Any tips for getting internet working smoothly on older hardware?

I know this is a general computing thing, but if anybody knows anything about this field, then it's you guys.

I've tried to go online with:

pentium 266 laptop, 128mb ram

ibm p4? 1ghz (laptop cpu socket style) - 2gb ddr 2 ram!!!

sempron xp2800 latop, 512mb ram

p4 3ghz

core 2 quad

I was in a situation with the 266 laptop where it was the only computer left in the house and I needed to look up my house insurance info. I only just got to the pdf with all the details before the swap file started going crazy.

1ghz doesn't seem to be enough to run todays' flash-heavy internet, even with ad blockers.

Even the sempron isn't so great. The p4 would just freeze every so often, you'd hear the cpu fan maxing out, and it would unfreeze (on flash-heavy things)

the core 2 quad is starting to show its age but I think that's because I haven't formatted since 2011.

Best I can think of is to try the Links2 graphical browser. It doesn't support most of the modern bullshit the web's been larded down with, so that part shouldn't be an issue any more with it, although a lot of sites won't degrade particularly gracefully.

Never heard of a p5 clocked at 266 MHz, but anyway 128 MB won't get you anywhere these days. So many websites today don't do any kind of graceful fallback for browsers without javascript, which means most of the light footprint ones are useless in many places. You can still try though... Lynx, Links, ELinks, w3m, Dillo, and others not based on webkit engine, because they're smaller.

You can also try to free up some memory by stopping all unnecessary programs/services and unloading uncritical drivers (if your OS lets you...) You could also try some kind of tiny Linux distro, the type that's really designed for embedded systems or routers, and is based on really lightweight stuff like busybox, and without bloated desktop junk. You can still surf some websites in console framebuffer with Links-2, or even text console with any textmode browser. You could even try to install FreeDOS and use its Arachne browser.

hex11 said:

Never heard of a p5 clocked at 266 MHz, but anyway 128 MB won't get you anywhere these days. So many websites today don't do any kind of graceful fallback for browsers without javascript, which means most of the light footprint ones are useless in many places. You can still try though... Lynx, Links, ELinks, w3m, Dillo, and others not based on webkit engine, because they're smaller.

You can also try to free up some memory by stopping all unnecessary programs/services and unloading uncritical drivers (if your OS lets you...) You could also try some kind of tiny Linux distro, the type that's really designed for embedded systems or routers, and is based on really lightweight stuff like busybox, and without bloated desktop junk. You can still surf some websites in console framebuffer with Links-2, or even text console with any textmode browser. You could even try to install FreeDOS and use its Arachne browser.

How difficult is it to "tell" freedos about your internet connection? Does it have drivers for all network cards via dosbox or something?

Sadly, there's no "silver bullet" here other than restraining yourself.

By this, I mean avoiding visiting Javascript and Flash heavy sites, and pretty much means that you're barred from watching any kind of online video from within a browser. Actually, the latter doesn't work smoothly with anything under a Pentium 4@2.4 GHz, and even then only with stuff limited to 240p-360p.

"Avoiding Javascript" today of course is like trying to dodge rain. But you can avoid visiting sites with heavy popups, many ads etc. Basically, visit only what would exist back in 1999 ;-)

If you are aware of the limitations, you can still use it for surfing, but don't make the mistake of letting "uneducated" people use it for "unrestricted" surfing: they'll just mangle it into a miserable pile of software overheads.

Using an older browser may provide enough "self filtering" against such problematic content, but you may discover that many websites don't have a pure HTML fallback (despite the recommendation that each website should have such a fallback) and thus will be virtually unusable. So again, you'll have to browse mostly "old" or simple enough content, with an old browser. Which might be OK, if what you're after is mostly scientific/technical information, which tends to be on very plain websites or even plaintext format.

I would definitely looking into expanding the diameter of your tubes.

Besides that, I would use Opera if you have severe processor restraints. It is a very lightweight browser and a pleasure to use. It is sort of like how Firefox was 8 years ago. And sort of how Chrome was 3 years ago.

Isn't Opera just a reskin of some other browser these days?

invictius said:

How difficult is it to "tell" freedos about your internet connection? Does it have drivers for all network cards via dosbox or something?

Dosbox is totally different altogether, as it's just a guest VM running inside your OS (Windows, OS/X, Unix, or whatever...) and so it doesn't have to worry about hardware drivers at all.

I haven't used FreeDOS (don't have any hardware old enough it would make sense) but in the 90's I installed some DOS "packet drivers" for my NE2000 network card, and a TCP/IP stack plus network programs like ping, ftp, telnet, Lynx, etc. I think most of that stuff was downloaded from the SimtelNet site. It's even possible the NE2000 card included floppy disk with DOS drivers on it (along with some for OS/2 and Novel). But for many years now, most hardware doesn't come with DOS drivers so that's your biggest hurdle with FreeDOS. They probably include common drivers on their install media, but can't possibly have everything. That's always the problem with these projects. So you have to try and see if it works with your hardware...

Btw, you should totally try OS/2 on that machine. It probably has decent browser like old version of Opera.

You could always try browsing with some "vintage" browser (like an ancient version of Netscape Navigator or Mosaic), but probably the most lightweight & full-featured browser you can find is [flame shields on] IE 6, which is already installed on every XP box. Yeah, it has a mountain of security issues, but it's also one of the best, performance-wise. Can't have everything, I guess.

Google Chrome you say? Yeah, that's a good and fast browser....only that getting it to work on a "vintage" PC now has been made harder because of an additional "hardware requirements" check that Google has added to the installer.

I'm am not aware which is the lower cutoff limit, CPU-wise, however Google Chrome won't even install on a Pentium 4 with 2 GB RAM and Windows 7, if the videocard is e.g. an Nvidia MX440, unless you find an older version (anything prior to 2014). I suspect that the "cutoff" is the videocard (or its drivers) supporting at least DX10 or something, at least on Windows 7, but I got a refusal to install even on Windows XP, on an Athlon XP1400+ laptop which I had always used with Chrome until recently.

Of course, if using older browsers of any kind, remember than you might be open to "classical" exploits and security issues.