[vcf-midatlantic] www locks out older browsers

Jim Scheef js at sdf.org
Mon Nov 12 01:08:43 EST 2018


Hello all,

After playing with an eMac running OS X 10.3 several months back, I let it sit for a few months. Now it can no longer open most common websites. So what changed while the machine was not even plugged in? After some investigation I realized that main-stream sites have changed their SSL to require TLS 1.2, mostly because it actually works. The result is that vintage browsers return an error similar to “cannot establish secure connection”. Forcing SSL by refusing to connect on port 80, these sites have locked out many vintage machines. 

So, what can be done? The obvious solution is to find a modern browser that runs on your vintage OS. This may require an OS upgrade (OS X 10.4 should run on the eMac) which allows running TenFourFox, which seems to include TLS 1.2.

The irony that in the name of security, the machine used to invent the web (NeXT) may no longer be able to display it.

Any thoughts?

Jim



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