Web surfing possible on real ST/STe hardware?

[6BQ5]

Just what the subject line says.

 

I am really curious to know if it is possible to run a web browser on real ST/STe hardware. There would be two challenges. First, how would the computer connect to a wired or wireless network? Is there a cartridge port adapter? I would assume the cartridge port is faster than the serial port. Second, could the 8 MHz 68000 processor handle the workload of rendering a webpage? Webpages are complicated, especially now with all the scripts, animations, and graphics. I remember using a program called Lynx a long time ago. It's a text based browser. Imagine viewing a webpage in "Reader Mode" and that's probably the best way to think of Lynx. The program is still around. Google it.

 

Thoughts?

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Even 100x faster computer with 1000x more RAM is not enough powerful for today WEB surfing.

You can run it on some ST, though. I don't know what is minimal RAM req. There is NetUsBee for LAN - that's smallest problem to connect. And will be able to visit only simplest WEBpages.

[hunter44102]

Even the Falcon is too slow for -modern- web pages. If you can set up a home HTML server with pages using just basic HTML, you can have something cool for demonstration purposes. Maybe there is a site that translates modern web sites to plain HTML text, that would work also

[Christos]

[url=https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eN33G-h3XyA]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eN33G-h3XyA[/url

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LhjAiVKYTd0

Edited January 24, 2019 by Christos

[rcamp48]

What about a Mega ST with 4 MBs RAM and an ICD AdSpeed 16 MHz booster, with a NetUSBEE device, I am getting my NetUSBee sometime this week , I have everything else including how to take a router and turn it into a wifi access point, kinda complicated but I will post my results here later on after I have tested it all, my Mega ST4 came with a Viking Graphics Board, (sold already) and an ICD AdSpeed 16 Mhz booster with fast ram. Will post benchmarks for it later on today. The router I am using is a D-Link DIR-601, have complete instructions on how to turn it into a Bridge, (will post them too, its basically the same for any router).

 

Russ

[Clint Thompson]

Someone should browse archive.org for some of the best 97 and before sites to host on a web page so those of us who love to reminisce what it's like to surf the web in 1997 (or just before) on such a machine and experience it for what it was or is, cao do just that. =)

 

With that said, I have zero desire to do either at this point lol but could see this being fun to have setup at a vintage computer fest of sorts sometime.

Edited February 14, 2019 by Clint Thompson

[Randy]

The biggest problem here, and it is an ongoing problem with ALL computers, is the weaponizing of the Internet for commerce.  It's the commerce ads, pop-ups, etc. that are such a resource-hog that it is requiring faster and more powerful computers to be able to work on the internet at all, and people like Mozilla, greedy bastards, are more than willing to allow changes to the web browsing experience just to get even more money into their pockets while forcing the users to have to buy new computers every year just to be able to use the internet.  I had a friend running a stripped-down old laptop with some kind of browser that basically eliminated all pop-ups, ads, etc. and that old laptop, running XP I think, worked well and was good for the internet.  What we really need is a browser that stops all that jack-assery that the current browsers use to screw the pooch, meaning us.