• Has Kernel-EX been abandoned?

    From Jerome Tews@21:1/5 to All on Wed Jun 6 14:48:40 2018
    Has Kernel-EX been abandoned? I am not seeing any updates posted. The
    last one was in 2011. Or am I looking in the wrong place? The site that
    I went to is on Sourceforge.

    From what I am seeing, Win98 has finally become completely unusable for
    the internet. There are no longer any browsers that work. Because of
    this, I plan to cancel my internet service at the end of this month. I
    will have to resort to using my smartphone at WIFI spots from now on,
    because I refuse to use any of Microsoft's latest crap operating
    systems.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to Jerome Tews on Wed Jun 6 17:44:31 2018
    Jerome Tews wrote:
    Has Kernel-EX been abandoned? I am not seeing any updates posted. The
    last one was in 2011. Or am I looking in the wrong place? The site that
    I went to is on Sourceforge.

    From what I am seeing, Win98 has finally become completely unusable for
    the internet. There are no longer any browsers that work. Because of
    this, I plan to cancel my internet service at the end of this month. I
    will have to resort to using my smartphone at WIFI spots from now on,
    because I refuse to use any of Microsoft's latest crap operating
    systems.


    I think you should view the problem from
    another perspective.

    Browsers are bloated.

    The designers insist on using a GPU-based
    approach to browser design. This idea is
    actually inherited from SmartPhones.

    Your SmartPhone is perfect for this. It has
    a modern GPU, to share the rendering duties.

    A Win98 machine, chances are the video card
    is too old to support hardware acceleration
    of what the browser wants to do.

    The fallback code path, uses the CPU. Now the
    CPU is doing two jobs (as the browser is only
    half as efficient as it used to be).

    I was going to tell you that "there are 500 OSes
    out there" and to try one. But then it occurred
    to me that the browser is the root of the problem.

    The "minimum OS" to run a browser should:

    1) Support multiple cores (Firefox and Chroms
    can fork four processes for example.)
    2) Support modern accelerated graphics standards.
    (In a comic coincidence today, Apple has deprecated
    OpenGL on their platform. Just to prove to users
    how obsolete their kit is. This is what happens
    when software monkeys drive platform design.)

    To continue to run a desktop browser, that
    tells you how to "rebuild from the bottom up".
    More than one thing needs to be modernized.

    If I was still using dialup networking today, I'd
    be paying $60 for a POTS phone (the dialup fee would
    be separate). Instead, I pay a total of $52 per month,
    for ADSL on a dry line, plus VOIP for phone services
    (no POTS). The reason I have options here, is because
    we have actual competition. In one part of the country,
    they offer rural people WISP for wireless Internet,
    as an alternative to dialup. And once the 5000 satellite
    constellations are in orbit, we'll no longer have
    this Internet logjam for rural people. Some day, everyone
    will have options. And that's the other part of a
    successful browsing experiences - meeting a minimum
    download rate (so you can watch a video on a web page).

    Kernel-EX isn't going to solve the worlds problems.
    Rewarding browser designers to make their stuff run
    on old hardware, that might work. Do you think
    paying $1000.00 for a browser would be enough
    to cover it ? I'm not even sure the software
    designers care - you see, the boss gave each
    of them a 20 core computer to develop on.
    They don't know what slow is...

    Paul
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Computer Nerd Kev@21:1/5 to Jerome Tews on Wed Jun 6 23:12:38 2018
    Jerome Tews <jertews7@nomail.com> wrote:
    Has Kernel-EX been abandoned? I am not seeing any updates posted. The
    last one was in 2011. Or am I looking in the wrong place? The site that
    I went to is on Sourceforge.

    I've never run Kernel-Ex, but I think it's no surprise that it
    would have been abandoned by now.

    From what I am seeing, Win98 has finally become completely unusable for
    the internet. There are no longer any browsers that work. Because of
    this, I plan to cancel my internet service at the end of this month. I
    will have to resort to using my smartphone at WIFI spots from now on,
    because I refuse to use any of Microsoft's latest crap operating
    systems.

    It depends on what you mean by usable. If you disable scripts or use
    a light weight browser and just put up with some websites not working
    properly, it may still be usable most of the time.

    "Off By One" is a newer (than the rest) light browser with win98
    support:
    http://www.offbyone.com/offbyone/index.htm

    I run Dillo in Linux, which is a similar thing but Windows
    versions won't work with native win98 (might be worth trying it
    with KernelEx). Generally the only time I need to switch to a
    mainstream browser is when a website requires a log-in (and
    various scripts running in the background to handle it), but
    even then a few well designed websites still work.

    --
    __ __
    #_ < |\| |< _#
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From 98 Guy@21:1/5 to Jerome Tews on Wed Jun 6 21:06:15 2018
    Jerome Tews wrote:

    Has Kernel-EX been abandoned? I am not seeing any updates posted.

    What a bunch of bone-headed responses to this question. I'm surprised
    this group has dumbed down so much.

    KernelEx has always been a special project centered in the win-98
    section of msfn.org.

    https://msfn.org/board/forum/8-windows-9xme/

    I see that as of right now (9 pm EST) that MSFN is down. But when it's
    up, have a look in the "member projects" sub-forum in the above forum.

    As for win-98 not being a usable OS on the web today, I continue to use
    it with Firefox 2.0.0.20 as my primary browser (with scripting turned
    off and with considerable use of select blocking add-ons as well as
    hosts file entries).

    When I have to, I will use Opera 12.02 (usable on win-98 with KernelEx).

    The KernelEx version I'm using dates to 2/24/2017 (4.05.2016.17) but I
    think newer versions are available. Also many kstubs options too.

    My primary win-98 pc is based on Pentium 4, 2.8 ghz, with several SATA
    hard drives (500 gb, 750 gb and 1.5 tb). Win-98 has no problems using
    such large SATA hard drives by the way. My system also has 2 gb of ram,
    and win-98 can see and use all of it (because of a certain well-known
    hack).
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From J. P. Gilliver (John)@21:1/5 to jertews7@nomail.com on Thu Jun 7 01:44:37 2018
    In message <j7eghdloulknhvqme4u1qqtjjqgc820vfp@4ax.com>, Jerome Tews <jertews7@nomail.com> writes:
    Has Kernel-EX been abandoned? I am not seeing any updates posted. The
    last one was in 2011. Or am I looking in the wrong place? The site that
    I went to is on Sourceforge.

    Wouldn't surprise me.

    From what I am seeing, Win98 has finally become completely unusable for
    the internet. There are no longer any browsers that work. Because of
    this, I plan to cancel my internet service at the end of this month. I
    will have to resort to using my smartphone at WIFI spots from now on,
    because I refuse to use any of Microsoft's latest crap operating
    systems.

    Microsoft aren't going to be bothered by your decision (-:.

    I'd not call XP and 7 "latest" - XP support ended some years ago.
    Basically, XP and 7 are where '98 and XP were a few years ago. XP is
    still usable with the internet, with work, though it's getting harder; 7
    is fine.

    What's your _reason_ for giving up? You should get a perfectly usable 7
    machine for not very much; an XP almost for nothing, though good ones
    are maybe now beginning to get rarity value.
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact. - Carl Sagan (interview w. Psychology Today published '96-1-1) --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From JJ@21:1/5 to Jerome Tews on Thu Jun 7 11:07:19 2018
    On Wed, 06 Jun 2018 14:48:40 -0500, Jerome Tews wrote:

    From what I am seeing, Win98 has finally become completely unusable for
    the internet. There are no longer any browsers that work.

    If you need to access rich multimedia sites, then yes. Otherwise, no.

    While most sites force users to use the latest browser, some of them can
    still work with older browsers by fooling the site's scripts using browser identification spoofing, and new browser feature emulation scripts.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to All on Wed Jun 6 23:19:11 2018
    98 Guy wrote:
    Jerome Tews wrote:

    Has Kernel-EX been abandoned? I am not seeing any updates posted.

    What a bunch of bone-headed responses to this question. I'm surprised
    this group has dumbed down so much.

    KernelEx has always been a special project centered in the win-98
    section of msfn.org.

    https://msfn.org/board/forum/8-windows-9xme/

    I see that as of right now (9 pm EST) that MSFN is down. But when it's
    up, have a look in the "member projects" sub-forum in the above forum.

    As for win-98 not being a usable OS on the web today, I continue to use
    it with Firefox 2.0.0.20 as my primary browser (with scripting turned
    off and with considerable use of select blocking add-ons as well as
    hosts file entries).

    When I have to, I will use Opera 12.02 (usable on win-98 with KernelEx).

    The KernelEx version I'm using dates to 2/24/2017 (4.05.2016.17) but I
    think newer versions are available. Also many kstubs options too.

    My primary win-98 pc is based on Pentium 4, 2.8 ghz, with several SATA
    hard drives (500 gb, 750 gb and 1.5 tb). Win-98 has no problems using
    such large SATA hard drives by the way. My system also has 2 gb of ram,
    and win-98 can see and use all of it (because of a certain well-known
    hack).

    You should view the problem of web browsing from the
    web browsing end.

    1) Web standards were made complicated, as a barrier
    to entry. The initial things that needed to be done
    to make a web page, weren't that complicated.
    2) The developers bloat the browser until it runs slow
    on their 20-core computer. Then they release it to
    everyone else as their "fastest yet".
    3) It takes a hundred people plus, to make a dent in
    browser development. Two well-meaning people in a
    basement somewhere, aren't going to edit half the
    files in the browser source, and correct all the
    privacy trampling or performance destroying stuff.
    One build tree I downloaded here, had 600,000 files
    in it, a lot of which will be test benches. This
    isn't something that two people can even read from
    end to end, let alone edit.

    If no one will make a decent browser, and "forking"
    efforts don't have the manpower to make a difference,
    then you'd better find something else to do with
    your Win98 machine. I bet you can still edit Word
    files on it just fine - using an editor from the same
    era as Win98.

    I've run Win98 on my Core2 at 3GHz (one core only),
    and sure it screams. But all it would take is one
    of those stinking advertising Javascript files
    to throw that processor into a tight loop while running
    a modern browser, and there'd be no cycles left for
    anything else. The first thing you'd need to do,
    is change the scheduling model, so a single
    Javascript can't do that. I'm not aware of any
    browser design that "solves the Javascript problem".
    The web sites have us by the short and curlys.

    As long as large organizations and standards bodies
    controlled by them, are working against us, what hope
    is there ? Being able to view a small percentage of
    sites, is that an option ? What good is that ?
    Would I have been able to place an online order
    today, if I'd had one hand tied behind my back ?

    Paul
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From R.Wieser@21:1/5 to All on Thu Jun 7 10:30:16 2018
    Jerome,

    I refuse to use any of Microsoft's latest crap operating systems.

    Have you ever thought of using XP(sp3) ?

    And for that matter, what about W7 ? As long as you disable its update mechanism (used to poisson it with telemetry and forced updates to W10) I've been told it is quite nice OS to work with.


    And pardon me, but the way you are putting it ("the *latest* crap operating systems") makes me wonder if you are maybe considering Win98 to be crap too
    ... <whistle> :-)

    In that case, why don't you, for being able to browse the web, take a look
    at the different flavo(u)rs of Linux ?. Most of them run browsers pretty well. Ubuntu for one is rather easy to install. Even has a "live cd"
    option (no installing needed), which wil also run off of an USB stick (with
    an option to remember settings and stuff).


    And by the way: I've been using 98se until late last year, when the
    motherboard died. If it would not have I would most likely still be using
    it today*. With possibly a Raspberry Pi next to it to be able to keep
    browsing the web (cat pictures needing SSL encryption ? You *got* to be
    joking me ... - Nope, they're not. :-( ).

    *currently using XPsp3. Lets see if it will service me for the next 20
    years. :-)

    Regards,
    Rudy Wieser
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Computer Nerd Kev@21:1/5 to 98@guy.c0m on Thu Jun 7 11:59:12 2018
    98 Guy <98@guy.c0m> wrote:

    As for win-98 not being a usable OS on the web today, I continue to use
    it with Firefox 2.0.0.20 as my primary browser (with scripting turned
    off and with considerable use of select blocking add-ons as well as
    hosts file entries).

    You must have trouble with the encryption protocols that Firefox V. 2
    didn't support and are now the only option when connecting to many
    sites. My recent expenience loading pages in FF V. 2 has been constant
    "unable to connect" windows when loading any mainstream website. I
    guess your hosts file and "blocking add-ons" might lesson that, but
    even the web servers that still let you use a FF V. 2 era encryption
    protocol usually use more recent SSL certificates than those that
    were bundled with FF V. 2, and adding new ones manually triggered
    another bug for me, which stopped the pages loading altogether.

    --
    __ __
    #_ < |\| |< _#
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From J. P. Gilliver (John)@21:1/5 to address@not.available on Thu Jun 7 16:02:02 2018
    In message <pfaqf0$1k99$1@gioia.aioe.org>, R.Wieser
    <address@not.available> writes:
    Jerome,

    I refuse to use any of Microsoft's latest crap operating systems.

    Have you ever thought of using XP(sp3) ?

    And for that matter, what about W7 ? As long as you disable its update >mechanism (used to poisson it with telemetry and forced updates to W10) I've >been told it is quite nice OS to work with.

    My W7 looks like a cross between XP and '98: well, the windows have
    square corners and equal-size minimise, maximise, and close buttons, and
    the Start menu's more like XP's than 7's. I have Classic Shell. (I went
    without it for several weeks, intending to try to learn/accept the New
    Way of doing things, but got too frustrated at one point, and haven't
    missed anything I may have "lost" since - well, a
    what's-making-startup-slow utility might not be working properly, but I
    so rarely reboot that it doesn't matter.)

    And pardon me, but the way you are putting it ("the *latest* crap operating >systems") makes me wonder if you are maybe considering Win98 to be crap too >... <whistle> :-)

    Well, even '98 has the IMO unnecessary frill of graded-colour title bars
    (-:! [I know I could make that invisible by setting both ends the same,
    but the processing would still be there, just doing nothing.]

    In that case, why don't you, for being able to browse the web, take a look
    at the different flavo(u)rs of Linux ?. Most of them run browsers pretty >well. Ubuntu for one is rather easy to install. Even has a "live cd" >option (no installing needed), which wil also run off of an USB stick (with >an option to remember settings and stuff).

    (I know I'm not the person you were addressing but) I'm too old to learn
    yet another way of doing things. Well, not too old - only 58 - but at a
    point where time spent on such learning weighs heavier than it once did.

    And by the way: I've been using 98se until late last year, when the >motherboard died. If it would not have I would most likely still be using

    I'm in a similar position with XP/7; if the netbook hadn't died I'd
    still be on XPSP3. (I'm glad it did force me to change though - not
    because of the change to 7-32, but because this is a much more powerful machine, and - although I don't do a _lot_ of things where that actually matters _much_ - it _is_ nicer not to have to wait quite so much.)

    it today*. With possibly a Raspberry Pi next to it to be able to keep >browsing the web (cat pictures needing SSL encryption ? You *got* to be >joking me ... - Nope, they're not. :-( ).

    I suspect it's not the (original - they've signed away their rights, in
    all probability) owners of the cat pictures that are imposing the SSL encryption, but the sites they're using to share them, which want to use
    it so they know who's accessing them, for data mining purposes. I hate
    such sites - not so much for the data mining (they've got to cover their
    costs somehow), but mainly because they make the page cluttered (and incompatible with older or restricted browsers).

    *currently using XPsp3. Lets see if it will service me for the next 20 >years. :-)

    Same here for 7-32-with-classic-shell (-:

    Regards,
    Rudy Wieser


    John
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    History is not the past. It is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. - Hilary Mantel, first Reith Lecture 2017
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From R.Wieser@21:1/5 to All on Thu Jun 7 19:43:12 2018
    John,

    (I know I'm not the person you were addressing but) I'm too old to learn
    yet another way of doing things.

    With me its mostly not a question of getting older (we're of almost the same age), but simply never really having had the urge to drop something which
    still works good enough for me for something which might-or-might-not have
    the same capabilities (read: I most likely need to re-acquire both software
    and hardware for - if possible that is ...).

    although I don't do a _lot_ of things where that actually matters _much_ -
    it _is_ nicer not to have to wait quite so much.

    Same here. Though much of the problem there is that I'm simply chugging
    thru much more data (regardless of it being game or webpage related) than I
    was doing in my DOS days ...

    I suspect it's not the (original - they've signed away their rights, in
    all probability) owners of the cat pictures that are imposing the SSL encryption, but the sites they're using to share them,

    As far as I can tell most of it is Googles doing: If you do not use HTTPS
    your website will be ranked much lower, and thus pretty-much unfindable
    using their search engine.

    I hate such sites - not so much for the data mining (they've got to cover their costs somehow),

    I can't say that I *hate* them. I've simply resorted to, by default,
    denying all third-party content, which, besides killing 99%+ of all
    advertising regardless of how its delivered, causes most every site to
    become actually readable again. :-)

    The people I have a strong dislike for are the spammers who pose as poor website owners and than try to make me believe that I *owe* it to them to
    oogle all crap they are, indirectly, shoveling towards my browser - but for which they, at the same time, deny any responsibility for. I should be choosing between allowing them to do whatever they want, or get off the web.
    In return I give them the same choice. Somehow they do not seem to like
    that. I have no idea why ... :-D

    Regards,
    Rudy Wieser
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jerome Tews@21:1/5 to Computer Nerd Kev on Fri Jun 8 01:50:47 2018
    On Wed, 6 Jun 2018 23:12:38 +0000 (UTC), not@telling.you.invalid
    (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:

    Jerome Tews <jertews7@nomail.com> wrote:
    Has Kernel-EX been abandoned? I am not seeing any updates posted. The
    last one was in 2011. Or am I looking in the wrong place? The site that
    I went to is on Sourceforge.

    I've never run Kernel-Ex, but I think it's no surprise that it
    would have been abandoned by now.

    From what I am seeing, Win98 has finally become completely unusable for
    the internet. There are no longer any browsers that work. Because of
    this, I plan to cancel my internet service at the end of this month. I
    will have to resort to using my smartphone at WIFI spots from now on,
    because I refuse to use any of Microsoft's latest crap operating
    systems.

    It depends on what you mean by usable. If you disable scripts or use
    a light weight browser and just put up with some websites not working >properly, it may still be usable most of the time.

    "Off By One" is a newer (than the rest) light browser with win98
    support:
    http://www.offbyone.com/offbyone/index.htm

    Have you actually tried to use Offbyone lately?
    I used to use that quite a lot. It does NOT load any httpS sites. At
    least 90% of all sites are now httpS. And every day more sittes are
    going with httpS.

    I run Dillo in Linux, which is a similar thing but Windows
    versions won't work with native win98 (might be worth trying it
    with KernelEx). Generally the only time I need to switch to a
    mainstream browser is when a website requires a log-in (and
    various scripts running in the background to handle it), but
    even then a few well designed websites still work.

    I use Firefox 3.x under Kernel-EX. Anything above that causes too many problems. Using Firefox 2.x or similar (K-meleon or Seamonkey) produce
    script errors every few seconds, repeatedly. In fact I have a weight
    that I sit on the enter key because I get tired of hitting that key 20,
    50 or 100 times for every webpage. Or there are security errors. Trying
    to load a webpage these days is like going to war. I am no longer
    willing to cope with it.

    None of this security crap was ever needed with the old (simple)
    websites. Now they add so much crap to sites that they apparently need
    all of that. I am no longer willing to deal with it.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jerome Tews@21:1/5 to All on Fri Jun 8 02:08:30 2018
    On Thu, 7 Jun 2018 10:30:16 +0200, "R.Wieser" <address@not.available>
    wrote:

    And pardon me, but the way you are putting it ("the *latest* crap operating >systems") makes me wonder if you are maybe considering Win98 to be crap too >... <whistle> :-)

    Wrong. Win98 is the ONLY OS I have ever loved. XP is ok, but I still
    prefer Win98. Anything prior to Win98 was lacking, but it was all new,
    so that can be expected. After XP came that miserable Vista. I have
    heard Win7 is good, I'd like to try it, but I am not gonna spend $100 or
    more for an obsolete OS. The real crap bagan with Win8.x and on to 10. I
    would not recommend that garbage to my worst enemy.

    And no, I do not do Linux. I have had my months of frustration with that
    lousy excuse for an OS. I am not willing to spend (waste) hundreds of
    hours trying to configure it, only to find out its still not gonna run
    properly and still lacks any decent software. I already did all of that,
    and I was glad to finally remove any and all traces of Linux from my
    home. Only once did I get a successful working install, which I sort of
    liked, despite the fact it still lacked compatible software with
    Windows. That was around 2010. A year later that flavor of linux was
    abandoned.

    I just want something that works and I dont have to piss with once it's installed. Win98 is the ONLY OS I have had that luck with. XP I have
    found needs to be reinstalled every 2 or 3 years or it gets real slow.
    That sucks!

    I have never had to reinstall 98. I have moved it several times to
    bigger hard drives and even to a different motherboard. Just add a few
    drivers and carry on. And I do still use some DOS too. I always liked
    DOS.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Computer Nerd Kev@21:1/5 to Jerome Tews on Fri Jun 8 08:07:27 2018
    Jerome Tews <jertews7@nomail.com> wrote:
    On Wed, 6 Jun 2018 23:12:38 +0000 (UTC), not@telling.you.invalid
    (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:
    Jerome Tews <jertews7@nomail.com> wrote:

    From what I am seeing, Win98 has finally become completely unusable for
    the internet. There are no longer any browsers that work. Because of
    this, I plan to cancel my internet service at the end of this month. I
    will have to resort to using my smartphone at WIFI spots from now on,
    because I refuse to use any of Microsoft's latest crap operating
    systems.

    It depends on what you mean by usable. If you disable scripts or use
    a light weight browser and just put up with some websites not working >>properly, it may still be usable most of the time.

    "Off By One" is a newer (than the rest) light browser with win98
    support:
    http://www.offbyone.com/offbyone/index.htm

    Have you actually tried to use Offbyone lately?
    I used to use that quite a lot. It does NOT load any httpS sites. At
    least 90% of all sites are now httpS. And every day more sittes are
    going with httpS.

    Ah sorry, no I don't use it much.

    It does say on the Overview page:
    "Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) support provided by optional OpenSSL
    libraries for secure navigation to https:// addresses."

    Dillo-Win32 handles HTTPS, but I've tried and failed to run it
    on Win98 without Kernel Ex.
    https://sourceforge.net/projects/dillo-win32/

    I don't use the internet on Win98 personally, my Win98 PC gets
    booted to Linux for that (and it's where I'm typing from now).

    I run Dillo in Linux, which is a similar thing but Windows
    versions won't work with native win98 (might be worth trying it
    with KernelEx). Generally the only time I need to switch to a
    mainstream browser is when a website requires a log-in (and
    various scripts running in the background to handle it), but
    even then a few well designed websites still work.

    I use Firefox 3.x under Kernel-EX. Anything above that causes too many problems. Using Firefox 2.x or similar (K-meleon or Seamonkey) produce
    script errors every few seconds, repeatedly. In fact I have a weight
    that I sit on the enter key because I get tired of hitting that key 20,
    50 or 100 times for every webpage. Or there are security errors. Trying
    to load a webpage these days is like going to war. I am no longer
    willing to cope with it.

    None of this security crap was ever needed with the old (simple)
    websites. Now they add so much crap to sites that they apparently need
    all of that. I am no longer willing to deal with it.

    Yes most often web developers just do it because they can,
    unfortunately.

    HTTP Web proxy services offer a sort of solution, though there
    are new problems introduced by using them too.
    http://applepieproxy.xyz/

    --
    __ __
    #_ < |\| |< _#
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to Jerome Tews on Fri Jun 8 03:55:41 2018
    Jerome Tews wrote:
    On Thu, 7 Jun 2018 10:30:16 +0200, "R.Wieser" <address@not.available>
    wrote:

    And pardon me, but the way you are putting it ("the *latest* crap operating >> systems") makes me wonder if you are maybe considering Win98 to be crap too >> ... <whistle> :-)

    Wrong. Win98 is the ONLY OS I have ever loved. XP is ok, but I still
    prefer Win98. Anything prior to Win98 was lacking, but it was all new,
    so that can be expected. After XP came that miserable Vista. I have
    heard Win7 is good, I'd like to try it, but I am not gonna spend $100 or
    more for an obsolete OS. The real crap bagan with Win8.x and on to 10. I would not recommend that garbage to my worst enemy.

    And no, I do not do Linux. I have had my months of frustration with that lousy excuse for an OS. I am not willing to spend (waste) hundreds of
    hours trying to configure it, only to find out its still not gonna run properly and still lacks any decent software. I already did all of that,
    and I was glad to finally remove any and all traces of Linux from my
    home. Only once did I get a successful working install, which I sort of liked, despite the fact it still lacked compatible software with
    Windows. That was around 2010. A year later that flavor of linux was abandoned.

    I just want something that works and I dont have to piss with once it's installed. Win98 is the ONLY OS I have had that luck with. XP I have
    found needs to be reinstalled every 2 or 3 years or it gets real slow.
    That sucks!

    I have never had to reinstall 98. I have moved it several times to
    bigger hard drives and even to a different motherboard. Just add a few drivers and carry on. And I do still use some DOS too. I always liked
    DOS.

    You need to work on getting Wifi at your place,
    so you can use that smartphone browser in comfort.

    Paul
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From R.Wieser@21:1/5 to All on Fri Jun 8 11:40:57 2018
    Jerome,

    Win98 is the ONLY OS I have ever loved. XP is ok, but I still
    prefer Win98.

    Oh. ok.

    So, you are considering using XP instead of throwing the baby away with the bathwater (disconnecting from the web altogether - even if it is usefull to you) ?

    And no, I do not do Linux.

    I did not try to suggest that. I suggested you could be running a "stand-alone" webbrowser which, instead of being installed ontop of Windows, would be installed ontop of Linux.

    You know, like running a backup program from a dedicated, bootable CD. You could/would not care less what it uses as its OS (Linux most likely :-) ),
    as long as it does its job. Consider my suggestion to be of the same
    level.

    I mentioned a Raspberry Pi for a reason: With its "noobs" install (copy the install file onto a microSD, plug it in a Pi, power it up, wait 15 minutes (only the first time mind you) and you're good to go) it allows you to get
    on the web with a minimum ammount of fuss. And its cheap enough to keep
    *next* to your Win98 machine (a KVM switch would come in handy though).

    I just want something that works and I dont have to piss with
    once it's installed.

    Well, there you go ! :-)

    And yes, I've done the above (as a test to see if it would work). Because I ran W98se on my main machine (until recently) and already had problems with sites becoming unreachable because I could not update the browsers
    encryption package anymore.

    And besides being able to stay online and reach all the websites again the
    Pi would also function as a kind of sandbox and a means to easily restore it
    to clean working state again in case of any malware slipping thru (simply wiping the microSD and copy the install file on it once more)

    XP I have found needs to be reinstalled every 2 or 3 years
    or it gets real slow. That sucks!

    Did you leave the updating mechanism enabled ? Well, what did you expect than ? :-)

    Also, how much software did you, over time, install and "remove" ? Care to take a guess to how much got left behind and as a result bugged your system down ? Or how many of those non-removed installations, because of their
    "must be running" updating mechanisms (looking at you, HP), having been
    slowing down the OS ? How many system-tray icons did you have ?

    See, I've got an XP machine here for over 10 years (bought as a gaming
    machine, next to my 98se), and can't say that I've noticed such slowing
    down.

    ... But I'm not really known for my "oh, lets install that software and see what it does!" enthusiasm. Rather the opposite actually. :-)

    I have never had to reinstall 98. I have moved it several times
    to bigger hard drives and even to a different motherboard.

    I've alse been moving to bigger harddisks over time. And yes, a simple transfer of the system partition to the new drive never failed. But the
    few times I switched to a new motherboard I opted to also re-instal the OS partition. Simply because a) I did not want to carry any driver cruft from
    the old board over to the new one. b) I saw it as a good time to get rid of (and I mean *fully* rid of) other software that I did not use anymore.

    And as I have had my OS on its own partition (seperate from the data) for as long as I can remember that was always rather easy to do. Ofcourse, having stored all driver and other software packages for the current machine in a special backup folder always made that rather easy to do.

    And I do still use some DOS too. I always liked DOS.

    Me too. In fact, I've still got a working DOS 5.x machine connected to my KVM.

    Both DOS and W98 made it easy to talk with the outside world (thru direct access of RS232 and/or printer-port pins). Under XP I can still install a driver which gives me direct control of them.

    Under later versions of the hardware and/or OS ? You need to stick some
    kind of specialized HID module into the USB port and hope its compatible
    with what you want to do - hardware *and* driver wise.

    Regards,
    Rudy Wieser
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jerome Tews@21:1/5 to Paul on Sat Jun 9 03:57:21 2018
    On Fri, 08 Jun 2018 03:55:41 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

    Jerome Tews wrote:
    On Thu, 7 Jun 2018 10:30:16 +0200, "R.Wieser" <address@not.available>
    wrote:

    And pardon me, but the way you are putting it ("the *latest* crap operating >>> systems") makes me wonder if you are maybe considering Win98 to be crap too >>> ... <whistle> :-)

    Wrong. Win98 is the ONLY OS I have ever loved. XP is ok, but I still
    prefer Win98. Anything prior to Win98 was lacking, but it was all new,
    so that can be expected. After XP came that miserable Vista. I have
    heard Win7 is good, I'd like to try it, but I am not gonna spend $100 or
    more for an obsolete OS. The real crap bagan with Win8.x and on to 10. I
    would not recommend that garbage to my worst enemy.

    And no, I do not do Linux. I have had my months of frustration with that
    lousy excuse for an OS. I am not willing to spend (waste) hundreds of
    hours trying to configure it, only to find out its still not gonna run
    properly and still lacks any decent software. I already did all of that,
    and I was glad to finally remove any and all traces of Linux from my
    home. Only once did I get a successful working install, which I sort of
    liked, despite the fact it still lacked compatible software with
    Windows. That was around 2010. A year later that flavor of linux was
    abandoned.

    I just want something that works and I dont have to piss with once it's
    installed. Win98 is the ONLY OS I have had that luck with. XP I have
    found needs to be reinstalled every 2 or 3 years or it gets real slow.
    That sucks!

    I have never had to reinstall 98. I have moved it several times to
    bigger hard drives and even to a different motherboard. Just add a few
    drivers and carry on. And I do still use some DOS too. I always liked
    DOS.

    You need to work on getting Wifi at your place,
    so you can use that smartphone browser in comfort.

    Paul

    I would if I could, but living in a rural area has no means to get WIFI.
    At least not affordably. I have two options. My dialup modem, which just
    dont cut it anymore with the bloated websites these days. -OR- Pay
    around $130 per month for satellite, which includes the TV and the
    Internet. First off, I dont want the TV. I watch the daily news to get
    the weather reports. I can do that on my antenna. I dont watch any other
    tv. Second, I am retired and on a small fixed income. $130 per month is
    NOT doable. I recall the government speaking of getting the internet to
    rural people. Apparently that was just the usual govt. promises that
    never happen.

    Having poor or no internet is the price we pay to live in the country,
    but I would not live in a city for any reason.The farmers around here
    dont even know what the internet is, for the most part. I just talked to
    my neighbor yesterday about this. He was having problems with some sort
    of seed distribution valve on his tractor, and told me he would have to
    contact the manufacturer to find out how to fix it. I told him to go on
    the internet and google the make and model of his tractor. He looked at
    me like I was an alien from another planet and said "I dont know how to
    do any of the stuff". I think that explains why we dont have and will
    never get high speed internet around here. There are probably 5 people
    who want it, and I am one of them five. I'll take a wild guess that 4
    more exist within a 20 mile radius.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jerome Tews@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jun 9 04:11:10 2018
    On Fri, 8 Jun 2018 11:40:57 +0200, "R.Wieser" <address@not.available>
    wrote:

    Jerome,

    Win98 is the ONLY OS I have ever loved. XP is ok, but I still
    prefer Win98.

    Oh. ok.

    So, you are considering using XP instead of throwing the baby away with the >bathwater (disconnecting from the web altogether - even if it is usefull to >you) ?

    Not exactly. A dialup modem does not work on XP. Win98 is the only way I
    can connect with the modem, and dialup is all I will ever have where I
    live.

    And no, I do not do Linux.

    I did not try to suggest that. I suggested you could be running a >"stand-alone" webbrowser which, instead of being installed ontop of Windows, >would be installed ontop of Linux.

    You know, like running a backup program from a dedicated, bootable CD. You >could/would not care less what it uses as its OS (Linux most likely :-) ),
    as long as it does its job. Consider my suggestion to be of the same
    level.

    Well, I know that Android is a form of Linux and my smartphone has
    Android. I dont use it as a phone though. (No service on it), but it can
    be handy when I am in town and have WIFI access. Them phones dont do
    anything near what a computer does, but it is handy for getting a
    weather report or watching a youtube video when I need help fixing my
    car or something.

    I mentioned a Raspberry Pi for a reason: With its "noobs" install (copy the >install file onto a microSD, plug it in a Pi, power it up, wait 15 minutes >(only the first time mind you) and you're good to go) it allows you to get
    on the web with a minimum ammount of fuss. And its cheap enough to keep >*next* to your Win98 machine (a KVM switch would come in handy though).

    Please explain this in more detail. I know a Raspberry Pi is some sort
    of smartphone. (I think), but you lost me after that. I'd still need a
    WIFI signal, which I dont have.
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to Jerome Tews on Sat Jun 9 05:11:42 2018
    Jerome Tews wrote:
    On Fri, 08 Jun 2018 03:55:41 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

    Jerome Tews wrote:
    On Thu, 7 Jun 2018 10:30:16 +0200, "R.Wieser" <address@not.available>
    wrote:

    And pardon me, but the way you are putting it ("the *latest* crap operating
    systems") makes me wonder if you are maybe considering Win98 to be crap too
    ... <whistle> :-)
    Wrong. Win98 is the ONLY OS I have ever loved. XP is ok, but I still
    prefer Win98. Anything prior to Win98 was lacking, but it was all new,
    so that can be expected. After XP came that miserable Vista. I have
    heard Win7 is good, I'd like to try it, but I am not gonna spend $100 or >>> more for an obsolete OS. The real crap bagan with Win8.x and on to 10. I >>> would not recommend that garbage to my worst enemy.

    And no, I do not do Linux. I have had my months of frustration with that >>> lousy excuse for an OS. I am not willing to spend (waste) hundreds of
    hours trying to configure it, only to find out its still not gonna run
    properly and still lacks any decent software. I already did all of that, >>> and I was glad to finally remove any and all traces of Linux from my
    home. Only once did I get a successful working install, which I sort of
    liked, despite the fact it still lacked compatible software with
    Windows. That was around 2010. A year later that flavor of linux was
    abandoned.

    I just want something that works and I dont have to piss with once it's
    installed. Win98 is the ONLY OS I have had that luck with. XP I have
    found needs to be reinstalled every 2 or 3 years or it gets real slow.
    That sucks!

    I have never had to reinstall 98. I have moved it several times to
    bigger hard drives and even to a different motherboard. Just add a few
    drivers and carry on. And I do still use some DOS too. I always liked
    DOS.
    You need to work on getting Wifi at your place,
    so you can use that smartphone browser in comfort.

    Paul

    I would if I could, but living in a rural area has no means to get WIFI.
    At least not affordably. I have two options. My dialup modem, which just
    dont cut it anymore with the bloated websites these days. -OR- Pay
    around $130 per month for satellite, which includes the TV and the
    Internet. First off, I dont want the TV. I watch the daily news to get
    the weather reports. I can do that on my antenna. I dont watch any other
    tv. Second, I am retired and on a small fixed income. $130 per month is
    NOT doable. I recall the government speaking of getting the internet to
    rural people. Apparently that was just the usual govt. promises that
    never happen.

    Having poor or no internet is the price we pay to live in the country,
    but I would not live in a city for any reason.The farmers around here
    dont even know what the internet is, for the most part. I just talked to
    my neighbor yesterday about this. He was having problems with some sort
    of seed distribution valve on his tractor, and told me he would have to contact the manufacturer to find out how to fix it. I told him to go on
    the internet and google the make and model of his tractor. He looked at
    me like I was an alien from another planet and said "I dont know how to
    do any of the stuff". I think that explains why we dont have and will
    never get high speed internet around here. There are probably 5 people
    who want it, and I am one of them five. I'll take a wild guess that 4
    more exist within a 20 mile radius.

    The price comes down when there is competition.

    We even have that problem in this country, where some
    areas of the country have real competition, and people
    get offers of "double their monthly cap at no extra cost"
    on cellphone data. In other areas, there are no deals
    like that.

    Keep your eyes open for alternative sources of Internet.
    WISP is one way to do it. Even if over-subscribed,
    WISP will deliver more tha dialup rates. And can probably
    manage to be a few bucks less than your $130 deal, if
    there are enough users.

    It needs spectrum though, and with the buying up of all
    the 900MHz, there might not be any good frequencies for WISP.

    When Musk gets his satellites up there, your price will
    drop. But that'll get done, roughly around the same point
    in time they perfect self-driving cars. It'll take a long
    time to launch 5000 satellites, even if they're small ones.
    One reason those satellites are going to be a good deal,
    is they aren't geosynchronous, and the latency is closer
    to terrestrial values, than to geosynchronous values.

    Paul
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jerome Tews@21:1/5 to Paul on Sat Jun 9 05:39:07 2018
    On Sat, 09 Jun 2018 05:11:42 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:


    The price comes down when there is competition.

    We even have that problem in this country, where some
    areas of the country have real competition, and people
    get offers of "double their monthly cap at no extra cost"
    on cellphone data. In other areas, there are no deals
    like that.

    Keep your eyes open for alternative sources of Internet.
    WISP is one way to do it. Even if over-subscribed,
    WISP will deliver more tha dialup rates. And can probably
    manage to be a few bucks less than your $130 deal, if
    there are enough users.

    A few bucks less aint gonna cut it. I pay $35 a month for basic landline
    phone service, dialup internet included. That's near my limit on what i
    can afford per month.

    That WISP does not exist near me. I have heard of it, but it's not here.


    It needs spectrum though, and with the buying up of all
    the 900MHz, there might not be any good frequencies for WISP.

    When Musk gets his satellites up there, your price will
    drop. But that'll get done, roughly around the same point
    in time they perfect self-driving cars. It'll take a long
    time to launch 5000 satellites, even if they're small ones.
    One reason those satellites are going to be a good deal,
    is they aren't geosynchronous, and the latency is closer
    to terrestrial values, than to geosynchronous values.

    Paul

    By the time that is available, I'll be 6 feet under. That seems like a
    complex method of doing things too. It seems that running the cable
    system to rural areas would be a lot easier. 5 miles from here, they
    have cable (in town). What's 5 miles of wire..... Then again, I can get
    dialup. Why cant they at least have DSL. But I can answer that myself.
    It's because they are only interested in profit, not in services. Heck,
    when I built a new cabin on my land, I had the phone line running to my
    tiny cabin. I wanted the wire moved from the tiny cabin to the new one.
    That's about 70ft away. They wanted $300 to $500 to do it. I told them
    to shove it and I ran a 70ft wire from the old cabin to the new one.
    Cost me about $40. So everytime the phone quits working, they come here
    and tell me they cant service my wires beyond that small cabin. I always
    tell them that I already tested my own wires and they are fine. The
    problem is always in their wiring somewhere down the road....
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From R.Wieser@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jun 9 12:59:06 2018
    Jerome,

    What's 5 miles of wire..... Then again, I can get dialup.
    Why cant they at least have DSL. But I can answer that myself.
    It's because they are only interested in profit, not in services.

    Not quite. Any length of cable will function as both a coil as well as a capacitor, an effect which gets more pronounced the higher the frequency is
    (in audio terms, a low-pass filter). As DSL uses higher frequencies (to be able to deliver speed, but also to stay out of the audio spectrum - so that
    DSL and your phone could be used at the same time) there would be no usable signal left after those five miles.

    (compare it with trying to pull a too much juice (amperes) over small wires. The voltage would drop considerably, upto a point you could not even get a lighbulb to glow ...)

    Yep, even in my country our phone companies cannot (could not?) deliver DSL
    to some houses in our *cities*, simply because they where to far away from
    the DSL node points.

    Regards,
    Rudy Wieser
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From R.Wieser@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jun 9 12:43:14 2018
    Jerome,

    A dialup modem does not work on XP

    It doesn't ? Strange, as googeling for "XP dial-up modem" shows quite a number of websites explaining how to do it ... I would suggest you take another look at it.

    Please explain this in more detail. I know a Raspberry Pi is
    some sort of smartphone

    :-) Not quite. Its actually a single-board computer, more-or-less aimed
    at electroncs hobbyists (amazon price: $35):

    https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/

    At the far right there you can see the ethernet socket, with just above it 4 USB2 sockets. The pins at the top are ment to connect ... whatever
    electronics experiments you want to it (the individual pins are programmable
    to be in or outputs). The connector top-ish-left is the microSD card
    holder. The connector bottom-center is the HDMI video output, and the black-and-white round connector right of it an extra audio output. The connector at the bottom-left is the micro-usb power connector.

    It also has wifi and bluetooth on board. The two black-and-white
    vertically placed (on the image at the left left and between the HDMI and
    audio connector) connectors allow you connect a touchscreen to it (to make
    it a stand-alone computer), and a camera. Both supported by the OS!

    Yep, quite the powerhouse for such a small board. :-)

    but you lost me after that. I'd still need a WIFI signal, which
    I dont have

    Nope, you don't. You can directly plug an ethernet cable into it.

    And before you think "but I only have a dial-up modem!", AFAIK you can get
    W98 to be used as an internet gateway for another computer. In other
    words, you could be dialing-up with W98se, and by connecting the Raspberry
    Pi to it (using ethernet) it could go online too.

    But to be honest, if you are in any way considering to use XP that would, I think, be a far better (easier?) solution ...

    Regards,
    Rudy Wieser

    P.s.
    KVM = Keyboard, Video & Mouse switch. Handy if you have multiple
    computers, but only place for a single monitor, mouse and keyboard on your table. And currently KVMs all seem to be able to switch by pressing a few
    keys on the keyboard itself (no need to touch the KVMs buttons)..
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Paul@21:1/5 to Jerome Tews on Sat Jun 9 06:21:00 2018
    Jerome Tews wrote:


    Please explain this in more detail. I know a Raspberry Pi is some sort
    of smartphone. (I think), but you lost me after that. I'd still need a
    WIFI signal, which I dont have.

    I would solve the networking project first, and
    then there will be plenty of time to entertain
    new computers.

    In Google, try

    <name_of_your_town> WISP

    and see if there are any WISP providers near you.

    Paul
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jerome Tews@21:1/5 to Paul on Sat Jun 9 06:31:37 2018
    On Sat, 09 Jun 2018 06:21:00 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

    Jerome Tews wrote:


    Please explain this in more detail. I know a Raspberry Pi is some sort
    of smartphone. (I think), but you lost me after that. I'd still need a
    WIFI signal, which I dont have.

    I would solve the networking project first, and
    then there will be plenty of time to entertain
    new computers.

    In Google, try

    <name_of_your_town> WISP

    and see if there are any WISP providers near you.

    Paul

    Ok, I did that. Took an hour to do on dialup. It took me to a website
    that I looked at about a year ago. Final result:

    No WISP
    No DSL
    No cable

    YES, Satellite (from my phone company for $130 per month package with TV

    It claims I can get internet from a cell provider. WRONG. I cant even
    get a cellphone signal here. I have to drive (or walk) one half mile, to
    the top of the hill to make a call.

    In other words, NO INTERNET!
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jerome Tews@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jun 9 13:00:24 2018
    On Sat, 9 Jun 2018 12:43:14 +0200, "R.Wieser" <address@not.available>
    wrote:

    Jerome,

    A dialup modem does not work on XP

    It doesn't ? Strange, as googeling for "XP dial-up modem" shows quite a >number of websites explaining how to do it ... I would suggest you take >another look at it.

    It gets complicated. I tried hundreds of fixes over many years. It's out
    of my hands, or out of my house. Its a bad ISP. XP does connect, but I
    get 5 min of use before it quits. Called "spiral of death". Using Win98
    I have the same problem, but I get more usable time. Normally 15 to 30
    min. After that, I have to disconnect and reconnect. So, in 20 min
    (average with W98), I can get my email and get the messages on a few newsgroups. Or I can load a couple small websites. Using XP, I have 5
    min. I cant do shit in 5 min time.

    Instead of getting better, it's actually getting worse. My ISP offers
    dialup for free with their phone service. But that means no support.
    Either I like it and use it AS-IS, or I dont get anything. What I do
    get, has gone from slow to turtle mode in the last year. I could once
    load a google page in 2 or 3 min. Now it takes 8 or 10 min just to get
    google to appear on my screen. (Of course I know a big part of that is
    the httpS crap). I regularly fall asleep waiting for a web page to load.
    It's just not usable anymore, and thus beginning July 1, I am
    disconnecting. In all honesty, I can drive to town and use WIFI at the
    library, a bar, or restaurant, and can use it from my car if they are
    closed. In the time it takes to load a webpage at home, I can drive the
    5 miles to town and still save a few minutes. Yea, gas costs money for
    the car, but not as much as it would cost for satellite int. Plus it
    gets me out to socialize. For doing that, I have a old laptop with XP or
    the smartphone, but I usually use the laptop. Easier to see and it does
    a lot more than the phone.


    Please explain this in more detail. I know a Raspberry Pi is
    some sort of smartphone

    :-) Not quite. Its actually a single-board computer, more-or-less aimed
    at electroncs hobbyists (amazon price: $35):

    https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/

    At the far right there you can see the ethernet socket, with just above it 4 >USB2 sockets. The pins at the top are ment to connect ... whatever >electronics experiments you want to it (the individual pins are programmable >to be in or outputs). The connector top-ish-left is the microSD card
    holder. The connector bottom-center is the HDMI video output, and the >black-and-white round connector right of it an extra audio output. The >connector at the bottom-left is the micro-usb power connector.

    It also has wifi and bluetooth on board. The two black-and-white
    vertically placed (on the image at the left left and between the HDMI and >audio connector) connectors allow you connect a touchscreen to it (to make
    it a stand-alone computer), and a camera. Both supported by the OS!

    Yep, quite the powerhouse for such a small board. :-)

    but you lost me after that. I'd still need a WIFI signal, which
    I dont have

    Nope, you don't. You can directly plug an ethernet cable into it.

    And before you think "but I only have a dial-up modem!", AFAIK you can get >W98 to be used as an internet gateway for another computer. In other
    words, you could be dialing-up with W98se, and by connecting the Raspberry
    Pi to it (using ethernet) it could go online too.

    But to be honest, if you are in any way considering to use XP that would, I >think, be a far better (easier?) solution ...

    Regards,
    Rudy Wieser

    P.s.
    KVM = Keyboard, Video & Mouse switch. Handy if you have multiple
    computers, but only place for a single monitor, mouse and keyboard on your >table. And currently KVMs all seem to be able to switch by pressing a few >keys on the keyboard itself (no need to touch the KVMs buttons)..


    Thanks for the explanation of the Raspberry. Sounds like a decent setup,
    but still dont solve my lack of USABLE home internet.
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  • From R.Wieser@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jun 9 20:31:18 2018
    Jerome,

    It gets complicated. I tried hundreds of fixes over many years.
    It's out of my hands, or out of my house. Its a bad ISP. XP
    does connect, but I get 5 min of use before it quits. Called
    "spiral of death".

    Ah, thataway. The only solution I know in regard to such a death spiral (which sounds as the modem keep adjusting its baudrate as a response to
    dropped packets) is to set it to a fixed (lowish) speed. But reading
    you've tried a bunch of fixes I get the feeling you already tried that.

    And it looks like the problem has shifted from an issue with the browser to major issues with the connection itself. As paul (I think) already said
    it, you would first need to solve those network problems before even
    thinking of doing something about the browser.

    It's just not usable anymore, and thus beginning July 1, I am
    disconnecting.

    :-) Yep, now I can understand that choice.

    Thanks for the explanation of the Raspberry. Sounds like a decent setup,

    You're welcome.

    but still dont solve my lack of USABLE home internet.

    Yup, it doesn't. I was (wrongly) assuming that your computer / computers browser was the problem here, not the internet connection itself. :-(

    I was almost going to suggest if you could not set some kind of CB (sender/receiver) connection set up (with someone in town), but when I heard about your reception problems with your phone (mountainous terrain?) I don't really think you will be able to get a connection that way either.

    Regards,
    Rudy Wieser
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Computer Nerd Kev@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jun 9 23:05:21 2018
    Jerome Tews wrote:

    It claims I can get internet from a cell provider. WRONG. I cant even
    get a cellphone signal here. I have to drive (or walk) one half mile, to
    the top of the hill to make a call.

    If you're not surrounded by mountains, there might be a chance that a
    fixed directional antenna could give you phone signal. I used an old
    aluminium cooking pot and a bit of copper wire to build a "canntenna"
    suitable for the network frequencies used by my provider. You need
    coax cable designed for high frequencies (RG58, I think) and a
    connector to fit your internet modem. They were the only costs.

    Of course suitable antennas can be bought as well, there's at
    least one crowd over here in Australia that specialises in remote
    area mobile broadband reception. That usually means there must be
    countless such business in America. :)

    --
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  • From Paul@21:1/5 to R.Wieser on Sat Jun 9 20:17:59 2018
    R.Wieser wrote:
    Jerome,

    What's 5 miles of wire..... Then again, I can get dialup.
    Why cant they at least have DSL. But I can answer that myself.
    It's because they are only interested in profit, not in services.

    Not quite. Any length of cable will function as both a coil as well as a capacitor, an effect which gets more pronounced the higher the frequency is (in audio terms, a low-pass filter). As DSL uses higher frequencies (to be able to deliver speed, but also to stay out of the audio spectrum - so that DSL and your phone could be used at the same time) there would be no usable signal left after those five miles.

    (compare it with trying to pull a too much juice (amperes) over small wires. The voltage would drop considerably, upto a point you could not even get a lighbulb to glow ...)

    Yep, even in my country our phone companies cannot (could not?) deliver DSL to some houses in our *cities*, simply because they where to far away from the DSL node points.

    Regards,
    Rudy Wieser

    Standard ADSL has a reach of 18000 feet.

    In the USA, they have 36000 foot service tariffed.
    The rate might only end up being 1.5Mbit/sec, but
    it's better than dialup.

    Since the phone line already exists, the question
    is how would you backhaul a digital signal from
    a DSLAM. On my installation, that's a fiber optic
    cable. If they can put in cell towers, there's
    probably some sort of infrastructure they could
    tap into.

    My ADSL signal originally came directly from the CO, and
    I got about 3Mbit/sec or so. Today, from the CO to my
    street corner is fiber optic cable, and from the
    corner to my house is ADSL. The rate can be higher
    because the (analog portion) distance is short.

    There's a speed versus distance graph here, if
    you're ever wondering why your service sucks.

    https://www.internode.on.net/residential/broadband/adsl/easy_broadband/performance/

    And the signal level is way down in the dirt so to speak.
    The red box at the bottom, stops at -57dB. If you look
    at the layout inside the ADSL modem, that's why the
    signal path from the DAA to the SOC is so carefully
    laid out. And the thing is still pretty easy to tip
    over (loss of sync), and all it takes is a decent
    bit of noise on the AC power cable to the wall adapter,
    to punch through to the analog portion inside the modem.

    Paul
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  • From Computer Nerd Kev@21:1/5 to Computer Nerd Kev on Sun Jun 10 01:50:33 2018
    On 08 Jun 2018, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

    Jerome Tews <jertews7@nomail.com> wrote:
    On Wed, 6 Jun 2018 23:12:38 +0000 (UTC),
    not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:
    Jerome Tews <jertews7@nomail.com> wrote:

    From what I am seeing, Win98 has finally become
    completely unusable for the internet. There are no
    longer any browsers that work. Because of this, I plan
    to cancel my internet service at the end of this month.
    I will have to resort to using my smartphone at WIFI
    spots from now on, because I refuse to use any of
    Microsoft's latest crap operating systems.

    It depends on what you mean by usable. If you disable
    scripts or use a light weight browser and just put up with
    some websites not working properly, it may still be usable
    most of the time.

    "Off By One" is a newer (than the rest) light browser with
    win98 support:
    http://www.offbyone.com/offbyone/index.htm

    Have you actually tried to use Offbyone lately?
    I used to use that quite a lot. It does NOT load any httpS
    sites. At least 90% of all sites are now httpS. And every
    day more sittes are going with httpS.

    Ah sorry, no I don't use it much.

    It does say on the Overview page:
    "Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) support provided by optional
    OpenSSL
    libraries for secure navigation to https:// addresses."

    I also found this page:
    http://offbyone.com/offbyone/ob1_ssl_support.htm

    But nevertheless, running it on XP, I can't seem to get HTTPS
    pages to load even with the SSL libraries in C:\WINDOWS
    \SYSTEM32. Perhaps it doesn't use TLS, which all the websites
    require now, or its included certificates are all out of date.

    One of the most annoying things about HTTPS is how all the
    encryption systems age so quickly.

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  • From Paul@21:1/5 to Jerome Tews on Sat Jun 9 22:36:50 2018
    Jerome Tews wrote:

    Thanks for the explanation of the Raspberry. Sounds like a decent setup,
    but still dont solve my lack of USABLE home internet.

    Enter your ZIP code in here.

    http://www.wispa.org/Directories/Find-a-WISP

    Prices vary, so don't give up on it.

    Paul
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  • From J. P. Gilliver (John)@21:1/5 to jertews7@nomail.com on Sun Jun 10 07:14:06 2018
    In message <p24ohdtp1spaqig13106sis188fi3pje3g@4ax.com>, Jerome Tews <jertews7@nomail.com> writes:
    []
    It's just not usable anymore, and thus beginning July 1, I am
    disconnecting. In all honesty, I can drive to town and use WIFI at the
    []
    You will be missed. Perhaps you could keep on the free one, just for
    usenet?
    --
    J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

    If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear. - Preface to "Animal Farm"
    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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