From the RAT FILES circa 2003: Retro Computing!

The following was originally composed as radio copy for THIS WEEK IN AMATEUR RADIO, first aired in April of 2003. Please click on http://www.twiar.org/ for additional information.

When we had last convened via these very same radio frequencies and telephone transmission wires, we had just concluded our detailed observation of the truly remarkable ARACHNE DOS based Web browser. Per that same elemental moment, I was also preparing to prep and Retro an antique Digital 486 433SX armed to the teeth with Windows 3.11 for Workgroups and take it back to the Internetable status it once had.

Retroing any computer back to the late 20th century is on par to high tailing it over to the local Home Depot with a big wish list of parts to recover an old weather-worn ramshackle homestead. Here though, your Home Depot is the Web and maybe the collective junkboxs of your fellow computer pals and your parts will be the requisite software needed to complete the call as desired to be dialed.

The first three items I requisitioned from our esteemed technical director George Bowen - W2XBS - who had copies of Microsoft DOS Version 6.22, Windows Version 3.1 and the Windows for Workgroups upgrade. The Windows For Workgroups upgrade elevates Windows 3.1 to Windows 3.11 status and comes equipped with the rudimentary networking components necessary to help get the RetroBox online. Your DOS 6.22, Windows 3.1 and 3.11 upgrades can just as easily be found on the Internet, but it may be easier to consult locally first.

You will need the so-called Win-32S upgrade. Win-32S is a little link library of dynamics developed by Microsoft to allow your Windows 3.1 16-bit operating system to run some 32-bit applications. The required file is OLE-32S-13.exe. This package allows for object linking and embedding which is something your current generation Web browser has been doing already to commune with other network devices.

Go find a copy of Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 3.03 for Windows for Workgroups. This is a cool thing because the software contains the browser designed exclusively for the 3.11 environment plus the bonus of an e-mailer, a self-contained Winsock dynamic link library, and most necessary, a built-in telephone dialer that speaks the PPP or Point-to-Point Protocol with your ISP or Internet Service Provider. There is also a 16-bit Internet Explorer Version 4 and a Version 5 available but I believe they are much larger and need more memory plus they are as-is with no e-mailer or dialer.

Secure a copy of Microsoft TCP-32B.exe. This optional executable provides some additional network devices that come standard in Windows 95 and 98, such as a simple telnet program, an FTP and a ping program. These are the elements needed to upgrade your old offline doorstop over to an old online doorstop.

I touched on the Winmodem thing a month back in our last Random Access File where I discussed Arachne DOS Web browser and its complete and total aversion to the Winmodem and its complete and total favoritism to real modems. Then, I did not know what a Winmodem is, but now I do!

Modems are supposed to translate data with compressed sequences of audio tones which are sent across a telephone network and they do! But not so long ago, they did so using a semiconductor chip dedicated to just that assignment. But now, the current buzzwords are: Host signal process, controllerless, host controlled, softmodem. In other words: a Winmodem.

A Winmodem is different from a real modem in that the signal processing is performed by the computer itself, making use of required vendor supplied software, usually Microsoft software or Microsoft compliant software. The Central Processing Unit does the data-to-audio-to-data bit. Thus, using a Winmodem limits your computer to using Windows. Other operating systems such as DOS and Linux require a real modem. But Winmodems are cheaper to make. Once armed with a really real modem with its dedicated data processor chipset, you may be ready to delve into yet another realm of network exploration, that of the deep, dark shadowy, monochromatic, two dimensional world of DOS Interneting where it's just you and the Disk Operating System and nothing else.

While coursing through voluminous volumes of "Cruising The Internet Using DOS" Web pages, I stumbled across an curious though inspiring quote. It read: The biggest disadvantage to DOS is that it's so primitive and the biggest advantage to DOS is that it's so primitive. Having read this, we discover there is an unseen underground armada of computer fans busily drilling deep into the ancient wireline sediment, mining and panning for little bits and bytes, network relics, one time big deal software items such as DOSLynx, Minuet and NetTamer, none of which can do any serious browsing by today's standards other than text with no image or sound at all.

Hardened Internet users dig this kind of world view, shunning the quite spectacular multimedia view of current Web browser technology. These petrified fossils do have value. Quite viable for other functions such as telnet, E-mail and FTP. Of these programs, NetTamer was still being updated as of 2000. NetTamer may still be useful for some of the visually impaired crowd as one easy means to access the Internet. But there are other, even more contemporary DOS network offerings to be unearthed as well. Do a Google search on Barebones E-mailer. The Barebones E-mailer is a scroungy little blister of DOS matter complete with dialer, packet driver and some itty-bitty initialization files, easily configured to dial out of the box and do some e-mail. If you are used to Microsoft Outlook Express, you may find it a little disconcerting to see a few slightly fuzzy grey colored status lines skitter across an otherwise onyx screen, doing the same job in just 1/10th the time.

Another interesting bit of DOS DNA: Referred to as LSPPP, this is a self-contained dialer and packet driver. All functions must be phrased as a command line text statement. No mouse clicks, drags or drops. Thus far, I have had little luck. LSPPP will dial out for me, talk to the local ISP in the PPP for me but then can't complete the network connect.

As we draw near to the conclusion of this month's continental drift into RetroComputerLand, I find myself imagining if there are still any stand alone dialup bulletin board systems in service given the billions and billions of pages scattered about the globe over the World Wide Web. So complete and totally compatible is the Web that onetime Internet hammers and screwdrivers such as Gopher, Archie and Veronica are no longer viable and are no longer employed. There are quite a few BBSs still in service which can be accessed through amateur packet radio and European citizen band packet radio networks and many of these same are also reachable over the Internet but this is not quite the same as the original dialup BBS of the Prodigy and FidoNet venue.

This is probably about as Retro as you could go, short of unearthing Cambrian Era rock deposits such as the Atari 400, Atari 800,the Commodore 64, the Radioshack TRS 80, the RadioShack Color Computer or the Osborne.

This is also where we came in just about five years back when this monthly rant was first billed as "Packet Radio's Best Kept Secrets". I recall discussing how to take telephone modem terminal programs such as ProComm Plus, Commo and HyperTerminal and adjust them for use with the packet radio terminal node controller. Now, I am imagining how cool it would be to take telephone modem terminal programs such as ProComm Plus, Commo and HyperTerminal to find a near extinct but still breathing dialup BBS to log on to. Maybe too, a point-to-point computer-to-computer connection with a subsequent ASCII text, X, Y or ZModem or Kermit session. None of which I got to do because I was something of a Billy-Come-Lately having spent the latter 1990'solely with packet radio.

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From the RAT FILES circa 2003: Arachne!

The following copy was originally composed as radio copy for THIS WEEK IN AMATEUR RADIO which first aired in March of 2003. Please click on http://www.twiar.org/ for additional information on this amateur radio audio news service.

This is no real shocking news. But. I have too much electronic junk lying around the house. Plastic irregular dollar-store storage containers bulging with mostly slightly vintage electronic junk. Not quite truly vintage. Only just slightly vintage. But not even really EBAYable yet either. Yes, I know. You got the same crap.

Your distinctive selection of the crap and the physical distribution and the ultimate disposition of the crap may vary somewhat from mine, but in the end, it's really going to be the same mess of wires, the same mass of cables, the same concoction of connectors, plus old radios, maybe many old radios, maybe some not-so-old radios, a couple of new radios and certainly a few computers.

Maybe a late 90's Christmastime 486.
A dusty musty mid-90's 386.
A rusty crusty early 90's 286.
Or perhaps a truly eroded if not totally corroded Dawn Of Man 8086.

I recently moved..again, this time back to little old upstate Albany, New York many miles from my beautiful lakeside shanty at rustic Sand Lake, home of course to This Week In Amateur Radio, North America's premier audio news service devoted exclusively to the fine art of ham radio and related subject matter. I remain as always, your humble servant, Bill Baran - N2FNH - with more chozzerai, more audio chachkes from the Random Access Files, at one time referred to as Packet radio's Best Kept Secrets. I still do packet but it's really Internet packet. The local radio networks in this area have fallen into disrepair, largely forgotten and now virtually unusable beyond the local horizon. My original interest in packet has however resulted in the amassing of an amazing stellar array of beige colored Dumpster Babies. Dumpster Babies are those abandoned and orphaned computers that nobody else wants.

But me.

A case in point: a friend of a friend had a gorgeous like-new Hewlett Packard 486 that about five years ago he wanted to sell to me for 250 dollars. Now five years later, this friend of a friend says: "Please! Just take it already!" An hour later, the HP, complete with CD-ROM, 1X, maybe 2X if I'm lucky, a 3 and 1/2 inch floppy - AND - a 5 1/4 inch floppy, is rigged and plugged in. As the box boots up, my heart sinks as I observe the BIOS screen summarily summarize in steely cold black and white frosty font that there is only 7.136 Megs of extended memory in the box. The machine came equipped with an internal modem, a sound card and a scanner card, which was nice. This friend of a friend has some visual impairment so the scanner for him was a necessity.

The HP came with Windows 95, still usable but no candle to a Windows XP. Imagine my further surprised when I discover that this Win95 is version 4.00. 950, most likely one of the very first if not the very first retail version of 95 to hit the market. So archaic is this copy that there is no Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser, no Microscoft Outlook Express e-mailer and no Microsoft DUN, that's your Dial Up Networking software. Just the alphabet soup modem Hyperterminal program on board. Even worse, the harddrive is only 162 Megs in size! What a heart failure! There would not be any space left at all if I wiped the drive clean and installed a more recent and more viable copy of Win95 so forget about Win98. Still, it was a FREEbie.

Now, I could go through the bother of installing a better harddrive and maybe scrounge some extra memory but this would be work and maybe I will do it someday, but not today. I decided to keep the computer in Retro mode and preserve the primordial Win95 in its virginal state but Iwould make this lead weight Internetable using not the monopolistic, pan-global Microsoft Windows but a fascinating operating environment called... Arachne.

Have you heard about this? Arachne, and the current version is at 1.70 at press time, is a full-featured FREEWARE Internet HTML browser which you can get from the good folks at http://www.arachne.cz that comes with a built- in PPP or Point-to-Point protocol dialer and the option of several TCPIP and multimedia plug-ins to make the program completely Internetable and completely entertainable. Arachne is designed to run over most versions of Disk Operating System - or - DOS as well as Linux and is very much reminiscent of Windows 3.1 or Win95 but it is not a Windows thing at all. Arachne is built to run on any PC from pristine Pentiums down to eroded 8088s. What's more, the executable is under a Meg in virtual size before installation which means it can be physically transported on just one 3 and a 1/2 floppy disk.

Installation is straightforward and the prospective user is prompted along the way to set up the dialer and e-mail configurations and also too, various miscellaneous user customization parameters. Perhaps the most annoying aspect of the Arachne program is its auto-modem detect feature. The help files stress that Arachne does not like Winmodems. A Winmodem? Since I really do not know, I am guessing that Winmodems are designed to work within the Windows environment and to function using Windows drivers that are inconsistent with the DOS world. (See a future Random Rant where the Winmodem is better defined and clearly hated by many Retro people!)

It would appear almost all current generation modems are Winmodems so don't be surprised if the auto-detect does does not find it and the manual setup format produces no result. The modems that did work here were a US Robotics 28.8 external modem and an Intel 14.4 FAX modem designed for use with early 21st century laptops. Curiously, the internal Reveal 28.8 modem that came with the Hewlett Packard load was well-liked by Arachne.

How does Arachne compare to Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape or Opera? In terms of shear performance, these advanced browsers easily outpace the Arachne product but then again you can't install an Explorer or Netscape on a 286 or an 8086. Arachne does strange things too, like convert incoming JPEGs to Bitmap images. We are advised JPEGs are slow to decompress so this scheme expedites conversion time. The result is images on a 16 color screen look a lot like 18th century pastel oil paintings sketched by shower-needy and badly unshaven psychotic (scribble in this space the name of your most disliked European country and not just France - JUST KIDDING!) painters.

Since this process may take a little time, Arachne is user friendly enough to ask if you would like to have some coffee while it processes. If it sounds like I am software bashing, please forgive me. I beg your pardon. I am not. Only because these appear to be the most objectionable aspects of the program so far. The learning curve associated with Arachne is fairly shallow so you can learn most if not all its functions within maybe an hours' time and still have a fun time the same night you install it. Some of the FREE plug-ins are truly eclectic, like a speaker WAV thing that lets you play WAV files through your teeny tiny insignificant little computer speaker, that one that goes beep or possibly boop or maybe bammp on boot up. The audio quality is synonymous with the kind of sound that squeeks out of stuffed animal toys embedded with cheap cruddy chips. But you can also download DOSAMP. DOSAMP is the non-graphical version of the NullSoft WINAMP product which can be used to play MP3 audio.

Any compressed download material from the Arachne website is expanded by the system's Automatic Package Manager, a device similar to WinZIP. Without prompting, the APM explodes Arachne plug-ins and also publishes a report summarizing success or failure plus a user synopsis. I just installed Arachne on all my Dumpster Babies but where this package really shines is on my somewhat Silver Age Toshiba Satellite crappy little laptop and of course, my equally almost-ancient Hewlett Packard 486 and this is where we came in. My completely shameless almost-infomercial-like testimonial is now... Over.

Thus, if you have old PCs concealed in closets, clustered in cellars, archived in attics, banished in basements or languishing in lavatories, get your children to drag them out because they are too heavy for you to drag out and prepare to revitalize. Hey, if we hams can refurbish old Hallicrafters, Hammarlunds and Heathkits, we can do the same with our Dells, HPs and IBMs. Remember, the site to check out is http://www.arachne.cz/

And now, as I sit here now topping off the install of an original Microsoft Internet Explorer version 3.03 (designed exclusively) for Windows For Workgroups 3.11 in that same crappy little Toshiba laptop, already loaded with Arachne, I bid you a fondue with a promise, a mandate even, to return with more curiously idiosyncratic and highly decentralized thought to your radio speaker in just one month's time. Let's face, a little goes a long way! Hey! Didn't I just say that about Arachne? More later!
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