Atari ST on the Web
| Status | Completed June 2018 |
| Goal | Connect my venerable Atari ST to the World Wide Web. Browse some sites! |
The Atari ST was released in 1985. Is it usable on the modern Web today? How far can I push the experience?
Starting with a NetUSBee Ethernet adapter, I installed TOS drivers and the STinG TCP/IP stack. I also used an ET4000 graphics card to push the resolution to a (somewhat) modern 1024x768 in 256 colours.
With those (and a successful TCP/IP ping) in place, I downloaded and configured Crystal Atari Browser (CAB).
The Web experience is slow and doesn’t support CSS - which rules out a lot of content. However I was able to make older sites work.
In search of a better experience: it might be possible to use a proxy server to strip CSS and shrink images. Or use a text-based browser like Lynx. Browsh also looks interesting. Lots of avenues for future investigation!
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