• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

web-surfing on windows 3.1: Any good winsocks?

C

carangil

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 3, 2009
Messages
285
Location
Oakland, CA
Last night I got my newly build 486 system out on the web. I used trumpet Winsock on windows 3.1 and Netscape 4.07. I 'dialed' PPP over to my linux box, which ran pppd. I had a BD9 serial extension cable, and quick-hacked together a 3-wire null modem adapter.

Works great!

Except: I have the trial version of Trumpet! OOPS. It will expire soon.

So... here's my question... Anyone know of a good, free (or non-cripled shareware) winsock implementation for Win 3.1x? I don't need ethernet, I'm happy living with PPP; I can crank it up to 112500, which is way better than you would have gotten with a modem back then...

I tried Internet Explorer 5 for Windows 3.1... It won't recognize my null-modem as an actual modem.
 
eek... well the first problem is that you're not using an ethernet card. get one! for 16-bit ISA, i prefer the 3Com 3C509-TPB.
 
Mike Chambers said:
eek... well the first problem is that you're not using an ethernet card. get one! for 16-bit ISA, i prefer the 3Com 3C509-TPB.
Click to expand...

I have a 286 which I'd like to get online. Running DOS 5 or 6.22 (I forget) and Win3.1 (WfW 3.11 needs a 386). Rather than make my own thread I figured I'd try to keep the relevant info in this thread (it's all closely related in the end), could you possibly point me in the right direction? I'm sure the advice to me will end up helping OP if/when they get an ethernet card.

Thanks
 
Actually, I am posting my reply from the 486 :) Vintage
internet! I am pleasantly surprised that this works well
without Javascript enabled. It's been a long time since
I've surfed around with Netscape.

Anyways, I have been considering getting an Ethernet card.
Setting up ppp to work without a response from a real
modem, and without proper handshaking was a little bit of
a challenge.

Even though I have bumped up the baud rate, I guess a bit of
CPU is being tied up doing the PPP protocol over serial;
ethernet should be much more effecient. I'll look into
getting an ISA ethernet card. I already have a VLB video
card in the mail.
 
Back in the mists of time, I used to be a reseller of Trumpet Winsock, so I almost certainly have a copy *somewhere* that won't expire. Somewhere. On a floppy. Do I have a drive? But if you're desperate, I'll rummage!

Alternatively, have a look at KA9Q, a DOS TCP/IP solution that should run on quite primitive stuff. Blimey, it's a long time since I've had to think about these things!
 
I don't find this all that odd. My first internet experience was with a 486/66 running Dos 6.22 with Win 3.11 and a 14.4 modem. That was my first access to eBay. I would not like to try a 14.4 modem on eBay now.

I would think the ultimate challange here would be to get an XT-10mhz to access craigs list or even this forum !



carangil said:
Actually, I am posting my reply from the 486 :) Vintage
internet! I am pleasantly surprised that this works well
without Javascript enabled. It's been a long time since
I've surfed around with Netscape.

Anyways, I have been considering getting an Ethernet card.
Setting up ppp to work without a response from a real
modem, and without proper handshaking was a little bit of
a challenge.

Even though I have bumped up the baud rate, I guess a bit of
CPU is being tied up doing the PPP protocol over serial;
ethernet should be much more effecient. I'll look into
getting an ISA ethernet card. I already have a VLB video
card in the mail.
Click to expand...
 
I almost certainly have a copy *somewhere* that won't expire.

Yes please look,there are more than a few of us who would like it.
cgrape2
 
ZOBEX said:
I don't find this all that odd. My first internet experience was with a 486/66 running Dos 6.22 with Win 3.11 and a 14.4 modem. That was my first access to eBay. I would not like to try a 14.4 modem on eBay now.

I would think the ultimate challange here would be to get an XT-10mhz to access craigs list or even this forum !
Click to expand...

i've gotten on this forum from here on a 4.77 MHz machine, using the Arachne DOS browser. let's just say i won't ever bother again. it takes a good 3+ minutes just to display google.com's front page.

i've also gotten on here using bobcat, which is text-only. that was more much more reasonable.
 
Mike Chambers said:
i've gotten on this forum from here on a 4.77 MHz machine, using the Arachne DOS browser. let's just say i won't ever bother again. it takes a good 3+ minutes just to display google.com's front page.
Click to expand...

Yup, that's my experience too (though I did it with a Tandy 1000 RL; not much difference.) Using IRC on the Tandy was pretty OK though. I wonder -- would it be impossible to get better performance "somehow"? Like could a carefully assembler optimized browser with some really clever trickery parse the HTML much faster and lay it out in better fashion?
 
on a 486 DX2/66 w/ 64 MB of RAM i just installed Debian 3.0 "Woody" with KDE.

WOW IT IS FAST!!!!! much faster web browsing with konqueror than i even got with IE in NT 4.0...

486web.png





do not bother with any newer debian or any newer distro at all for that matter. stick with kernel 2.2 on a 486, trust me. plus it can double as a web/ftp server and even local network storage device if you toss a big drive in and install samba. ;)
 
Mike Chambers said:
on a 486 DX2/66 w/ 64 MB of RAM i just installed Debian 3.0 "Woody" with KDE.

WOW IT IS FAST!!!!! much faster web browsing with konqueror than i even got with IE in NT 4.0...


do not bother with any newer debian or any newer distro at all for that matter. stick with kernel 2.2 on a 486, trust me. plus it can double as a web/ftp server and even local network storage device if you toss a big drive in and install samba. ;)
Click to expand...


Nice! I will have to install that! I also have a 486DX2.
 
offensive_Jerk said:
Nice! I will have to install that! I also have a 486DX2.
Click to expand...

it runs REAL nice, imo this is the best way to go on a 486 unless you are interested in DOS gaming of course. in the past, i've used debian 3.1 "sarge" as well and that was speedy too. it starts getting pretty slow if you install 4.0 etch or newer. i've bumped it up to larger res and 16-bit color now too. nice and smexy.

486screenshot.png


:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D
 
AFAIK Dillo doesn't have any dependencies. I wonder if it would run in that environment. I use it on large news sites to cut down on the crap and speed up the show. It doesn't do CSS but does render text and pictures really well and really fast.
 
Ole Juul said:
AFAIK Dillo doesn't have any dependencies. I wonder if it would run in that environment. I use it on large news sites to cut down on the crap and speed up the show. It doesn't do CSS but does render text and pictures really well and really fast.
Click to expand...

I was running DSL on my 486, but didn't really like it. DSL comes with Dillo and Firefox. Dillo is MUCH faster than firefox, at least on DSL.
 
I've tried DSL before, and mostly liked it. I haven't tried running it on my 486 yet.

I have an update on my winsock-ness. I have installed an ethernet card, but am having trouble getting trumpet to recognize WINPKT. I think I may make the jump to WFW.

Is it correct to assume the IE does not come with TCP/IP for ethernet? I know it has a dialer w/ TCP/IP over PPP but when I select LAN as my connection method, it keeps trying to use trumpet.

I think I'll give a couple other TCP stacks a try, such as Chameleon. But, if it fails, I will fall back to WFW.

(I do have a win95 cd laying around that would work perfectly, but If I wanted the win95 feel, I'd just play around with my old win98 machine I have laying around. I want the 3.xx look.)
 
Not vintage, and not a PC, but I know very well the speed difference between Dillo and Firefox: I ran PS2 Linux for a while. Dillo was fast, whereas Firefox was almost unusable!
 
I thought I'd post an update:

I got the ethernet card working with Trumpet. I was using the wrong version if WINPKT (I thought there was only one WINPKT shim in existence; the first one I tried was not trumpet compatible).

It is much faster than ppp/serial!

The card I am using is the 3com 3c509b-tp.

I have a 286 which I'd like to get online. Running DOS 5 or 6.22 (I forget) and Win3.1
Click to expand...

Here is the good news for you: http://support.3com.com/infodeli/inotes/techtran/30fa_5ea.htm
It will work on a 286! I'm not sure if Trumpet (or any other winsock) will work well/at all on a 286, but at least you could get DOS stuff going.
I got my card from http://www.weirdstuff.com/cgi-bin/item/11035
I think on a 286 that would be the way to go, since serial PPP seems to eat up a lot of CPU.
 
Heh yeah I was going to suggest that Win 3.x is a horrific OS for web browsing. It just loves to crash. Some video drivers seem to have problems with WWW browsing and like to implode the whole OS. :)

That Linux setup looks quite nice though!
 
swaaye said:
Heh yeah I was going to suggest that Win 3.x is a horrific OS for web browsing. It just loves to crash. Some video drivers seem to have problems with WWW browsing and like to implode the whole OS. :) ...
Click to expand...

I was able to duplicate a particular Cirrus video card and driver under Windows 3.1 that would blue screen every time the customer went to our homepage (other pages I tried at the time were fine). The solution? Without changing anything she ended up not able to go onto our site.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top