Old Computers and WWW

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Modern WWW on Old Computers

The WWW evolved a lot since the last Amiga and other vintage computers were produced and, for better or worst, CSS, JavaScript, and HTML5 are now de-facto standard for many Web sites. Also, many Web sites use SSL even without good reasons. Finally, a lot of Web sites are now Web applications, doing some kind of AJAX.

In these conditions, our vintage computers are a bit at a disadvantage... Although, for the Amigas, the famous and well-featured IBrowse receives again regular updates, it doesn't support CSS and has limited support for JavaScript.

But complements/alternatives exist! Beyond other Web browsers, like Links (and its v2.12 for Amiga), there are the possibility to interpose a proxy that convert modern Web sites into clickable images. This Web site explains very well these alternatives:

  • Web Rendering Proxy (WRP): to render modern Web sites as clickable images;
  • Squid: to perform TLS/SSL handshakes with modern Web sites from a browser with SSL;
  • Crypto Ancienne (Cryanc): to integrate TLS in pre-C99 code.

For our Amigas, WRP is really great. Install it on your favourite Raspberry PI and point your browser to it and you can access modern Web sites, albeit a bit slower... 

 

The last three changes:

Tygre - 2026-03-07 20:18:31  |  Tygre - 2026-03-07 20:17:38