get the networking running on this machine and tried to load Google. Anyone who has played around with the class of machines we seen for retro submissions knows what happened next (nothing), but luckily [Nick] remembered Hackaday has a retro site. The rest is history.
Another old Mac submission, this time a Mac II. It was he first not-all-in-one mac, complete with a NuBus Ethernet card, MacTCP, Netscape 2.02, and a 68020 processor. Not bad for a computer that is coming up on it's 30th trip around the sun.
[Scott] got his Mac SE to load up the retro edition. This was a chore; after getting a serial connection from his SE to the outside world, [Scott] realized he didn't have a browser on his retro mac. 800k drives are a pain, it seems. He eventually got everything running in a terminal session, and the results are fantastic.
Here's another ultraportable from the depths of [Curtis]' basement. It's a Toshiba Libretto 100CT with a 100 MHz Pentium and 64 Megs of RAM. Here's what [Curtis] has to say about it: "Although it now has a 16bit 11Mbps wireless card (rescued from a Netgear MR314 - thus the severed pigtail), getting the drivers on the device was more challenging as I did not manage to scavenge the FDD also, leaving me with no way to get files on/off the device. I did, however, have a Cisco rollover cable, which was promptly plugged into the AUX port of the router and configured as an access server. A Hyperterminal telnet session later and the drivers are happily xmodeming along - the rest is history!"
[Eugenio] sent in four old laptops he managed to get on the Internet. First up is a Toshiba Libretto CT50 running Netscape Communicator 4. There's also a Sony Vaio Picturebook, an oldish iBook and a Powerbook 520, one of the last 68k Powerbooks.
This one is really cool: [Greg] has an old Powerbook Duo 2300c that unfortunately lost its screen. No worries, because the screen from a black-and-white Duo 230 fits neatly in its faster PowerPC kin. After plugging in a DuoDock adapter with built-in Ethernet, [Greg] was able to get the smallest Mac laptop until the Air on the Interwebs. Pics here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
It's not one of historical significance, but [Victor] got a Corel Netwinder to load this site. Built in the late-90s, the Netwinder ran an ARM processor with a hard drive, VGA output, sound, and dual (!) Ethernet. [Victor]'s hard drive has long since bitten its platter, so he's booting it off the network with an old Red Hat distro. Here's a pic.
Oh the glory days of the interwebs; back in 1999, we were downloading everything labled 'Metallica' from Napster out of spite, and downloading 700MB rips of [John Carpenter] movies and the Matrix. Yes, now we can download those same movies in a few minutes as compared to an entire weekend, but the siren inside the modem still calls to us, much like it did to [Glen Lashley]. [Glen] had an old, old Compaq Armada 1500c lying around loaded up with Windows 98, 32MB of RAM and an old Pentium II. He dialed into his ISP (yes, apparently you can still do that), and pulled up this retro site. It's not very old, but we're giving bonus points for the 56k modem.
If normal computers aren't your thing, how about some old-school PDAs? [Andrew Hull] had an old Psion 5mx lying around, and needed a project for his new Raspberry Pi. He set up his Pi as a wireless bridge and connected the Psion serial cable. Using PPPD, [Andrew] fired up the built-in browser and loaded up the retro site. Here's some pics: 1 and 2.
How about some PowerPC action? [rusbus] had an old Power Macintosh 6100 - the first PowerPC Macintosh - and pulled up this site with Internet Explorer 3.01 and an AAUI ethernet tranciever. Here's some pics: number one and number two. Nice job, [rusbus].
What do you do if your retro computer doesn't have a web browser? Well, you could do what [azog] did and write an HTML reader in BASIC. Yes, it's crazy.
[Giovanni] used an old and yellowed Apple IIc+, a VT100 terminal, and a macbook to load this up. The Apple IIc+ doesn't get enough love: 3.5" disks are awesome, and the integrated power supply makes it the ideal Apple II machine for today.
[leadacid] can't get enough of this retro site. He had an IBM RS/6000 running AIX lying around and pulled up this page. Pic 1 and 2. This beast of a machine uses a POWER2 processor running at 67 MHz and most likely cost tens of thousands of dollars in its prime.
Another OS/2 Warp submission! [Chris] had an HP Omnibook 800CT lying around and loaded up this site. Pentium 166MHz running Opera 5.
[Witek] got a Wyse thin client to load up this site. It only had a 300MHz Geode GX1 CPU, and 32MB of RAM. Usually, this thing boots Windows CE off a small Flash drive, but [Witek] put GRUB on the box and booted Debian Squeeze off a USB Flash drive. We have a little experience with these Wyse thin clients, and we assure you they're crappy enough to make the cut for a retro success.
[leadacid] sent in two more retro successes. First one is a Power Macintosh 8100/80, the high-end, first generation PowerPC Macintosh. We're a ambivilant over the PowerPC, but his Quadra 840AV is the bees knees. (arguably) the best 68k Mac. Nice job.
[Lunatic] loaded up this site on his Commodore 64 with a 64NIC. His retro submission is really cool: it's also going for the retro 1993-era HTML this site strives for. Oh why didn't I think of PETCII?
Here's a 486 running Trumped Winsock (pic 1 and 2). It's [Mark]'s old machine that he uses to play DOOM and a few other old games. Here's the specs: 486DX running at 133MHz, 16 MB of RAM, a Sound Blaster 16 ISA, 3Com ISA network card, and Windows 3.1 running Netscape 4.07.
[Santiago Crespo Castillo]'s Toshiba T1850 - a wonderful 386 machine with 4MB of RAM can load this page. Here's some pics: 1, 2.
[azog] didn't want to use Lynx, so he connected an Ethernet card to his C64. This was cool enough to make the Hackaday main edition.
[logik]'s old Commodore 64 successfully loaded this page with a little help from Ubuntu, a copy of Novaterm, a null modem cable and 64HDD. This is one of the best retro entries we've seen - [logik] threw together a serial level converter with an MAX232 chip (dead bug style gets extra points). Bravo.
Here's [Chris Osborn]'s (a.k.a. [@FozzTexx]) NeXT box loading up Hackaday
[Malvineous] put a DEC VT320 serial terminal from 1989 back into service as a serial console for a Linux machine. Logging in and running Links made it easy to access the web. Surprisingly, [Malvineous] reports the terminal had to be switched to VT100 compatibility mode to work correctly, as the VT320 is just a bit too advanced for Linux. Here's a pic.
[TheOneTrueStickman] sent in three pics (1, 2, 3) of an IBM Thinkpad 380D. Here's what he had to say: "I just dug out my IBM Thinkpad 380D - I think the oldest (complete) piece of PC kit I've got - and loaded up the retro page. I used links browser from the terminal and then from an xterm in X (fluxbox). It's running Debian Lenny, which tells you how long it's been since I booted this thing.
[leadacid] sent in four retro successes. The most interesting is an old Thinkpad T20 running OS/2 Warp 4.5 (remember that?) There's also IE6 on a Windows 2000 laptop, Windows 98 on a Thinkpad T20, and a Thinkpad i-Series 1400 running Firefox 2.0. Nice work.
[RetroAppleFanToday] used his Apple IIc as a terminal to connect to his mac. From there, running lynx and pulling up the retro site was a piece of cake. By the way, this one made the HaD front page!. Awesome job, [RetroAppleFan].
[Dylan Jesernik] loaded up this page with his awesome NEXT cube! (1, 2) He telnetted into a WRT54g, then sshed into his Macbook Air and used and used w3m to view this site. You know the first browser was written on a NEXT cube, right?
[moontear] loaded up the retro edition with IE5 running in a VM
