[shifuimam]

I can't find this application anywhere on the Internet. All links point to a location on AOL's FTP server, which is dead.

Anyone who has it, let me know - thanks!

[Laminar]

I don't even want to ask why.

[besson3c]

Some people collect stamps, others AOL versions?

[shifuimam]

I eventually found it.

Holy God is it bad - no HTML support in email (but instead of stripping out the tags, it just renders it all as plaintext), and the version of Mosaic they're using to render pages is HORRIBLE.

I'll stick with Netscape 7, I think...

[olePigeon]

If you're looking for an internet browser for Classic, try downloading Classilla. It's relatively new. Some people have backported FireFox to OS 9.

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

I eventually found it.

Holy God is it bad - no HTML support in email (but instead of stripping out the tags, it just renders it all as plaintext), and the version of Mosaic they're using to render pages is HORRIBLE.

I'll stick with Netscape 7, I think...

Might explain why it was so difficult to find.
We all just tossed AOL discs into the garbage when they showed up in the mail.

But, just remember, the Mac Internet experience was pretty horrible until Chimera and Opera showed up about 6 months into OSX.

[Mrjinglesusa]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

I'll stick with Netscape 7, I think...

I think I'll stick to modern operating systems with modern browsers.

Why anyone would want to subject themselves to browsing the internet and using email today with an OS and browser from 5-10 years ago is beyond me. What exactly is the point?

[brassplayersrock²]

might be writing some kind of "look how far we've come" article?

[lexapro]

Very interesting how difficult it was to find considering the sheer volume of AOL CDs and disks in those days.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Mrjinglesusa 

I think I'll stick to modern operating systems with modern browsers.

Why anyone would want to subject themselves to browsing the internet and using email today with an OS and browser from 5-10 years ago is beyond me. What exactly is the point?

Shif clearly enjoys messing around with old hardware. What's wrong with that?

[brassplayersrock²]

As long as the hardware she's messing around with isn't twice her age.

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by lexapro 

Very interesting how difficult it was to find considering the sheer volume of AOL CDs and disks in those days.

I'm sure they're lining landfills these days.

[Brien]

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak 

Might explain why it was so difficult to find.
We all just tossed AOL discs into the garbage when they showed up in the mail.

But, just remember, the Mac Internet experience was pretty horrible until Chimera and Opera showed up about 6 months into OSX.

Not me! I used to collect them. I even have AOL floppies.

[Chuckit]

Oh, I kept the floppies. They were perfectly serviceable floppy disks. Never needed to buy another one again.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by brassplayersrock² 

might be writing some kind of "look how far we've come" article?

I'm guessing some new reality TV show, like that family who signed up to live in a Victorian-era house.

[Mrjinglesusa]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Shif clearly enjoys messing around with old hardware. What's wrong with that?

Did I say there was anything wrong with it? No.

I said I don't understand why someone would want to mess around with ancient hardware/software. What do you gain out of it? I've done it - it's a pain in the ass and even you get it running, it's not really useful for anything productive.

[besson3c]

Mrjingle: I understand it. As a society we dispose of many computers which could be used for many modern computing tasks, this is a very wasteful practice. Many people don't need a core duo for basic web surfing or typing up papers or something.

The only thing I don't understand is why sink effort into OS 9 rather than Linux, which you can get a lot more mileage out of?

[besson3c]

Never mind, I guess Linux PPC support is somewhat limited...

[shifuimam]

Well, if we're all going to speculate about why someone would be so stupid as to use old hardware and old OSes...

I'm using 9.2.2 on a 266MHz Wallstreet PowerBook G3. The CPU isn't remotely fast enough to run OS X, and PPC Linux options are limited. While there is a PPC distribution of Ubuntu 8.10, it's very bloated. It was slow enough on my 500MHz 12" iBook G3 that I suspect it would be utterly painful to use on a 266MHz CPU.

I bought this specific PowerBook model because it has a LocalTalk port, which means that I can use it more easily to directly communicate with the Macintosh Classic II I recovered from a dumpster - that machine is currently running 7.5.3. Similarly, OS 9 has better AppleTalk support than OS X, so it's a better choice than Linux for my specific purposes.

I've been using this PowerBook pretty regularly as my around-the-house laptop for the past few days.

Things that suck about it:

• It weighs like six and a half pounds.
• The battery is shot, so I have to shut it down entirely whenever I want to move to another room.
• No multi-protocol IM client for OS 9.
• OS 9 occasionally locks up and requires a hard reboot.
• The screen stays black after booting for awhile, and since the machine is so quiet, I'm not always certain it's actually *on*.
• Sherlock won't work with anything but local hard drive searching.

Things I like about it:

• It's fast.
• I haven't had any problems with OS 9 yet - the only bomb errors I've gotten were from a beta IRC client I was trying to use. It locks up sometimes when I'm doing too much at once, but not to the point that I have to restart it (for the most part).
• It communicates with file shares on my G4 running Leopard without any problems.
• Internet is fast and stays reliably connected to the WEP portion of my home network, although I'm not using Airport - I'm using a Cisco 802.11b PCMCIA card.
• I can make good use of the PCMCIA CompactFlash adapter I bought about six years ago for a laptop I had in college. Since this has no USB and I don't have a floppy or Zip module for it (or a HDI-30 to DB-25 SCSI cable for my external Zip drive), CF is working nicely for transferring files quickly between machines.

I hated trying to use OS 9 on my 500MHz iBook. Airport was extremely unreliable, which made the machine less than useful to me.

I'm using WaMCom right now, which is based on Mozilla 1.3.0. It's fast (much, much faster than iCab), and I haven't seen any rendering issues with the websites I use. I do wish I could install AdBlock Plus with it, though - not loading ads (or waiting for popups) really shortens load times. For IM, I haven't been doing a whole lot - I found a working install of AOL 5.0 on the PowerBook's original hard drive, although my main AIM account doesn't work with it (even though one I just created does - wtf). Netscape 7 also has built-in AIM support. Guess I'll be stuck using original clients for my chatting.

Is there an OS 9 Jabber client out there? I'd like to be able to use Google Talk.

[besson3c]

shif: the next time that you have any desire to run Linux on a slow computer, I would suggest not using Ubuntu or Kubuntu, but Xubuntu or Fluxbuntu

[angelmb]

As a linux illiterate, I had to do a google search to find out all those *buntu were for real. Crazy.

Is there an OS 9 Jabber client out there?

Jabbernaut????

[shifuimam]

Originally Posted by angelmb 

Jabbernaut????

Hey - thanks! I'll go download that right now.

Edit - boo, I don't think it supports the SSL encryption gtalk uses.

TBH, I don't really think OS 9 is all that bad anymore. Outlook Express works really well with Gmail IMAP, and WaMCom is fine for the browsing I do on a regular basis. I'm using a custom UserStyles.css to filter out some ads, so that helps.