
Gmail on NT 3.51 with IE 1.5 via WRP - dotcomboom
https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2019/07/12/gmail-on-nt-3-51-with-ie1-5-via-wrp-4-1/
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quickthrower2
"A HTTP proxy server that allows to use historical and obsolete web browsers
on the modern web. It works by rendering the web page in to a GIF image with
ISMAP."

So it's a thin client terminal type of thing. I was really hoping it was done
by a ridiculous number of polyfills!

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dtech
IE 1.5's biggest feature was support for HTML tables. You'd have to use IE3 to
even be able to execute IE's precedessor to Javascript!

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quickthrower2
Wikipedia says IE2 has JS which really surprises me. I never tried IE2 - I got
online in 1994 and IIRC I was using Mosaic. I didn't know of the existence of
IE2, I don't remember how I got Mosaic but most likely it came on the CD that
the ISP provided to get started. I have fond memories of the internet in that
time. Not that it was better but it was more amazing given not having internet
before. Sending an email was magic then, and to talk to someone in another
country for free seemed amazing.

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S_A_P
Is this a more secure platform since it’s so far behind that it’s unsupported
by malware?

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caf
Even better if you ran the DEC Alpha build of NT 3.51. Security through
obsolescence!

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lhoff
Works well for me.

If i get suspicious Mail or something similar i use my old BlackBerry Z10 to
open it first.

Afaik there has never been a know Malware for the device. The whole system
itself was pretty security oriented from the beginning. Sure it uses webkit
for the browser but a browser exploit is usually just the first entry. Even if
the Malware gets root i suspect it won't be able to run anything useful on the
QNX Kernel.

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jdsnape
Ah, but now you’ve posted that publicly anyone who wants to target you knows
what to do! :)

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karmakaze
Ahhh, NT 3.51--the most stable version of Windows I've ever used.

Odd numbered versions are the best with fixes and not a lot of new stuff being
tried out--3.51 put the polish on 3.5.

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raverbashing
But NT 4.0 was almost there in features, yay

(though I miss Windows 2000)

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karmakaze
There were many small technical improvements along the way but 3.51 was purely
just a 32bit protected preemptively scheduled system with a decent filesystem
and boring UI: a sweet spot. A major later improvement was laptop support.

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cowmix
A buddy of mine implemented a very popular (back in '96) multi-user web based
chat service using the streaming gifs.

[http://chatbox.com/default2.htm](http://chatbox.com/default2.htm)

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gattilorenz
invalid URL...

[http://web.archive.org/web/19970116121126/http://chatbox.com...](http://web.archive.org/web/19970116121126/http://chatbox.com:80/default2.htm)

[http://web.archive.org/web/19970116121335/http://chatbox.com...](http://web.archive.org/web/19970116121335/http://chatbox.com/info.html)

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nailer
For those wondering :
[https://github.com/tenox7/wrp](https://github.com/tenox7/wrp)

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userbinator
I know this is a "just for fun" type of project, but...

 _This is a new version using GoLang /ChromeDP. Python/Webkit being now
deprecated_

...seeing the rise of the Chrome monopoly still saddens me.

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kalleboo
One thing I've been looking for as I mess around with vintage computers is a
SOCKS proxy that just strips HTTPS. The wide move to HTTPS, newer TLS
protocols and newer certificate issuers has made a lot of old browsers more
useless than they should be.

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userbinator
Proxomitron is not SOCKS (it's a regular HTTP proxy with MitM capability) but
it can strip HTTPS in its "half-SSL mode". Its original author is dead and it
was originally designed for OpenSSL 0.9.x, but there are patches that will let
it use a newer version.

I use it on my network mainly for adblocking and other page filtering, and the
"HTTPS upgrade" it does is more like a side-benefit.

On the other hand, a TLS 1.2 connection coming from a client purporting to be
some old version of IE on Windows tends to cause some sites to reject the
request, I guess purely because of how unusual that looks.

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mmastrac
Can't believe I haven't seen this before - I've had this idea kicking around
for years. It was definitely more important in the days when IE was locked
down as the default browser on Windows in corp environments.

This definitely could have been a valuable enterprise product in the early-to-
mid 2010s.

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peter_d_sherman
First of all, Brilliant!

OK, so a lot is going on here, if I am understanding this correctly:

1) IE 1.5 is displaying and updating an image. 2) Image is from a screenshot
of a current version of Chrome, running on another machine 3) Image gives the
impression that you're running Chrome locally. 4) Mouse clicks and keystrokes
are transferred from IE to that remote version of Chrome, and Chrome screens
are transferred back (as Images) in response.

Net effect is that you've got new Chrome functionality inside of old Windows
3.51... Nice!

(Observation: It might make sense to bypass IE 1.5 altogether, and just write
a simple VNC-like program that shows images from remote and sends clicks and
keystrokes, but this would be great for NT 3.51 if the user didn't want to
install any other programs...)

But... all in all, brilliant!!!

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emersonrsantos
Windows NT 3.51 is the new "8-bit" computer. Wow.

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ahje
And why not? It's one of the more decent alternatives if you want to run a
stable Windows install on old PC's, so it's just as retro as, say AmigaOS 3.1

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redder2
Why do people to these kind of crazy things?

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gattilorenz
The author, tenox, is a retrocomputing enthusiast with an inordinate amount of
technical knowledge. I guess it scratches some itches and gives him some good
fun.

I would feel the same.

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echeese
I was working on something sorta like this, but I thought it'd be cool to make
a proxy that takes all requests and runs them through the wayback machine, so
you could browse the old web in an old browser whilst maintaining the original
URLs

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visiblink
My LifeDrive is about to meet the modern web!

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pmlnr
Self hosted Opera Mini?

