Windows 95, 98 and ME users have Retrozilla.
Classic Mac, Be and NexTStep users have Crypto Ancienne.

Could it be possible to run a Gemini client on
these systems? I know the easiest way could
be to run Retrozilla against a web proxy,
but a native program would be a good achievement.
There are libraries for Unicode for W9X.

On Mon, 10 Oct 2022 21:05:43 -0000 (UTC), Anthk wrote:
> Could it be possible to run a Gemini client on
> these systems? I know the easiest way could
> be to run Retrozilla against a web proxy,
> but a native program would be a good achievement.
> There are libraries for Unicode for W9X.

It might be easiest to try to build one of the terminal clients
against Cygwin. You will probably have to use an older version
of Cygwin as they depricated 32-bit support but that seems like
a quicker route than developing a new application for archaic
Windows platforms directly.

--
"The avalanche has started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote."
--Kosh

Le 10/10/2022 à 23:05, Anthk a écrit :
> Windows 95, 98 and ME users have Retrozilla.
> Classic Mac, Be and NexTStep users have Crypto Ancienne.
>
> Could it be possible to run a Gemini client on
> these systems?

I don't know how helpful it is, but Haiku, a free OS who tries to be
compatible with BeOS, has two Gemini clients (Kristall and Lagrange) in
its repositories. I think (but I'm no programmer) it wouldn't be hard to
use them with Be.

Le 10/10/2022 à 23:05, Anthk a écrit :
> Windows 95, 98 and ME users have Retrozilla.
> Classic Mac, Be and NexTStep users have Crypto Ancienne.
>
> Could it be possible to run a Gemini client on
> these systems?

I don't know how helpful it is, but Haiku, a free OS who tries to be
compatible with BeOS, has two Gemini clients (Kristall and Lagrange) in
its repositories. I think (but I'm no programmer) it wouldn't be hard to
use them with Be.

Le 10/10/2022 à 23:05, Anthk a écrit :
> Windows 95, 98 and ME users have Retrozilla.
> Classic Mac, Be and NexTStep users have Crypto Ancienne.
>
> Could it be possible to run a Gemini client on
> these systems?

I don't know how helpful it is, but Haiku, a free OS who tries to be
compatible with BeOS, has two Gemini clients (Kristall and Lagrange) in
its repositories. I think (but I'm no programmer) it wouldn't be hard to
use them with Be.

Matthew Ernisse <matt@going-flying.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Oct 2022 21:05:43 -0000 (UTC), Anthk wrote:
>> Could it be possible to run a Gemini client on
>> these systems? I know the easiest way could
>> be to run Retrozilla against a web proxy,
>> but a native program would be a good achievement.
>> There are libraries for Unicode for W9X.
>
> It might be easiest to try to build one of the terminal clients
> against Cygwin. You will probably have to use an older version
> of Cygwin as they depricated 32-bit support but that seems like
> a quicker route than developing a new application for archaic
> Windows platforms directly.

Another option for the old Windows platforms might be to actually
target MSDOS with DJPP, and as those versions of Windows included
MSDOS that will in turn support them too (though requiring users
to drop out of the desktop). People have modern OpenSSL working
in MSDOS for things like web browsers.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

It... Should be possible even for very old hardware to make somethign
that will render the gemtext (since it's just markdown which is just
askii (or possibly unicode)

Hard part is getting old hardware to work with TLS.

Given my own interest in retro hardware I had asked this in the original
mailing list and got a lotof 'why bother' type responses as well as some
helpful gems.

gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/~solderpunk/gemlog/the-mercury-protocol.gmi

So introducing an intermediary device (a pi or a micro controller) that
can handle encrypt/decrypt with the host device only having to handle
rendering via a'Mercury' client?

I don't know where or how to best start, but it seems like it'd be
doable, and having an old mac, or an amiga cruising Gemini-space just
seems too neat to not try to make happen.

On 10/10/22 4:05 PM, Anthk wrote:
> Windows 95, 98 and ME users have Retrozilla.
> Classic Mac, Be and NexTStep users have Crypto Ancienne.
>
> Could it be possible to run a Gemini client on
> these systems? I know the easiest way could
> be to run Retrozilla against a web proxy,
> but a native program would be a good achievement.
> There are libraries for Unicode for W9X.
>

On 2022-11-02, Andrew <singletona082@gmail.com> wrote:
> having an old mac, or an amiga cruising Gemini-space just seems too
> neat to not try to make happen.

You may want to take a look at AmiGemini, "a Gemini + Spartan browser
for the Commodore Amiga."
gemini://jeacle.ie/amiga/amigemini/

--
gemini://gemini.thegonz.net

....oh. MY yes that's something special. Thank you.

On 11/4/22 2:52 AM, mbays@sdf.org wrote:
> You may want to take a look at AmiGemini, "a Gemini + Spartan browser
> for the Commodore Amiga."
> gemini://jeacle.ie/amiga/amigemini/

Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk>, 2022-12-23 09:33 (+0000):

> Not really: TLS is just software. You just need an implementation compiled
> for an old machine that doesn't depend on modern OS features.

Speaking of which I recently across this gem, an implementation of the
ChaCha20 stream cipher in PDP-11 assembler:

https://niconiconi.neocities.org/posts/chacha20-performance-on-pdp-11/

--
MC, https://hack.org/mc/