Browsing the Web on a Vintage Apple //e with Contiki! 

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This is one of those channels you stumble across and now you have hours of binge watching ahead of you

"mooooom, I need an Apple II!" "for what, dear?" "to browse the Web with, duh!"

Frogfind is easily one of my favourite inventions of the last 10 years!

Computers ending up as ewaste is a national tragedy! Save the computers!

I've been using frogfind on my Wii so it can browse the web again! Granted the Wii isn't as old as the computers other people are using, it still is a roughly 15 year old powerpc computer.

I bet if you showed this to an Apple engineer in 1983, it would totally blow their mind! Not the whole logging onto a remote service part, modems and dial-up services were around in the 60s (home users started getting access to such services in the late 70s, and I'm pretty sure Apple had their own internal service for e-mail and such in the 80s), it's the complexity of the software and the depth of information it gives you access to that would flip their lid. We're talking about a time when the most complex thing a computer could do was to help you balance the household budget with a tiny, single workbook spreadsheet. The fact that you can boot a simple Disk Operating System (with mouse support!) from a floppy disk, twiddle a few settings, then have access to an endless feed of news and knowledge, or chat in real-time with dozens, hundreds, or possibly thousands of people across the world - that would've seemed like the amazing future that science fiction has promised for decades prior to the 80s! And in a way, it still kind-of blows my mind too!

It's great to see my work on Contiki (and my Telnet65 in another video) shown to such a broad audience. And thanks for creating FrogFind and 68K News!

This is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. The internet through a green-monochrome display is a beautiful thing

I remember back in 1984 that Apple IIs did have a dial up modem. I remember that because I used to use it it was slow as hell but it did work you used a telephone that you connected to a suction cup receiver, and you could go on connections that had programs on them.

My 2018 mbp doesn't like mentions of the new Apple Silicon based ones. It's bad for it's confidence. I can't imagine what your beige box must be feeling

Hey, I resent the “really old computer” comment at the end. I was 22 when I got my first Apple computer. From my perspective, the “internet” was late to the party. We still did great things back then with 300baud modems and BBSes. In fact, we were able to bring together 1000 members in our south Florida club back then. I don’t want to sound like some old grandpa but we were able to do some amazing stuff back then (think Guy Kawasaki at one of our meetings). I love the internet today but it doesn’t have the same impact for me as when we got on the ‘net “way back then”. Done now. I’ll use my walker to leave. (HA!) Keep up the good work.

This is such a wild and cool application of technology. I've heard a lot about doctors in remote locations still using dial up BBS to share information, and I always thought that was pretty fantastic. This only adds to that level of awesome. Probably wouldn't want to use the modern internet on a dialup, even with Frogfind, but it still feels like it could be done. Great job. Thanks so much for sharing this. :)

Who gives this a thumbs down?! Honestly! Great video again, very thorough walk through. One of my first videos on YT was about using an Apple 2e on the web, great to see this one bring it all together!

VERY impressive indeed for an Apple IIe. Good that we have 80-column screens instead of 40 columns. VERY GOOD WORK! I may try it myself some time. It seems to runs on an AppleWin Apple II Emulator, then I don't have to buy the Uthernet.

Very nice system and review! BTW, you have an earlier unenhanced IIe here. ReactiveMicro sells the enhancement kit that includes the most recent ROMs, including the MouseText character set that would give you a proper mouse cursor, and the newer 65C02 CPU that should let you run all of the later 8-bit Apple II applications

Well, I can see quite a few other retro channels showing this off. Super cool

Honestly ive been looking for a 'primitive' internet experience. I would love to get a vintage computer like this and use it this way. Its comforting to me that an option like this exists.

Just today discovered your channel. I have been wondering for several years, with the expansion of vintage/retro computing of every conceivable brand of computer, if people out there were really doing internet apps and sites for the old machines. It is cool to see that you have actually done it. Keep up the great work. Looking forward to discovering what else the vintage/retro community is doing out there.

In one word: awesome!! I actually have an Uthernet II card lying around, so this is my project for today. Thanks so much for Frogfind!!

Stumble accros this channel due to RU-vid suggestions, great source of information and finish to push me into more Mac vintage shenanigans, as I’m already in retro computing. So thank you and keep up your instructive shenanigans

Got a good laugh. We had those monitors in the computer lab in my middle school. Those poor screens never got tilted with the tilt switch. *push* CREEK "STOP DOING THAT!", screamed the lab teacher. Good times.

Love it... And a philly local ... This is amazing ... Been using 68k.news on my old Compaq presario.. I'd love to see more retro sites put up ..as well as a return to instant messenger and icq... Those were the good ol days

This really takes me back to my first days of the internet. I used an apple iie with the monochrome screen in a computer lab at my university, circa 1994 (it was the lab for the non-computer geeks, so we got the older computers at the time), and I mostly used it to read all the articles I could find about Smashing Pumpkins, lol. I just got a “new to me” apple iie yesterday and I’m pretty excited to be able to use it for things like this!

Minor point, but the card's name is not pronounced like "other-net" but like "ooth-er-net" (ooth as in tooth). It's a reference to King Uther Pendragon, father of King Arthur in British legend.

I forgot to let you know after the earlier video, I tried FrogFind and 68k-news on my HP Palmtop with WWW/LX and ran into a few problems which I was able to diagnose. First, some of the links (and other HTML attributes) in your generated pages use a single tick around the URL instead of the standard quote mark. This should be easy to fix if you haven't already. Second, the browser can't handle long URLs so the article links can't be loaded. Working around this would probably require an integral URL shortener. Given enough time I could probably do this myself but I'm lazy. I don't know if there's a fork which has already done this. Oh, I almost forgot, thanks for creating it in the first place! Other than these two issues it's a great service.

That ADT Pro bootstrapping is pretty neat, I'll have to try it out

This is the coolest thing I've seen today.

Amazing That Is The Great Thing About The Apple Community We All Work Together To Kept The Older Vintage Tech Working In This Modern World Great Job Sean

I have seen a video yesterday where someone uses his C64 with Contiki to browse the web. Sure it was a little slower while rendering the webpage but things actually work really well when there's just or mostly text. In fact, sometimes I still do that on modern machines if my Internet connection is really bad or if I need that retro feeling. Gives you a good feeling how the majority of a website these days is nothing but graphics and JS too. Neither of which necessary if all you want is reading news.

This looks like what the first web i ever used dialed into a VAX when i was in college.

2:18 That's because accessibility was Woz's vision. Jobs wanted everything closed and seamless. Woz wanted everything buildable.

I have one of these for my IIgs and as of yesterday the IIgs actually works 😁 Although I have a Booti card in mine, but I’m pretty sure there is a Contiki 2mg or PO image kicking around.

it would be cool if you can make a telnet version of frogfind so that vintage computers can use native terminal emulators with those cheapy serial/esp8266 modules without the need to run a full tcp stack on the machine. ie. a type of bbs to html gateway ...

when he waves his hand like its like a cartoon comedy lol

dude, this is so cool! I'd love to acquire an old apple ii

IRC....one of the first Internet apps I started using in 1987.

i sold one of these 2e's with a color monitor 2 or 3 years ago. i Still have a mono chrome shoulda kept the color it was beautiful playing pacman on it.

can't wait to see this done on a 60s era ibm mainframe

Action Retro (a.k.a "The Hand") is the right hand of retro tech. I love frogfind and 68k.news! Thanks so much!

Hello from a former NJ resident viewer. Not a turnpike exit resident, but Sussex County.

I always knew this was possible. Now, it's time to dig out all of my old APPLE II+and IIe computers and have some fun! I must have at least 15 of them plus all kinds of software, manuals, drives, monitors, hard drives and so on. Play time!

Thanks! I’m going to visit your custom pages next time I get online with my Dreamcast!

It's the Fallout world coming to life.

I have a feeling that an os as simple as this could be ported to scratch, a highly limited programming language. I will keep you updated

Fun fact about IRC, if you create a Twitch bot, it will use the IRC protocol to connect to the chat. I don't know if this is just twitch thinking its a good interface or if twitch perhaps uses irc internally for all its chat. I think that would make sense, since IRC servers are tried and tested for decades for handling loads of chat.

I'm watching this video on my Apple ][ right now, and I would love to upgrade to an Apple //e.

One word: Amazing! 👍🏻

Dude, I REALLY admire what you are doing here but not just for retro computing. There is a significant percentage of the earth’s population that not only have sub-par computational power but also terrible internet access. What you are demonstrating here is just how much INFORMATION can still be provided to humans living in parts of the world where the internet is a phone line and 300 baud (remember those days? I do.).

Thanks for providing such useful sites. I heard about Frog Find via Reddit and set it as the homepage for my 486 PC. It was this that brought me to your RU-vid channel and I have subscribed. Just finished watching the cursed SE/30 playlist. Awesome work.

It's so weird seeing all these modern day events and sites popping up on that thing, seeing that is actually the same feeling you'd get back in the day seeing a computer do something you didn't know it could do.

This is amazing - thank you!

Very cool! I started out with an Apple 2 (in 1980), but I never used a modem with it, let alone an ethernet card.

Gopher would be awesome to use with this

@action retro would you consider adding captions to your videos?

This is awesome you're doing a great service.🧠📈

I’m definitely trying this on my Apple II

Great work

Super awesome dude!

Love this so much!

Old computers, the best ad blocker on the internet.

That's awesome! I didn't know there was a text based browser for the Apple II.

Man there's few information about this monitor, probably my favourite.

Thank steve and xerox for gui we don't have nightmare how to operating things

You might wanna blur out your own hostname in the IRC section.

one to try if i ever get a apple IIe again. (my last one was when i was 10 and i did not know what to do with it or where to get the programs to run on it.) memories these days i have a Macintosh lc new on the internet love frog find tho it would be nice if there was a list of 68k websites to visit

That ADTPro bootstrapping tool is quite the perfect example of forcing a terminal-based UI design on a graphics-capable UI XD

Awesome stuff, Sean!

Image to text rendering would be really cool on frog find

That's so rad!

I would love to see if it's possible to develop a website using that computer. Maybe that telnet disk could be of use to connect to a modern pc and write code that way I kinda want to try it, but I digress. Rather nice! Even if I'm 2 years late to the party

Looks like the Teletext experience on old TVs

Whats the spec on your IIe? Does it still sport the 64k or have you upgraded it? I know its "unenhanced" so thats a start :). Now you are making me want to get an uthernet card and pop it in something, maybe my II+ although with only 40 columns that might be a disaster!

Thanks ,I promise oneday i will become like you

When you made frogfind and 68k.news, those of us in the BBS world likes talking about and using it. There are some great text-only BBSes that you could telnet to, if that telnet disk allows telnetting out. I wish you’d do a BBs video - I run one, but in ANSI graphics... I’d you’d like to collaborate, or at least get info from me about all text BBSES, there is still a thriving BBS community in 2021. Love your videos, and would love to see you cover Bulletin Board Systems. Some of us still in Fidonet and Fidonet-like message & file networks. It’s right up your alley... or should be. Pick my brain for video research!!

Got tired of all the convenience of my iphone so I cancelled my service and got me an circa 1942 WW2 era Morse code walkie talkie! SWEET!!!

Here's a question about contiki....if you download a file from the web, say with the wget program it has, will that be saved in a ProDOS compatible format, so you can load it with a text editor or file viewer from the 70s/80s? The ultimate evolution of this would be an IP stack integrated into ProDOS. Like with the original IBM PC 5150, you can put an ethernet card into it and you can run a IP stack such as WatTCP and it connects to the internet directly just like a modern PC. If we could get that on Apple //e it would be cool 🙂

frogfind is useful even on modern systems if your bandwidth is low, like a weak mobile connection

Ran your two sites on my moldy oldie PowerBook 4G….. dang…. SUPER FAST pages!!!!……, ahhhhh brings me back to the old days when this computer was considered a top end high speed internet powerhouse 😃… back in the late 90’s I created super fast websites using GoLive Cyberstudio 🥳🥳🥳

Super neat!

Oh that is so cool

Amazing!! This is so cool 😎

Apple // Forever!

Now you just need to get a Hotline Client for the Apple IIe and you're all set!

I love it!

8-bit is all you need

Tbh it’s actually not that slow loading news articles!

Im a few days late but nice! Imma see if i can get my apple 2 online lol.

I have a 2e and I want to do this

Nice! now I can check my email like I'm Strong Bad.

This is insane

#FrogFind is amazing!

This is actually, the most secure way, to browse the web.

Hello, good content!

Nice mate

if we time travel with this cool thing, we would have gotten much advanced technology than we have now.

Finally a reason to use the comments section on PH.

Dude this is amazing!

Almost all BBS boards uses telnet for connection, so is something that you could use for

Steve Wozniak made that easy for us.