2024-02-10 | [retrocomputing] [pc]
Big fan of the old, basic, lightweight web 1.0 form and functionality (and to use the internet on my old computers), but making sites for these old things can be tricky if you don't feel like dragging out an old machine and getting it set up.
Instead, I'll use emulation. I'm interested in the very early stuff, so I'll setup Windows 3.11 with Netscape or something.
Regular DosBox cannot do this, so use DoxBox-X. I use Linux and the flatpack package did not work for me, so grab the source of the latest release and build it.
per https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/issues/4482, it seems the latest 2023.10.06 has issues, I tried 2023.09.01 instead
I use Linux Mint (ubuntu based). Download source, untar, and cd into dosbox-x directory
sudo apt install automake gcc g++ make libncurses-dev nasm libsdl-net1.2-dev libsdl2-net-dev libpcap-dev libslirp-dev fluidsynth libfluidsynth-dev libavdevice58 libavformat-dev libavcodec-dev libavcodec-extra libavcodec-extra58 libswscale-dev libfreetype-dev libxkbfile-dev libxrandr-dev
./build-debug-sdl2
sudo make install
new build should already have networking enabled
I could not get it to work using my wlo1 interface, which is (mostly) expected; it needs an ethernet interface. There might be some way to make a virtual interface cable in linux which shares the network - I tried a couple of things before giving up and just using a USB ethernet adapter.
Some links to possibly get it working on on Wifi (make a virtual ethernet device and get that for forward packets to the wifi, or something)
Set in dosbox-x conf:
[ne2000]
ne2000 = true
nicbase = 300
nicirq = 9
macaddr = AC:DE:48:18:F1:7B
backend = pcap
[ethernet, pcap]
realnic = enx00e04c6c2ed6
timeout = default
Install Windows For Workgroups as normal. Choose IRQ and nicbase as shown above when asked.
Install a better mouse driver that doesn't need to be captured in the dosbox window
Install better video driver
Install Sound Blaster 1.5 @ 220, 7
autoexec section eventually needs to look like:
mount c /home/alnwlsn/.dosbox-x/c
DEVICE C:\WINDOWS\IFSHLP.SYS
call c:\autoexec.bat
c:
IFSHLP is needed to get networking working. Need to set IRQ in windows beforehand or it will break.
Go get Microsoft TCP/IP-32 and extract (is a self extractor), then add the protocols through Windows Setup. I chose DHCP. Then, I rebooted and tired ping.exe 1.1.1.1 - it worked!
Installed Netscape 3.04 - Worked straight away loading http://alnwlsn.com