I Built a Search Engine... for Vintage Computers!
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- Опубліковано 4 жов 2024
- The first 1000 people to use this link will get a free trial of Skillshare Premium Membership: skl.sh/actionr...
It's no secret that the internet has become mostly terrible over the last decade or so. Long gone is the open web, and in it's place is a quagmire of ads, trackers and social media blobs that have gotten so complicated, we have to buy new computers each year just so Big Tech can track us better!
Well, forget all that. I've built a service that strips the modern web back down to basics - text and images. So far, in fact, that even ancient web browsers can handle it again!
Here's the story behind FrogFind.com and 68k.news.
💥 I've released the source to both FrogFind and 68k News under the GPL: github.com/Act...
💥 Mozilla's Readability library: github.com/moz...
💥 PHP Port: github.com/and...
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💾 Support these retro computing shenanigans on Patreon! / actionretro
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Check out my Amazon page with links to my tools, adapters, soldering equipment, camera gear and more: www.amazon.com...
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#Vintage #Computer #Internet
Checking out the Skillshare link really helps the channel! skl.sh/actionretro04211
Why don't you add different levels of compatibility, I would like mode for windows xp era?
I tested FrogfFnd on Dillo browser and it had some parsing issues on filtered pages, but 68k News worked fine.
does skillshare work on frogfind?
Fr
I thought IIe was a IIg cause the case I had a 2gs that had no hdd but ran offf 3.5 floppies, which could have been interesting for this If I still had it but that was 30 years ago.
This is one of those things that's so useful it feels like it would've been done long ago. I've seen a few solutions for browsing the modern web on older browsers, but this really takes things to a level of usability that I've been dying to see. Combined with what TheOldNet is doing, yeah, it's an awesome time for internet-connected retro computing. Great work!
Thanks man!!
@@ActionRetro Hey, thank you for doing this. A lot has changed where I live in the past few years, but still after a tropical cyclone or bad storm I might have to go up a tree with my smartphone to get a GPRS connection to get my family some connection to the outside, and a service that can strip down webpages like this helps a lot. Plus computers are really expensive and tend to stick around for decades, but the web has started advancing quite quickly to their exclusion, and we have machines that could really benefit from this.
It is absolutely a great time to be a retro computer user!
Hello!
Yeah, but can it load goatze?
That perfectly shows how bloated the modern web has become. Basically, all the stuff which is really useful and does not just waste your time (news, Wikipedia, web search) could have perfectly worked even on the 80s machines.
UA-cam is the most useful invention of mankind
@@beyondgenesis2954 no.
@@beyondgenesis2954 It can also be viewed on a 68k Amiga with a format conversion.
@@lepidotos Gosh, I love an amiga, I had an amiga 600HD and it was the bee's knees
@@bronwaith One of my dream computers is a 4000!
I love this so much, good old internet... no social media... no advertisements... just stuff to read and cool pictures
This is like a real time version of how my sph-i500 would sync web pages from my computer's dialup connection.... Cellular data was sloooooow back then :)
This is literally the best / most important thing anyone has ever done for retro machines - AND not only that, there is nothing stopping people from using it on modern computers too! Please keep it up, for the love of all things sacred.
yes, not only shall I use this on my ibook clamshell, but now I will use it on my modern mac. I can finally read the news and not the popups!!!
Looks like he's sharing the source code so we can set up our own proxy servers 🙂 I'll be figuring out how to set that up when I can get a computer lab running in the coming months.
"And" isn't an acronym
@@the_motherfucker??? they didn't use it like acronym, they capitalized it to give the word emphasis
You just single-handedly got all my old computers on the web. That was a great idea. You rock!
All the guys in the Dreamcast community are gonna love this.
This is the coolest! Along with wiby, the old net, and based.cooking, the old net is coming back!
Personally I miss the 2007 web (the time I grew up), when everything was making the transition to the web we know today. That awkward phase was so cool and magical!
Ikr! I personally miss the 2010 days, when websites weren't so fat but were modern enough
does based cooking have a not https page?
@@thealterlion7163 Old browsers crap their pants on SSL and newer HTTP protocols.
@@thealterlion7163 You don't need HTTPS on a static web page. no private info being exchanged. as well as older browsers not liking it.
I personally feel like modifying the Invidious code to run on old IE versions using the Windows Media Player ActiveX control... or a really old version of Flash.
This keeps our vintage units working still. Please continue to make interesting videos like this Sean.
One of my favorite retro channels.
That really means a lot, thank you :)
My friend I think you have offered us a way to save the internet from Madness
This is fantastic. Looking forward to playing around with it 🙂
So impressed and thankful for these sites :)
I’ve wanted something like this for a few years since getting my A500 onto Wi-Fi. Thank you for your service! 👍🕹️ Your friend in retro, Perifractic
Thanks Perifractic! I hope it works great on your Amiga!
This is fantastic! Even on a modern machine, browsing the internet with all the bloat removed is the way it should be. My Pentium 90 and me have never been so happy. :)
aside from youtube or forums, this should be the default 100%
@@sparkie5571 No thanks! While i love the old ways i could never go back...
Me too! I use this on my modern machine now. I just wish there was a button to disable readibility mode on a page, as a few pages either don't load or don't play nicely with it. I can remove the Frogfind bit in the url bar, but that's more cumbersome.
I started using the internet in 1989 - usenet, email, ftp, archie, gopher, etc. Web browsers were quite the novel thing, in 1993/4. Lynx via our SLIP/PPP accounts...ah, memories.
Yes and getting news from trn and using pine for email were in many ways better. ASCII Art rules
Let's take a moment and appreciate the link in the Digg screenshot "Flash powered email". I think that would make the cursed SE/30 extra cursed
Hahaha I knew someone would catch that!
Every time you bring out that Libretto I'm always impressed by just how sharp and vibrant that little display is. Must have been state of the art in it's day, and probably quite expensive as well. LCDs rarely age so well in my experience.
I remmber seeing the first one around 1996 in J&R computer world in lower manattan NY. was close to $2400. wanted it so bad but too expensive for my taste. I think I was 20 at the time and making $12 an hour. but had rent and utilties.
My PDA and vintage smartphone collection thanks you! But also I do, it really is a great way to read news on a modern machine. Absolutely no wait time. I'm really excited about the minimalist website movement going on right now. For a cleaner internet!
@@springchickena1 As far as vintage computing equipment goes webpages are pretty much the last thing you would use them for. People have these things primarily because they want to play games on their intended hardware or mess around with contemporary applications. Some people are fed up with massive bloated webpages, and are creating alternatives. Nitter, invidious, based cooking, this, probably more. The goal is to create a knock on effect that encourages more web developers to step back a bit and create no frills webpages
We have needed this for about 20 years! Thanks :)
@@springchickena1 Yeah. I know there are already modern browsers for XP and other older OSs.
FrogFind! Is so beautiful 😭
This is simply awesome! When you stop and think about it, vintage computers can still serve a purpose. I would love to take an old Apple laptop to the coffee shop and brows the web. What fun!
yuh,cept can0ford pryseas!!...
The wealth of information now available again to even mid-1980's machines via this is insane. Such a great project you've done here! It just goes to show how much processing power goes to waste with the modern web. Love this.
He walks the land, a god among mere mortals and he saw they were sad and unto them he gave frogfind and all rejoiced.
We need more people to add to this. If we can make this mainstream for old hardware, we could save a BUNCH of old machines from going to the landfill. Not only that, but by making old hardware viable, this could even drive down current hardware prices so that people who only need basic web browsing and a word proccessor to do much don't need to by a new machine.
This could also be very useful for people with poor internet services...like me😅
Makes dial-up somewhat usable
@Imix Muan nice thanks for the links to light asf news
or for mobile data users in developing countries
this is not just an awesome service for vintage pcs but also people with bad internet connections or limited data plans who rely on savind data when using the internet. great work!
This is such a good example of just how bloated the internet has become. Great work, i'm going to pull out my macintosh se and try this now.
This is literally gods work! I always had to need push old tech and find some extra use. This even works with psions! It came handy, I already bought an old imac g3 and can use the internet under OS 9 !!! enough for my needs. Thank you for your effort, the result is amazing!
os9 ppc/68k has2be the place2www!!
Suggestion: when scaling images, simply pick a max value for one of the dimensions, then scale the other dimension proportionally, that will fix the distortion in the scaled images. If an image is 1280x720 and you want it to be no bigger than 400x300, just pick the largest dimension of the source image and constrain it to the largest target dimension, 1280 gets constrained to 400, then you just scale the 720 dimension by (400/1280 * 720) = 225. This preserves the original aspect ratio.
This could be the best thing ever for vintage Macs and PCs! It is obvious that the reason most old computers become obsolete is due to internet browser system requirements and security. Now there is an extremely viable option to keep old iMacs, iBooks, and 68ks up and running.
My favorite thing to do on my old iMac was dialing up the internet in the evening to do some internet reading, now it’s back! Thanks SO much!!!
An awesome project that greatly increases the usability of retro machines, and it's released as free software under the GPL! Nice!
The 90s called. They want their Internet back ;)
jokes.
If only they had internet this fast that long ago.
You mean the 80s...that 2e is older than me
No, it's ours now. Take this bloated pile of monopolized corporate web 2.0 garbage instead.
Signed, 2021
-PS We're keeping Yellow eBay, too.
UNdaaMapszzJaaa...
###...ATH0
AWESOME! In a fraction of a second I was learning about Majorana Fermions and 'FAIR' data reporting to eliminate "cherry picking" problems in scientific analysis and journalism in general. I tested it and found that the information was obtained in apx. a quarter of the time a google search required. I get the feeling that this is the beginning of something really big. Keep at it, lets see how good it can get.
So this is so serendipitous because I was just writing an article for a kid's tech magazine about the history of the web and exploring how usable it still is with oldschool text browsers like lynx, to try and make some points about how bloated everything is now. Definitely want to point them here as an additional thing to learn.
I love FrogFind! I've replaced my default search engine on my Chrome and Firefox browsers with it. I love the old school, text-only style of Internet! I was a 14 year old teen dialing up and using IRC back in the 90s, I remembered how much more fun we had without ridiculous pop-ups and embedded Ads slowing down page loads!!
This site does not have a certificate. so its not secure
ive been after something like this for ages, thanks for making it happen
Dude, I´m so happy I kept all my old stuff. This is sweet, Good Job, Mate!
Really impressive 😱
May I do a little suggestion?
Do your proxy available as a DNS server, so automatically redirect the web as a simple version for vintage computers 😉
0geeSpoX!...
This also works wonders on my old Nokia 6230i phone over a GPRS connection. It actually makes it possible to look up some things on the go now. Thanks for making it, much appreciated!
How did it take so long to see this, this is amazing! Nevermind *retro* browsing, this really illustrates the bloatware currently present on modern websites, and we've barely touched into web 3.0 now...
The work you just did, brought back HTTP2 incompatible hardware to the internet, and that's just awesome.
This makes the 3DS browser more useful than it ever was (even with that google mobile phone view thing it used ) and by extension the DSi and DS browsers too, not quite vintage computers, but quite under powered machines.
Hell yeah!
I miss when the internet was so pure and untracked
I can also see this being useful for accessibility software, for those who are vision-limited or use screen readers.
Thank you for the great retro resource for the internet information surf. I’ve worked on dozens of old Apple Macintosh metal and plastic clad pizza box and metal towers and the restoration of these units does not disappoint. Sometimes only a replacement battery and a reset of the cpu (pressing several keys on start up) is all it takes to bring back a Mac from la-la land. I will have to pay-more-attention to your key board finger placement for those boot-up shenanigans. Serious note: Do not open a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) monitor or TV if you do not have experience working around deadly voltage and amperage levels. It only takes a few thousands of an amp (electron current) to stop your heartbeat and a CRT can generate tens of thousand of volts (the force needed to push a lot of electrons). We appreciate that Mr. Malseed is working on a boob-tube and not us.
This has to be among the best three videos on UA-cam!! Man! I run FreeBSD on a Libretto and I'm old enough to remember what it was like when the Internet was new...
That PowerBook 540c has such a crispy display... And the colours?! Really impressive
I wouldn’t mind the 2006 version of UA-cam. Compressed 4:3 videos. It just makes me nostalgic for a time when there weren’t a million ads for mobile games and ball shavers. Back when the Badger song was what entertained us and guy cussing out Nintendo games was new.
This is an extremely awesome contribution to retro computing. Thanks Action Retro.
That's quite a title BUT...you deserve it. I really hope that will start a trend and people want to enjoy more of that peaceful experience from the newsPAPER experience from other times through your searchengines.
I guess you made it all opensource so that it can live on whenever you decide to cut hosting the service.
Also i wonder if "Bitrotting" has to do somethings with why the Netscape software didn't want to run on your MacPlus...so much to archive properly...
Man that brings back fond memories of when I first discovered the web. I was a freshman in high school. I went to an event at OSU in a computer lab. I was mesmerized. It was like water for a desert with information.
This is so useful even if you aren't trying to use a vintage computer. Using the internet without intrusive advertising is wonderful.
This is amazing, I’ve been kicking around a similar idea but haven’t pulled the trigger yet to get a text based browser to expose via telnet for use on even older computers. Good job!
Just this *HUGE THANK YOU*. I'm using your Frogfind when I need to go full text-mode.
Despite having inbuild adblocker on the Opera browser, there's way too much input on the Internet and I have been looking for an all text-mode method to use.
Firefox used to have a setting that would turn off animation. As far as I can tell that disappeared a number of years ago. The graphiocs still loaded, but were static once they were loaded.
Its the best thing happened in retro computing.Great work.
This is a game changer for me, the usability of old computers is so much better becasue of this. Thanks so much for doing this on your personal time.
My wifi-enabled 486 laptop with just 8MB of RAM and Win95 loves frogfind. It really amazes me, as others have said, how fast this ancient hardware is for web browsing when you strip away the bloat. This is one of the coolest contributions to the retro community ever.
Thanks Matt, that really means a lot! Glad you're getting use out of it.
I love this for much better viewing of modern sites that have absolutely no reason to be loaded with videos and javascript. The one thing that hurts it for me is the images. I'd love the option to either not compress them or compress them less as well as the possibility to show them inline. It looks like the RFC for cookies was from later than HTML 2.0, but I don't think it would be that bad to have a settings form for controlling some simple options to store in a tiny cookie (this would only be overhead for someone who's changed from the defaults).
I remember back in 2003 my first attempts with Perl and cgi to implement basic form input; then javascript wonders to implement "odometer" like hit counters, graphical buttons rollovers, etc; those were cool days when the new browser technologies along with server sides were used in favor of the design; but then it was abused to became the marketing evil we all know very well, with the help of the tech giants (yahoo, google, apple, amazon, etc)
You've given me a way to read the New York Times and other news sites again. I don't often read the NYT but when I want to see some random article I'm always frustrated by their JavaScript which blocks the page unless you pay. No longer! You've given me the upper hand again. Thank you!
I never comment anywhere but this deserves one, this is incredible, this is a gift to the retro world but also the low bandwith world too!
This is the best project which i see this year. Thank you very much for this project! Respect to you! Vintage Computer Never Die!
Excellent! Good job man! Internet news on an ancient Mac, and everything else. Just awesome.
Broadband connections enabled "web 2.0", any lazy hack could make a "pretty" web page.
People that used dial-up understood what interwebs was: just a bbs with pictures and no download protocols. :D
This is just so incredible, had a bit of fun playing with this on my Toshiba Satellite 4000CDS. Currently only over Win2k (IE 6 only, so far) with a WLAN pcimcia card, now I have a reason to really find a pcmcia ethernet card for Win3.11 on it.
You really are allowing people born in the late 90s to experience something we thought we'd never be able to do. Load up Netscape on pre 9x Windows and actually use the internet. Wild.
I'll get back with my x86 vintage Windows experiences on the Toshiba, but it currently only has the original 4GB HDD (Fully 100% still operational) which is limiting, so I'll be ordering an SD adapter for it for more room to play with.
These sites are quite useful on a modern machine too, thank you for making them
Ya know, this is great even for modern machines/OS's for us to have some "noise free" browsing when we just want to pickup the latest news or read an article without . . . well, you know, all the noise.
Absolutely BRILLIANT.. this lets us grab info without the Garbage attached today even on Modern machines it is such a relief.. .. Thanks and Well Done you.
Words can't express how much i thank you!!! I broke my phone last year and while i was saving up i used an old 2g nokia (here in Bulgaria we still have 2g coverage, last time a cell hone service died here was in 05/06 when analog phone cells shut down). I had opera mini 8, but it doesn't support go to/homescreen shortcuts. You made my experience on the nokia A LOT easier. Again, thank you!!! PS. i Got my proper phone fixed.
Thank you! FrogFind works decent with my (not that) old laptop and when I pass through an area with poor cellular coverage.
I modified this a bit and made a netscape navigator revival. thanks for open sourcing this :)
Omg, my pentium 166 mmx thanks this, you theserve all the respect and love for the retro computing community. New subsc here!!!
This dude loves nostalgia and wants to share his love with us. Doesn't get any better than that.
I just hope the PHP code wasn't written on one of the demo devices 😅
Your frogfind will (if I understand correctly heavily reduce traffic between the web and the client computer. Especially for mobile devices this is extremely useful wwith small internet bundle.
This indeed takes me back some 20 years ago. Thanks. I will definately try this out.
Frogfind and 68k news actually work on a 2G network and load pages up in seconds or even less than a second sometimes (I tested this myself with an active 2G connection in my area)
This site does not have a certificate. so its not secure
I have used this on my IMac G4 and Amiga 500. Both work great. It is a fantastic service that you have provided for the retro community. Next stop. A commodore 64 on the world wide web
Another use for this is getting past pay walls in news sites
This is fantastic! Even works on my PSP and old Nintendo DS perfectly! You've earned my subs.
"Just you and the text" - thank you sir.
Excellent work! 25 years of bloat instantly stripped out :) - Web browsing from my Amiga 500 and Windows 95/98 PC is a pleasure...
I'm stoked with FrogFind. I use it on my RPi Riscos 5.28 system and it works very well. I leant to code html in the 90s and do not understand why the bloat is present. Not just the ads and graphics, but all of the extra content under the hood, such as scriting, tracking etc.
Nice job.
Ten years ago I was working on a project that turned HTML into Gopher. Didn't go over to well.
This is absolutely unbelievable. There are no words to describe this … it's genius. What a job you pulled off. Done!
Can't wait to try this on my dream cast and PSP
This has been my go to site for my Linux projects. Really cool!
You absolute mad lad! You made the entire news web readable again! Thank you!
Wow, thank you so much! 🌞
Can't wait to take my old Macs for a spin!
FrogFind and 68k make my 20 year old Dell Axim's fast and reliable online again! Man this brings me back!
i was just looking for exactly that when i dusted off an old ibook a few weeks ago. this really breathes life into retro hardware. also it may function as an educational time machine for young folks eager to see the past but with contemporary content.
You're my hero. I've been wanting to use some old 8 bit machine for my daily computing tasks and this pretty much makes that possible.
This is really amazing. And a solution to not just a totally retro problem.
Happy to report it also works on original NeXT 68K hardware AKA NeXT Cubes and NeXTSTATIONS as well as our Previous 68K Free homebrew emulator using the Omniweb browser. Tim Berners Lee one of my customer wrote the first web browser on a NeXT Computer, Steve Jobs other company and I've been trading, buying , refurbishing and reselling NeXT hardware and software for 29 years . NeXTSTEP operating system is the grand daddy of Mac OS as Apple merged with NeXT in 1996/97. Thank you so much for your efforts. Best Regards Rob Blessin
*Awesome!* At the beginning of the video I thought of Contiki. What a pleasant surprise that you featured it! After watching the video I got immediately to the sites to see how they would parse my language special characters (áàâãéêíóôõúü窺) as even modern websites now and then have problems with it (due to different encodings). To my _second_ surprise they came out perfectly!! Congratulations on the amazing job!!!!
Absolutely love this, it works great in modern browsers as well as old. Inspired me to turn my old x220 into an Amiga 4000 laptop. Given it a nice old fashioned widescreen resolution, and paired with these services and browse 2.55 its perfect. I hope you keep working on ways to make the modern web palatable on old machines, because honestly I'm in awe.
Seriously man; thank you so much for all your effort into making these two sites. Truly awesome work!
What a brilliant idea. I'm getting my old retro boxes out... Ita nice to be able to have basic web on these old boxes ..
Thank you for creating this, we appreciated the time and effort you put in to this, such a great work. There was a somewhat similar project back during the 2015 or earlier where a guy created a text base search engine using fb messenger. Basically if you only have free data to send and recieve chat messages, you can message a bot to search for wiki articles,and that bot will send you a text version of the article you are looking for, limiting fake news and such with factual articles. I was able to try it on my old android 2.3 phone and it worked great, unfortunately it didn't last much since the guy needed funds to pay for the cost of keeping the bot up, it replied fast and accurately back then, too bad it went offline. Yours is much better in terms of search and backwards compatibility, plus it's faster too.please keep it up. It's my default search engine for my older techs.
I gotta say, this is so dang cool. Honestly reading the news in all-text is so much less stressful!
I bet these would be super useful for folks using Linux on old hardware with browsers like Dillo. Really cool!
Fantastic project. I will share to the Amiga community. Keep optimizing it!
Looking forward to trying this on my a1200 with wifi lol
This is incredible! Great resource for my vintage PCs.
This is an absolute boon for smart TVs too. They usually try to shoehorn a full web experience into a weakling CPU with tiny amounts of RAM.
It would be cool if websites embedded your engine for automatic use when they detect a very limited machine. That would save on processing power at your end.
Truly awesome. I've been looking for something like this for so long, and to have it work so well is an absolute bonus! I truly thank you, you are a hero for the vintage computing community.