Hackaday Retro Submission: Browsing With An Apple IIc

We’ve had the retro edition of Hackaday up for about a week now, and already a few people have sent in a few neat builds that use an ancient computer to pull this page up. The latest comes from [RetroAppleFanToday] who used an Apple IIc to browse the Internet.

To load our humble retro edition, [RetroAppleFan] used a serial connection between the Apple and a Mac Mini to get a terminal running on the 30-year-old computer. From there, it was a simple matter of running lynx to browse the Internet.

There are a few more retro submissions cataloged on our retro successes page including a NEXT cube. If you have an old computer lying around that can pull up our retro site, don’t feel shy about sending it in; it’s pretty much guaranteed to get a mention.

As far as the development of the retro site is going, we’re posting 5 random stories every day. There’s a script to generate the front page every day, but if we get enough complaints or compliments we may just generate a new front page for every visitor.

25 thoughts on “Hackaday Retro Submission: Browsing With An Apple IIc

  1. God, I remember Lynx. Got free internet from the college but we had to login through their service and use Lynx. I used to browse video game sites for cheat codes. And I had to go to pages without frames, frames were bad news.

  2. The NeXT went through a lot more hoops than I expected to view the page. I remember their being browsers for the platform and surfing via one.

    It seems like if there is a browser for the platform you should use the browser for the platform instead of pretending to be a dumb serial terminal?

  3. Eh, connecting to a more modern PC via a serial terminal and using that PC’s text-based browser to open the page? That just sounds like cheating to me.. it’s not the same

    I was expecting him to use some kind of ethernet adapter for the Apple II and then connecting via an Apple II program (telnet?) to the webpage. But I guess that would be much more difficult

    1. Yeah, I’m not too keen on this either. If we’re allowing the old machines to be used as dumb terminals, then nearly anything with a display and a serial port could be used.

      Where’s the challenge in that?

    2. For that matter, if you’re using a //e, you can run a web browser right on the thing, using an ethernet card.

      I would submit that, but it’s not really a hack to use a commercially available ethernet card with a freely available, already written web browser, is it?

  4. bah, the IIc wasn’t connected via a closed circuit modem with a PPP channel to a linux machine as a router?

    good job tho!

    I’d have jumped on it, but I’m not into writing a html browser in BASIC :)

    I wont put away the IIe yet.

    1. If you can get your hands on one I’d highly recommend the uthernet card. I only have a IIc left (chucked my IIe collection before my last move, drat) so I’ll have to go the serial-PPP route. Still plan to do it eventually, but low priority for now.

      /me breaks out the Zaurus next :)

  5. Lynx works well enough on the regular hackaday site.
    I’m using it right now.

    If I had something sitting around that wasnt’ capable of running a modern OS, I’d gladly send you a picture of it loading your retro page.
    But since I don’t all I can do hope you keep it around since I like the idea.

  6. If we are going to allow the VMware entries – like Explorer 5, then we can do all kinds of stuff. Not really cricket without the actual old hardware. I wish i still had the old 386 I used Arachne in Linux to surf the web in the 90’s.

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