Your Libretto is online! Now what?
You’re online! While many modern websites won’t work on browsers that run on Windows 98, there are many services and options to still enjoy the web!
The Old Net
The Old Net is a project by Richard Bettridge that restores vintage internet to vintage computers. It lets you use Archive.org’s Wayback Machine, search the archives, search Wikipedia, and use FrogFind. This is my homepage on my Libretto.
The Old Net Proxy
The Old Net Proxy is an http browser proxy that lets you type in the address you want to go to and be taken to that page as archived in the Wayback Machine. So you can just type in yahoo.com and be taken back to the glory days of Yahoo! I have Netscape installed and configured for this on my Libretto, so I don’t have to worry about changing proxies back and forth.
Another option I’ve found is protoweb.org, though I do not use it personally.
FrogFind
FrogFind was built by ActionRetro and is a basic HTML wrapper for DuckDuckGo. It converts the modern web search and pages to basic HTML for use on vintage PCs. It’s built for PCs that are much less powerful than the Libretto, but it’s super fast and good to find things quickly without having to mess around with proxies.
Browservice
Let’s say you’re sick of the boring old web. You want the new stuff! Browservice is an HTTP proxy that you can host locally on your Raspberry Pi or Windows machine that converts the modern web to a stream of images usable by your vintage PC. Basically takes an embedded version of Chrome and streams its viewport to your vintage PC.
Escargot.chat
Escargot lets you use MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger again! It supports almost every version of MSN Messenger, and supports many of the major functions. Chat like it’s 1999! AIM/ICQ versions are currently in the works, but for now, MSN works great! You can add me at kazy@escargot.chat
Bitlbee
Bitlbee is an IRC bridge that lets you link many chat clients through IRC. I currently use it for Twitter, and can tweet and reply to tweets from IRC! It has many other plugins, too, such as Slack and Signal.
A fun little trick is to connect to Bitlbee through Microsoft Chat and read Twitter as it was meant: Through Comic Chat!
Found any other fun things to do online with vintage computers? Let me know over on Twitter!