Bill Degnan, you've done a great job on of presenting your installs of Win 3.11 aka Windows for Workgroups and video drivers on your 486 system, and providing access to your resources. I'm no Microsoft fan, but the history of public Internet access is worth preserving, and is reasonably "vintage" by year 2015-16. One resource your site links to, is a site at Yale University, with (what I presume is a forgotten) set of year 1995 instructions for establishing Internet access. They suggest several possible means including "old" Win 3.1 and WFW, but also "Winsock". I recall using a Winsock product as they describe, in the era probably under Win 85/98, to make a SLIP (serial TCP/IP) connection via dial-up modem, to a Linux commercial system which had Internet access. My first Web site was on that system, probably over my client side was a 16-bit Win98 set of installs. I don't recall the freeware product name, something-slip, seaslip, ??? Bill, Winsock was supported in various ways, by either shareware/freeware products, or commercial products. Do you have any interests in checking out Winsock type networking? Digging up some still-available product? As I've described it, it would be period-appropriate for PC's with no hard-network support but certainly serial line support. At the time of course that would be dial-up; but a direct serial connection to a local hosting system would be (incrementally) faster. I have a 486/Win 3.1 system I use to operate old-school hardware. I don't think I'd install Ethernet cards and WFW on it - it might break it. But installing a Winsock and some serial stuff is no risk. I'll add, you discussed some kind of networking of vintage systems as your VCF-East exhibit, as I recall. Related: five years ago, I worked the issue of TCP/IP support on 8-bit CP/M class systems. The radio amateurs (hams) developed packet radio in the 1980's which used X.25 protocols,and hardware "TNCs" (terminal network controllers) to do most of the networking, and software like KA9Q and KC85. But interest in reviving old 8-bit networking died out, once you could buy "TCP/IP on a chip" products for under $50. And now those products are under $10! But my notes include some SLIP discussion and cover some path to 8-bit computers "on the Internet". Herb Johnson -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net preservation of 1970's computing email: hjohnson AAT retrotechnology DOTT com alternate: herbjohnson ATT retrotechnology DOTT info
On Fri, Mar 4, 2016 at 11:16 AM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Bill Degnan, you've done a great job on of presenting your installs of Win 3.11 aka Windows for Workgroups and video drivers on your 486 system, and providing access to your resources. I'm no Microsoft fan, but the history of public Internet access is worth preserving, and is reasonably "vintage" by year 2015-16.
One resource your site links to, is a site at Yale University, with (what I presume is a forgotten) set of year 1995 instructions for establishing Internet access. They suggest several possible means including "old" Win 3.1 and WFW, but also "Winsock".
I recall using a Winsock product as they describe, in the era probably under Win 85/98, to make a SLIP (serial TCP/IP) connection via dial-up modem, to a Linux commercial system which had Internet access. My first Web site was on that system, probably over my client side was a 16-bit Win98 set of installs. I don't recall the freeware product name, something-slip, seaslip, ???
Bill, Winsock was supported in various ways, by either shareware/freeware products, or commercial products. Do you have any interests in checking out Winsock type networking? Digging up some still-available product?
As I've described it, it would be period-appropriate for PC's with no hard-network support but certainly serial line support. At the time of course that would be dial-up; but a direct serial connection to a local hosting system would be (incrementally) faster.
I have a 486/Win 3.1 system I use to operate old-school hardware. I don't think I'd install Ethernet cards and WFW on it - it might break it. But installing a Winsock and some serial stuff is no risk.
I'll add, you discussed some kind of networking of vintage systems as your VCF-East exhibit, as I recall.
Related: five years ago, I worked the issue of TCP/IP support on 8-bit CP/M class systems. The radio amateurs (hams) developed packet radio in the 1980's which used X.25 protocols,and hardware "TNCs" (terminal network controllers) to do most of the networking, and software like KA9Q and KC85.
But interest in reviving old 8-bit networking died out, once you could buy "TCP/IP on a chip" products for under $50. And now those products are under $10! But my notes include some SLIP discussion and cover some path to 8-bit computers "on the Internet".
Herb, Yes I do have experience with WinSock, in fact that's what I used back then with a modem set up on Win 3.1 on a home PC. Because I have a network available to me in my house now, something that would have been unheard-of back then, I took advantage of it and went with the TCP/IP direct connection method. Made less sense to use WinSock given lack of a modem. All that said, I have carefully saved the files I used back in the 3.11 days for WinSock use, including some old ISP install disks that installed Winsock setup as part of the setup process. I will post these onto my site so people can download them, when I get the chance soon to do so. I was really there in the very beginning and I remember having to roll my own modem AT commands, save them into to the Winsock process to initialize the modem before it used Winsock as a TCR program in memory. I did a lot with MEMMAKER to optimize RAM, etc. I fell back a few years yesterday and ran my PDP 8e for a few hours while I was working, in the background, to exercise the RK05 drives and processor. I used my 486 system as the terminal (ST240 9600 B serial port COM1). My plans for this 486 system is to serve as a bridge between the old and new worlds. Using Win 3.1 AND being able to run TCP/IP and serial comms is a great way bridge old vintage with post vintage. -- @ BillDeg: Web: vintagecomputer.net Twitter: @billdeg <https://twitter.com/billdeg> Youtube: @billdeg <https://www.youtube.com/user/billdeg> Unauthorized Bio <http://www.vintagecomputer.net/readme.cfm>
On 03/04/2016 12:20 PM, william degnan via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Herb, Yes I do have experience with WinSock, in fact that's what I used back then with a modem set up on Win 3.1 on a home PC. Because I have a network available to me in my house now, something that would have been unheard-of back then, I took advantage of it and went with the TCP/IP direct connection method. Made less sense to use WinSock given lack of a modem.
This brings back memories. AT&T Starlan (3B's, Windows WFW/3.11). Winsock, SLIP, PPP, Modems and something to do with Clarkson to load more than one Network stack. Since I did support for AT&T Starlan we tended to do the ridiculous to see what was possible. My home network had 3B1's, a beige box PC and an NAU (serial to Network interface). A few years later the 3B1's had died but I was loading up Linux on beige boxes (my 6386sx which I still have). I upgraded from 1BaseT (unofficial) to 10BaseT. But I still have plenty of splinters from the coax. I bet 6386sx still has the Realtek NE2000 clone in it. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
participants (3)
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Herb Johnson -
Neil Cherry -
william degnan