Australian PC World - Cruise the I-Way in your old computer

Cruise the I-Way in your old computer

Tip
Can you access the Internet with the old 286 DOS clunker in your basement? Yes, you can get onto the Internet with any computer that you can plug a modem into.
If you just want to send e-mail over the Internet (face it, that's all many people do), get yourself an old-fashioned communications program like Procomm Plus, plug a modem into the phone jack, and you can tete-a-tete with anyone on the Internet in minutes. Make the link by signing up with an Internet service provider or a commercial service like CompuServe that lets you dial in with a general communications program.
Whether you're able to access the splashy graphics of the World Wide Web depends on your computer's vintage -- and how much fiddling you're willing to do. But even if your computer isn't new enough to give you Internet graphics and sound, you have many ways to search for information and retrieve it with that old PC. Here's what you can do with some venerable hardware and software.
386 with Windows. To view the Web in Technicolor, you need at least a 386 PC with 4Mb of memory and a VGA monitor. It should be running Windows 3.1 in Enhanced mode. Ideally, you should have at least a 14.4Kbit/sec modem -- otherwise graphics downloads will creep. These are the minimum requirements for using a Web browser like Mosaic or Netscape, and for tapping into the Net through some online services. (Tip: If you have a 386 or 286 PC, give it a 16550x UART chip if it doesn't have one already. Either buy the chip itself and slip it into the socket on the motherboard, or purchase a high-speed serial card. This will speed up your communications significantly.)
386 without Windows. Even without Windows, you can get Web graphics on your DOS 386 PC, but not as many as if you were running Windows, and they don't appear as rapidly. You need a DOS-based Web browser; several are available as shareware and freeware.

With Minuet shareware browser, even an old 386 computer without Windows can get onto the Web

The popular $US50 shareware browser Minuet from the University of Minnesota is an integrated Internet package for older computers. It requires at least 512K of memory, DOS 2.1, and a hard disk. Its Web browser is text based but can display GIFs and JPEGs on a 386 PC with VGA or better graphics. You can't, however, click on the images and link to other pages. Minuet also offers e-mail, Gopher, telnet, FTP, and Usenet news. Its default is a SLIP connection; these days, most Internet services use PPP connections. You can configure Minuet to run on a PPP connection, but not without glitches. Check the following Minuet distribution sites (but note that not all of them work regularly): http://www.cesnet.cz/pub/gopher/minnesota/minuet/, or ftp://minuet.micro.umn.edu/pub/minuet/latest/minuarc.exe, or http://www.cren.net/.www/minuet/overview.html.
286 or 8086. The text-based Web browser DOSLynx works on computers as old as 8086s with 512K of RAM, DOS 3.0 or later, and a monochrome monitor. You can download this freeware from http://lynx.browser.org/. It works with both SLIP and PPP connections, but you need to download the appropriate driver for the type of connection you have (ftp://ftp2.cc.ukans.edu/pub/WWW/DosLynx/support/). You must also download a dialler or use a terminal program to call your Internet service, and you have to learn the commands to get into SLIP or PPP mode. After that you exit the dialling program, load the SLIP or PPP driver, and fire up DOSLynx.
The $US35 shareware program Net-Tamer (http://people.delphi.com/davidcolston/) automates access to the Web from PCs as old as a 286 XT with a Hercules graphics card. It offers e-mail, FTP, telnet, and a Web browser. Net-Tamer displays graphics only on a 386 machine or better, and it supports only PPP connections.
Other Internet utilities such as mail and FTP programs are available in DOS flavours for older PCs. To find them and to get more information about accessing the Net with a clunker, head to The DOS User's Guide to the Internet (http://www.palms.4kz.com.au/dos.html), run by Nigel Gorry in Queensland.
Finally, consider tapping into the Net via a UNIX shell account with an Internet service. Dial your Internet service with an old-fashioned communications program like Procomm Plus, and log in just as you would to a computer bulletin board. Once the connection is made, you type in Internet commands to download files from other computers via FTP, travel to other computers via telnet, and retrieve e-mail and read Usenet messages. This is the way computer users surfed the Net in the years before Web browsers. In fact, this is the way many Internet old-timers still cruise the Web, insisting that the browser graphics are just eye candy and that these old-fashioned connections are much faster than working through the latest Web browsers anyhow.
- Judy Heim

Category: Internet
Issue: Jun 1997
Pages: 180