• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Posting from a Vintage Computer?

Terry Yager said:
Some people just don't think about such matters as accessibility for those with disabilities when designing pages, writing software, etc. And of course, every time someone comes up with a solution to a problem, someone else finds a new way to bust the web for others less fortunate.
Click to expand...
No kidding. I don't even know anybody who relies on a screen reader, but for crying out loud, it does not take a lot of thinking and profound insight to understand why that's important for them!
 
commodorejohn said:
No kidding. I don't even know anybody who relies on a screen reader, but for crying out loud, it does not take a lot of thinking and profound insight to understand why that's important for them!
Click to expand...

It has to do with the notion that everything has to be the latest & greatest. Whenever somebody comes up with a way to filter out some of the excess noise, there's a new version of the reader software that it doesn't apply to, and they usually update the old files automatically. Like I said tho, not sure how much things have improved in the past decade-or-so...

--T
 
Terry Yager said:
It has to do with the notion that everything has to be the latest & greatest. Whenever somebody comes up with a way to filter out some of the excess noise, there's a new version of the reader software that it doesn't apply to, and they usually update the old files automatically. Like I said tho, not sure how much things have improved in the past decade-or-so... --T
Click to expand...
A decade ago, I used to belong to a list called SurvPC which revolved around minimal computing and mostly DOS. Most of us were basically anti Windows. After I was there for a while I discovered that quite a few of the members were blind. I wonder how they're fairing now. Linux has some seemingly decent support, and MS probably has some good things too. Unfortunately most web developers are hell bent on screwing their audience.
 
Caluser2000 said:
It's still at Yahoo Groups but a shadow of it former self. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/survpc I liked Justin Webers Computing.net forums( now part of Tom's Hardware Site) and Uncreative Labs.
Click to expand...
The Yahoo Group is a little on the inactive side. November of 2008 had one message (spam) and the message before that was early 2005. :) Actually I spoke with one of the old members a couple of years ago and found out that there is a very small mailing list remaining, but it is not really on-topic. It was a great group though. I was the first one to post on it.

You keep mentioning Uncreative Labs. So, I just went to look and it looks great. I'll lurk there for a while to see.
 
You'll see some familiar handles there. There was a 386 only related site but that's disappeared. VCFs fills the void by a long chalk.
 
Ole Juul said:
A decade ago, I used to belong to a list called SurvPC which revolved around minimal computing and mostly DOS. Most of us were basically anti Windows. After I was there for a while I discovered that quite a few of the members were blind. I wonder how they're fairing now. Linux has some seemingly decent support, and MS probably has some good things too. Unfortunately most web developers are hell bent on screwing their audience.
Click to expand...

As you may recall, OJ, it was late '99, early 2000 when I was finally forced to switch to Windows full time, as well as begin paying for internet access for the first time ever. The only ISP available in my area then was Win only, and I never did figger out how to log in in under DOS/lynx. Damn Y2K! I still hate GUIs!!! Gimme a good ol' CLI anytime!

--T
 
One of the prime features of CSS2 was (to be) accessibility. CSS in general also meant to separate the content from the presentation. It's enough to "view source" on any given page on the net to see that it didn't. Whereas in early HTML days a web page was just text along with some formatting tags, now it's hard to FIND the content in the page source. CSS applied properly would leave that "old style" page alone, moving all the presentation issues to externally linked style sheets - these involve for instance the kind of media in CSS2 (screen, speech, tty, braille, handheld, print, tv...).

There's nothing stopping the maker from making a page that would display (and be usable) just fine on an old browser, on a television set, spoken through the speakers or printed on a printer. Apart from laziness of course (remember the "best viewed on XYZ browser version AB at resolution HV" banners on every single page on the World Wide Web a few years ago ?)
 
Unfortunately it's all part of this stupid new "every web page an application" model. Static content is passe, you lowbrow Neanderthals! If your page doesn't require at least a Core 2 and a JIT browser just to view and have transparent overlay "dialog boxes," (bonus points for whole-page "lightboxing" that chokes up the entire system on anything sub-Ion,) you should just go back to the Stone Age!
 
Posting from my previously-mentioned Packard Bell system (Pentium MMX @ 166MHz) running Win98se and the latest stable version of K-Meleon. It's definitely balky, but Javascript is the killer - with that off, it's actually usable. (It's also faster now that I've got the video drivers and it's running in 32-bit color and doesn't have to dither everything.)
 
I posted with Lynx on a DOS machine so I don't believe java is needed to post here. If it is possible to turn it off I suspect it would be possible to use some of those "in between" browsers.
 
Ole Juul said:
I posted with Lynx on a DOS machine so I don't believe java is needed to post here. If it is possible to turn it off I suspect it would be possible to use some of those "in between" browsers.
Click to expand...

This post is sent from Firefox 3.6 with NoScript activated and set to no-exceptions. If it goes through, then posting here with no javascript at all in the browser should be posible.
 
Pepinno said:
This post is sent from Firefox 3.6 with NoScript activated and set to no-exceptions. If it goes through, then posting here with no javascript at all in the browser should be posible.
Click to expand...

Thanks Pepinno, that clears that up. So, those who had problems with old browsers choking on java will probably be able to post if that can be turned off. I hope they take the time to retest.
 
Caluser2000 said:
You'll see some familiar handles there. There was a 386 only related site but that's disappeared. VCFs fills the void by a long chalk.
Click to expand...
I'll say. I put two posts on the Uncreative Labs site some time ago and it looks like that should cover postings there for about a week. :) I'm glad the VCF is here! Anyway, I just now posted over there with Lynx and it worked just fine. In fact their software is perfectly workable with a text browser. They're using phpBB which is one of the best.
 
Out of curiosity I just dragged out what was the old family PC for many years, Celery 400(one of the many varieties IBM 300GLs ;) )out of storage with running Win98 first edition and FF 2.0. Though not the quickest of machines it handled the task quite well. No errors at all like FF on Slackware.

I'd forgotten how well set I'd gotten this wee beasty. Wopping 128 megs of ram and 4 gig hdd. looks great using the lcd display. Having a look around on the hdd I've noticed there's a few linux files I must backup make backups of.

Thought I had an issue with the modem initially but got that sorted.
 
Last edited:
How's this? Warp 3.0 (non-connect) with no fixpacks, running with FreeTCP (TCPIP) and MS Lanman for OS/2 (NetBEUI).

...and Netscape 2.02 for OS/2.

I tried to get it going with OS/2 2.1, but too many Warp dependencies.

(I'm ashamed to say how long this took me).

System is an Toshiba Infinia 7230 (Intel AN430TX mobo, P1 233MHz) with ATI Rage II+ onboard video, 2GB CF card as "disk" and NE2000 NIC.
 
Last edited:
Chuck(G) said:
How's this? Warp 3.0 (non-connect) with no fixpacks, running with FreeTCP (TCPIP) and MS Lanman for OS/2 (NetBEUI).

...and Netscape 2.02 for OS/2.

I tried to get it going with OS/2 2.1, but too many Warp dependencies.

(I'm ashamed to say how long this took me).

System is an Toshiba Infinia 7230 (Intel AN430TX mobo, P1 233MHz) with ATI Rage II+ onboard video, 2GB CF card as "disk" and NE2000 NIC.
Click to expand...

Sounds great! I think such an "exotic" system deserves to share a screenshot of it in action... :D
 
Yes please.

Just the standard VGA Chuck or did you find a video suitable driver? I ended up using the SciTech SNAP driver on my Warp 4(FP14) setup. It works out better than resetting the video each time I put the hdd into another machine.

Of course with Warp 3 there's also the option of using the IAK(in the BonusPak that came bundled with v3) with updated dailer(available from Hobbes) using a proper modem if a serial port is available and you have POTS. Hmmm.................now there's a thought. After all it was "Your on-ramp to the information superhighway" ;)

Edit: Just been going through some old prints outs I've kept of networking with OS/2 from the past. The original page is still up discribing Chucks method http://www.jacco2.dds.nl/samba/lanman.html

It might be useful for others to give it a shot. The updated tcp/ip v2.0 files mentioned in the artical are in at Hobbes:- http://os2site.com/sw/upgrades/os2v2/index.html
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top