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Updated Vintage Web Proxy (markdown)

Daniel Markstedt 2021-11-07 10:27:43 -08:00
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Vintage-Web-Proxy.md

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If you're reading this, you may just have gotten your vintage computer online, through RaSCSI's DaynaPORT adapter emulation, other any other means. And now you're asking yourself, what's next? While a vintage computer is excellent for [telneting into a BBS](https://www.pcmag.com/news/7-modern-bbses-worth-calling-today) such as Level 29, or browsing websites made for vintage computers such as http://www.theoldnet.com or http://68k.news.
However, the broader modern Web is an unforgiving place for a vintage computer and its equally vintage browsers. The sheet amount of data that they send to the user agent, javascript libraries thousands of lines long, massive images in exotic formats, multimedia, etc... It may take minutes to load a page, and minutes more to parse and reflow the DOM over and over, and you're lucky if it doesn't crash when running out of memory. And the biggest practical hurdle: the move to enforcing encrypted https connections on a vast majority of sites (I blame Google for that) and even the last versions of classic Mac OS (or AmigaOS, Windows 98, etc.) have root certificates long since expired.
However, the broader modern Web is an unforgiving place for a vintage computer and its equally vintage browsers. The sheet amount of data that they send to the user agent, javascript libraries thousands of lines long, massive images in exotic formats, multimedia, etc... It may take minutes to load a page, and minutes more to parse and reflow the DOM over and over, and you're lucky if it doesn't crash when running out of memory.
And the biggest practical hurdle: the move to enforcing encrypted https connections on a vast majority of sites (I blame Google for that) that even the last versions of classic Mac OS (or AmigaOS, Windows 98, etc.) aren't able to decrypt due to expired root certificates or other cryptographic limitations.
Vintage Web Proxy servers to the rescue! The Raspberry Pi that RaSCSI runs in is a versatile little device, and if it is not already overburdened by other software, it should be able to run a proxy server in parallel with RaSCSI. This page will cover a few options, tested in particular with older Macs.