Getting older machines on the Internet is nothing new, but it sure is a ton of fun. We take a computer and NIC from 1987 for a cruise on the information superhighway, and see how useful an 8086-powered machine could be as a web server.
Your test with mTCP is using a much smaller document (22x smaller), and that will impact request times given the slowness of the machine. Would be great to see a comparison with the same content being served in both. I'm guessing mTCP still wins out but it might be a closer race.
Great point.. I didn't think it would make much of a difference at the time, but didn't really consider just how slow the machine is. I'll give ez-nos2 another try with the smaller file to see if there's a noticeable difference. Thank you!
I remember these PS/2 computers. I had one of the monitors and it was just a bit finicky to start: You had to use a hairdryer to warm it up before it would fire up lol
Surprised you didn't ftp over a better text editor while you were at it. Really cool job! Would be fun to see what the most complex website you can host on the machine is. I'd imagine it would have to be only html and css based. Basically everything done on the client side. Though I bet you could host some basic imagines. Also, image using it as a smart home controller like thing? Using simple GET and POST requests on a webpage, and then using the serial port to send commands to something? I mean, the only reason that would be cool is because it's an old machine, but that's a good enough reason for me! There is, for some reason, python for DOS which might be something you could use. I'd imagine it would run pretty poorly, but still. Basically, forcing it to do things it was never intended to do is always fun!
python is one of the slowest languages on the planet for the machine code it produces, and it also has a complex and slow interpreter. Don't think it would fit well on an 8086.
This brings me good memories of working at computer shop in 2000 we'd get these old girls in (sorry if that offends, I just like treating electronics as an object of satisfaction) my boss was tripped out how I managed to boot load win95 off a network server for a fast install. He always did things manually.
usually in today web apps you dont really need to test the web servers since the bottleneck won't be serving the pages but running the apps that it hosts, so expect the javascript side or the application or database side to be the bottleneck for users.
I still have a storage bin of parts from the 80’s and 90’s, when I’d work on a machine, or retire one, I’d scavenge or keep stuff in it. There must be 5000 jumpers in it.
