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IRC on Vintage Hardware

IRC on my Apple IIe. This is a daily use machine, mainly used for BBSing now as opposed to IRC. Here it is tied via serial link to my iMac running irssi. (For BBSing I have a WiFi232 module on the serial port, tying it to the LAN.)

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bp
 
It's an older image that I took, but here is my PDP-11/73 on IRC, using a TeleVideo 955 terminal.

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Edit: This is using 2.11 BSD's networking stack. Not some cheaty serial->telnet bridge :p
 


Interactive UNIX 4.1a i386. System is an Intel Express EISA chassis with Pentium 90 CPU board, DPT 2122 SCSI board, and WD8013 Ethernet board. Bit of a cheat, I started an xterm on a different machine and just set the DISPLAY variable to point it at the Interactive system :) Haven't built a native client yet, there's source already on the machine, but the build tools are missing or in a weird place.
 
Behold, IRCjr on the humble PS/2 Model 25 ...

PS2_Model_25_IRCjr.jpg


This PS/2 Model 25 features an 8086 running at 8Mhz, 640KB of RAM, a 720KB diskette drive, a color monitor, and a 20MB hard drive. Networking is provided by a 3Com 3C503 ISA card.

Yes, the keyboard is twice as wide as the machine ...
 
IRCjr on the mighty Tandy 1000 SUX:

irc.jpg

(It's actually a Tandy 1000 HX motherboard in a case made out of the linen drawer from an old dropside crib and a keyboard scavenged from a dead Wyse terminal. 7.16mhz V20, 640k+96k upper memory, DOS 6.22 running off a 2GB SD in a 44 pin PATA adapter; RAM and 8-bit XT-CF interfaces are homebrew boards I made myself. Networking via an RTL 8019 in an ISA slot adapter, also homebrew. CGA color video display courtesy of a very beat up Commodore 1084.)
 
mbbrutman said:
Yes, the keyboard is twice as wide as the machine ...
Click to expand...

These and EquQuest series machines were the vast majority of computer lab/school machines in the district I was in, always paired with a Model M Space Saver. I think that's why Space Savers aren't (or weren't) rare back home -- every mom n pop computer store seemed to have them, they showed up at flea markets and yard sales, etc.
 
Apparently I never posted these, IRC on AT&T color serial terminal:



Appears to be connected to my SPARCstation 10 running NetBSD. Pretty good display even at 132 columns:



I'm used to color of the era being kinda not great even at 80 columns :)
 
Tadpole SPARCbook 3:



After getting a dump of its intact SunOS 4.1.3 install (with the Tadpole goodies!) I of course built ircII:



`convert snapshot.rs snapshot.png` still works fine. ImageMagick to the rescue!
 
irssi under tmux on OpenBSD, but the X server is MacX 2 on Mac OS 8.1 on a Power Mac 6100/66 (the one from the IRCLE screenshot above):

 
Reflection X running under Windows 95 on a Socket 5 Pentium machine:



The X server is running on Windows 95, but the xterm and IRC are running on a CompactPCI Sun UltraSPARC IIi machine (basiclly a Netra T1 in a weird enclosure) running OpenBSD, down in the equipment rack.
 
Quadra 700 running SSW 7 and MacIP, with MacX 1:



This is the usual "xterm is running on another machine" trick. This Quadra has a Radius Pivot monochrome display, it's interesting to see some of the stuff in screenshots is still color!
 
Chatzilla from Mozilla 1.7.19 on Windows 98SE:



Machine is an IBM ThinkPad T22. I'd been setting it up to see if it would be any good for playing UT99...turns out, as it was then, so it is now :p
 
Right now I 'cheat' IRC by having a script on a local BBS instance which runs IRC. I can use a WiModem or whatnot to connect to the BBS, and launch IRC from there. I do this for my RC2014 and some old mac/apple stuff too.
 
IRCjr and the mTCP stack (23-03-31) running on a Zenith EazyPC with a Xircom parallel ethernet adapter and dual floppies (one for DOS and drivers, the other for the TCP stack and applications)

IMG_5757.JPG
 
I'm running into some issues trying to get onto IRC with my Commodore 128 or Apple IIGS.

I'm using DesTerm v3.02 on my C128, and ANSITERM on my IIGS. I am connected to a Raspberry Pi running the latest Pi OS (bullseye). More specifically, I am using two different zimodem-based wifi modem emulators to telnet into the raspberry pi - they are not directly connected to a serial port on the pi.

VT100 emulation seem to run OK - I have both terminal programs setup for vt100, and I can run "top" on the pi for example and its redrawing the screen properly. But on either system when I run ircii I just get a cursor going crazy in the top left corner of the screen - jumping down one line and then back up one line. If I use terminal on macOS to connect to the pi then ircii works fine. I've tried different baud rates. Disabling the split screen in ircii with the "-d" CLI option also works on the C128 and IIGS, but that poses other usability challenges.
 
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I'm not sure why "ircii" won't work, but "irssi" works beatifully! I couldn't even get ircii to work on my mac mini running minicom version 2.9 connected to my WiFi RETROMODEM V3 - same thing, the cursor just goes up/down one line in the top left of screen endlessly. But "irssi" works on whatever environment I've tried so far!

Below is "irssi" running on both my IIGS via ANSIterm and my C128 running DesTerm

On my IIGS I have a WiFi RETROMODEM V3 that I use to connect to Raspberry Pi where "irssi" is being run.
On my C128 I have a Link232-Wifi cartridge, which is a combination Swiftlink cartridge and WiFi modem. I then "dial" into the Pi same as IIGS.
Both modems use variants of the Zimodem firmware.

Back in the day I primarily used my C128 as a terminal to dial into a local Freenet system, an m88k machine running SysV, and some Ultrix hosts I had access to . From there I could explore the early internet! A lot of time spent on email, IRC, gopher, MUDs, Usenet all from my C128.


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