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Comment by stormbrew | Hacker News Reader

Well, ya know, there were browsers for win3.1. They didn't time warp to the 2014 internet, but they did work with the 1994 internet thanks to trumpet winsock.

http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Cello.png

Those were the days.

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And using SLIP connections, with SLiRP on the server side, likely over a 1,200bps dial-up.

It was a patchwork of hacks, just to make Windows use IP over a serial line, so you could use Mosaic and Pegasus.

Still, it was a magical time.

Mmmm...trumpet winsock. One of the better tcp/ip stacks for win3.1. Jumping through the hoops needed to get a second phone line in the dorm room so my roommate and I could have our own dedicated dial-ups was fun too.

Yep. I felt so awesome when I got slirp working on the dialup shell I had access to. Not gonna lie, one of the first things I did was very slowly load some porn.

Don't feel bad, I think porn was the "killer app" for the early internet. Not faring so badly on today's internet either.

Not quite that slow in 1994. I had a CompuServe account with a 9600bps dialup around then...

Oh lucky you; in 93-94 I could only dream about a 9600bps connection. At the time I had a Hayes 2400, but lines were so noisy that most of the time it'd connect only at 1200.

(worth noticing: I was in South America back then, where the telephony system was less developed and a lot more expensive than the US)

Or Trumpet + Mosaic, which came out in 1993

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser)

But I get his point completely. When I think back to that time of using Win 3.1, I have fond memories of Encyclopedia's on CD-ROM, Solitaire, Paint and Minesweeper, but I don't really think about the early Internet experiences much - probably because there just wasn't much out there yet.

You could get IE5 for win3.1, which isn't a million miles behind IE6 that a lot of people are still using / developing for.

I concur. My first experiences on the internet were on a Mac with Netscape Navigator 1 & 2.0, and Netscape Navigator 2.0 and 3.0 GOLD on Windows 3.1. This was in 1995 as well.

Ah Trumpet Winsock!

Berkeley sockets for Windows

Terrible Haiku...

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