Old VCR

>I can even chat with friends on it via IRC

With Bitlbee you can connect to far more services with just an IRC client:

https://bitlbee.org

Public servers:

https://www.bitlbee.org/main.php/servers.html

On each server, join the "&bitlbee" channel (not a typo),
and run the "commands" plugins in order to see the supported protocols.

Usage upon connecting:

https://www.bitlbee.org/user-guide.html#quickstart

You can also put a RaspberryPi in your LAN with Alpine Linux "diskless" install (the best solution to avoid wearing out the SD card) and the bitlbee daemon. Then you would just connect to your RaspberryPi IP instead of the public server one.

Finally, I forgot: sites like http://68k.news, http://frogfind.com will run on legacy browsers for System 7.

And if you get a Gopher browser, head to gopher://hngopher.com

MacLynx works: https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2020/11/maclynx-beta-2.html

Open it, press g, enter gopher://hngopher.com and have fun. Also, gopher://magical.fish and gopher://gopherddit.com

There is Crypto Anciennce, TLS for legacy systems, but I didn try:

https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2020/11/fun-with-crypto-ancienne-tls-for.html

On the utf-8 issue for Lynx visiting this site over HTTPS, just choose the Mac Encoding in the options (press "O" under Lynx (capital O) and then configure it for the Mac Encoding and save your settings). It might solve it.

Reminds me of the COMP-X machine and CAP-X assembly language that was invented for Japanese IT exams.

It was invented so that nobody taking the test would be at an advantage or disadvantage depending on platforms they had experience with, so the exams could just test pure understanding of the concepts.

But standardized exams being what they are, so many people started studied this specific ISA that eventually it made its way all the way to the US in the form of a few Tandy pocket computers sold at Radio Shack.

Exhaustive article about the history and the ISA here: http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2024/02/cap-x-and-comp-x-how-tandy-pocket.html

Another example (http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-pong-you-could-program-possibly-mos.html):

“Texas Instruments, typical of their modus operandi in that era, had the most over-engineered solution. Instead of all-in-one chips, TI offered separate ICs for scoring, various types of graphics (walls, balls, stick figures, cars, rockets, etc.), game logic chips and position generators. You combined them together to make a complete game, which was fairly flexible for circuit designers but caused an expensive parts count for manufacturing, and the chip line ended up being a flop.”

That was supposed to compete with a single chip solution.

Some more market and technical information about the DEC PRO/VENIX system here:

https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2025/03/more-pro-for-dec-professional-380.html

And this wonderful quip here:

"Keep that kernel version history in mind for when we get to oddiments of the C compiler. As for networking, though, with the exception of UUCP over serial, none of these early versions of Venix on either the PDP-11 or 8086 supported any kind of network connectivity out of the box."

https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2025/04/lets-give-provenix-barely-adequate-pre.html

Apple did release a LocalTalk card for PCs circa 1987, although the article I found about it shows MS-DOS drivers[1]. AFAIK until Windows for Workgroups MS-DOS provided network file access, so perhaps this is referring to support for AppleTalk printers???

Alternatively, 2.11 was 1989, and I’m sure Ethernet cards would be available for NuBus Macs by that time. Or perhaps even those funky SCSI to Ethernet adapters for those without.

[1] http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2020/07/appleshare-pc-on-ms-dos-and-apple.html