About a year ago, I tried to replace the motherboard in my computer, because I wanted to install a Socket A processor. I followed some instructions that I had printed out from the Internet, and proceeded to activate it. But, nothing happened, and I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I was going to go back online, but I realized that I no longer had access to the internet, because my computer didn't work. Then I remembered that I had an old 486 in my closet, that I hadn't used since 1997. But I didn't have the Internet back then, and I didn't think it would work. Nonetheless, I pulled it out, hooked it up, and looked at what I had. Apparently, it had an old 3Com Ethernet card, and I found some floppy disks for Internet Explorer 3.0. I installed it, and at first I couldn't access the web. Luckily, my router uses DHCP, and while looking through the networking options in Control Panel, I found DHCP support. I also still had my Windows 95 installation disks. After feeding it a couple of drivers from the Windows disks, and rebooting, I tried to access the web again. Google.com worked well, and most other sites only displayed text and hyper-links. It was a lot like using Lynx, but with limited graphics support. I was able to access more information, but I needed more specific help. Unfortunately, my browser could not understand most websites well enough to post on message board forums.

So I tried to search for another browser. Mozilla required at least Windows 98, and so did most others. But after several Google searches, and having to restart IE a few times, I found something called K-Meleon, that claimed to work with my hardware. I downloaded it, and it did indeed work, but it took seven minutes to render a web page. So I alternated between IE 3.0 for looking up information, and K-Meleon for posting on Message boards. In the meantime, I played a few games of Solitaire, and tried to look up things on Internet, which was still viewable, even if it barely worked. I also managed to find an old version of Office for $5.00 at the Half-Price bookstore. I was surprised at how many features I used in Office 2000 were available in this older version. I was able to create documents easily, which I found extremely helpful for organizing data and such.

Eventually, I got a reply, and I was told that I had probably attached the power supply wires incorrectly. I was given a link to a schematic for my motherboard, but it was in PDF format. I downloaded the file, and started searching for a PDF reader. I tried an old version of Reader that still worked on Windows 95, but the memory requirements were too high (I only had 8MB). So I found a DOS program that converted PDF to Postscript (this took about two hours), which I couldn't view either. But eventually I stumbled across something in an old DOS book that helped me. I was told that Postscript files could be printed out on a Postscript printer using the COPY command. I happened to know where an LPT-based Postscript printer was, and I hooked it up, and printed out the file. It hadn't converted very well, but the text and graphics were still readable, even if they weren't in the right order. I found I had simply attached the Power On wire to the wrong pins on the motherboard, because they were color-coded incorrectly. So I fixed the problem, and the new computer worked. Does this illustrate a good reason for keeping things at least marginally compatible with older machines?

hmm, yes?
why were you using a socket A Board?
i ran the internet on a 486 75Mhz with wfw 3.11 and ie5 at one stage.
for future reference im pretty sure seamonkey works on 95

*cringes* Oh, God, will it never stop? **** the Mozilla Foundation for giving the Mozilla prefix to Mozilla Firefox, making users think that Mozilla = Firefox, when it's actually the Mozilla Application Suite, at least before Mozilla became a brand...

SeaMonkey is supported on Windows 95 (my signature shows I use it ). Firefox has run on Windows 95 until version 1.5. The only issue was a crashing bookmarks import tool that appeared the first time you started it. In version 2.0 there's a bug that makes it crash on Windows 95.

K-Meleon is great for older computers. The interface is built directly with WINAPIs, instead of based on XUL, so it's fast. I wonder if pages would have rendered faster if had turned off the images. Or maybe it's because of the complicated table-based lay-outs that websites and message boards insist on using. I don't think you can turn off CSS (not sure if it would have made a big difference anyway).
I wonder if Foxit Reader would work better.

Absolutely. Everyone should have access to the web. Plus, if you don't have the latest CSS feature, websites should degrade nicely. In the end, you'll still be able to access the actual content.

It's also a nice example that the latest version of your offline program isn't necessarily better.

Well, my processor was only 33MHz, and I had only 8MB of memory. I doubt it would have worked. Frankly, I'm surprised it worked as well as it did, considering it was assembled in 1993, and I had stopped using it in 1998, when I got my newer computer.



To upgrade my computer. You see, in 2005, I was still using my AMD K6-2 at 350MHz, and 192MB of RAM (it originally had 64MB, but I upgraded it). This was the computer I had upgraded to in 1998 from my 486 mentioned above (but I had upgraded the RAM from the original 64MB). So I decided it was time to get an upgrade, because a new program I wanted to run was working rather slowly. So I purchased a Shuttle AN400N Ultra with Nforce2, an Athlon XP 3200+, 512MB of PC3200 RAM, and Windows XP, and tried to install it in my machine.

The reason I have a 500MHz Intel Pentium III with 128MB upstairs is because a friend was planning to throw it away when they upgraded, and I wanted to have a backup computer in case I ever had trouble with upgrading again.

I don't upgrade often, though. Here's my pattern of upgrading:

33MHz 486DX with 8MB memory: 1993-1998
350MHz AMD K6-2 with 64MB memory: 1998-2005
2200MHz AMD Athlon XP 3200+ with 512MB memory: 2005-
Also, you might have noticed a little pattern in how I purchase machines with regards to memory:

8x8=64
64x8=512
512x8=4096

This represents the original memory of every computer I have purchased. This also means that my next computer (which I'll probably purchase in 2010 or 2012) will have 4GB of memory. The one after that, in 2018, 32GB.

about 2 years ago I I was board and decided to try to get my old 386 on the internet. It is a 386 with 4 mb of ram and 100 mb hard drive. I think 25mhz. Loaded MS-Dos 6.2, set up my old network card, and loaded a dos based web browser. I believe it is called Archane and is still being activly developed to some extent. Although some websites did not work browsing speed was much better than I expected. Most pages loaded in less than a minute.

Other Comments:
I use K-Meleon as my default web browse in both windows 98 and XP.
As someone mentioned FoxitReader would have probably been a better choose for a pdf reader. I am pretter sure it still supports windows 95 and is much faster than adobe acrlobat..

I know, I was only pointing out that it was compatible.

...What?

Arachne?

do you mean lynx

Yep that is it.
I think this is the home page:
http://home.arachne.cz/

That page hasn't been updated in several years. I don't know why it was left up. More recent versions of Arachne are here:

http://www.cisnet.com/glennmcc/arachne/

Sorry about that. It was the fist thing that came up in google.