Mr Browser – Macintosh Repository file downloader that runs directly on 68k Macs | Hacker News Reader

Mr Browser – Macintosh Repository file downloader that runs directly on 68k Macs

macintoshrepository.org

87 pointszdw20 comments

This landed at exactly the right time for me. I've just pulled out my 7100/66av power pc from the cupboard to play with. It lacks any modern browser (and probably the power to deal with https) so I resorted to hosting simple http server on my modern computer and downloading things I wanted to there and then going to the mac to download it again.

If it helps, Macintosh Garden has a FTP server, but everything is un-organized in one of 2 folders, apps and games. Too slow to get a directory listing on these older systems but you can get a file directly if you know what you’re looking for.

> It lacks any modern browser (and probably the power to deal with https)

It should be able to run Netscape 4, but HTTPS will indeed be an issue - less because of speed, more because a browser that old will lack support for modern cipher suites.

I fixed that

https://bbenchoff.github.io/pages/MacSSL.html

There's a modern Lynx build for Classic Mac.

Also: gopher://magical.fish has tons of services, among gopher://sdf.org for phlogs and gopher://bitreich.org/1/lawn for a big directory.

And, by connecting to the public servers of http://bitlbee.org with any IRC client you can access modern IRC+TLS servers and a good chunk of protocols too (Discord, Mastodon, Steam, Jabber, Linc, Facebook chat, Telegram....)

If you mean the updated MacLynx I've been working on, I don't have TLS in it yet, but now that the PowerPC version is back I'm planning to embed Crypto Ancienne in it for opportunistic TLS 1.3 (unfortunately too much for anything less than a high end 68040).

https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2025/04/maclynx-beta-6-back-to-p...

Also be sure to check out FrogFind!

http://frogfind.com

Currently returning server error.

A stock Amiga 3000 with a 25 MHz m68030 can browse modern sites using modern SSL [0] without much fuss. Granted, some m68k optimizations have been done, but if an '030 can do it, an '040 can, and a PowerPC 601 absolutely can.

[0] https://www.ibrowse-dev.net/amissl/

I just discovered this 2 weeks ago when I missed mac OS 9 so much compared to modern macOS I wanted to see how far I would get. The answer is, there is promising progress on TLS 1.2 but it’s not there yet.

Very cool and much needed. I run an iMac G3 on OS 9, and it’s a bit of a challenge to download files on because most websites don’t work, and the FTP directory listings on Macintosh Garden are so long that they never finish loading for me. Granted it’s nothing compared to the file transfer difficulties of the past, but it’s nice to see a period-correct workaround.

I can post a text file of apps and games if you want, or a directory with txt files split by letters.

Oh, that’s quite alright, the way I do it is to browse the site on my phone which lists the file names for each download, then just type them in to the FTP program. You really need to browse the site to know what everything is, anyhow, as there are multiple downloads for each program- demos, different languages, patches etc. Thank you though!

Macintosh Garden over gopher and FTP:

gopher://phytocodex.porcupine.club/1

ftp://repo1.macintoshgarden.org/Garden/

Although very cool, I lack the emotional context to understand why ppl work on it, what is the motivation that drives them ?

Not trying to offend, just trying to understand

I’ll hazard some guesses, since no one has replied.

- Big fish small pond. Because so few people are tackling problems like this, it’s much easier to get noticed and appreciated.

- Nostalgia. I think most people have a soft spot for the computers they grew up with. For me, it’s the TI-99/4A that I learned how to program on.

- Technical challenge. Making a decades-obsolete computer work with the modern world is not trivial.

>25 years ago I worked for BBN, and they had a warehouse of old equipment, including the IMPs that made Arpanet work, a pallet of early Macs, etc. I grabbed a hard drive to use with a routing project; it had 1GB of disk, and was the size of two rack units. Working with very old computers can be fascinating as well as frustrating.

Is there a hotline server still up wihth 68k mac software? I remember that Hotline client was popular around then!

There are many. There's even a modern macOS client. https://github.com/mierau/hotline

68,000 macs to run a program to download something seems a bit too much to me.

For some reason the first 10 seconds of the video felt like satire. Only after it didn't continue with cookie banners and "Do you want to send anonymous usage?" dialogs I assumed it's being serious.

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