BeOS browsing support is now probably at its worst level ever, more or less. The TLS Apocalypse , whereby the majority of secured websites dropped support for less than TLS1.2 has happened; and with most websites now required a secure session to use at all times, this means there's very little you can access with any browsers, including nearly all download sites should someone create a working browser. Even BeBytes is out of reach. BeOS was never flush with browser options. On x86 you had: * Firefox or Mozilla Seamonkey, last updated for Firefox 3 / Seamonkey 1.9 of 2006 * Opera 3.6 of 1999 * NetPositive 2.2, included in the OS so theoretically from 2000 but with standards support more like 1996 * Netsurf 2, more updated but quite behind the others in capabilities There was also a beta Net+ "3", older than 2.2, with some very basic JavaScript support, and the otherwise identical Net+ in Dano, which had ssleay (a predecessor of OpenSSL) instead of licenced RSA SSL code As
A semi-sensible way to upgrade an ancient Mac to faster/quieter/larger (the drive I had was 2GB, partitioned for MacOS 8.6 and BeOS at that) storage is to use a SCSI2SD device, which allows you to access the file system from a compatible OS with an SD reader, swap "disks" (cards), and so on. But one of these is $98, plus whatever shipping and possibly taxes I'd get hit for; and while its tested with a similar machine (the 6400) , it may not work on my 5400. Plus it'd be a bit more complicated to connect it internally, as the supplied HD in the 5400 is IDE - the CD is SCSI. But that IDE use gave me another option, both a lot cheaper and vastly quicker. One of the bigger European vendors of memory and storage products is based a few miles from my house, and €22 got me a 32GB short-size 2.5" SATA SSD, and a SATA-PATA adapter; delivered to my office overnight (so the proximity to my house was sort of irrelevant then) This fits, or will fit when I put some anti stati
As I've mentioned before, I've another BeOS R5 machine on the go - and this one has working WiFi. Four families of cards have drivers - Intersil Prism PCI/PCMCIA/USB, e.g. the ORiNOCO 11mbit cards, Ralink RT2500 54mbit cards, Intel 2100 11mbit cards and Intel 2200 54mbit cards. I have an ORiNOCO PCMCIA for various retro gear, and a mini PCI 2200 in the R5 laptop. Windows 98SE does not support this card - just too new - so I use the ORiNOCO with Odyssey to connect from it I'm not going to expose my normal cable connection to an open WiFi connection, but I'm also getting rather annoyed having to use tethering on my mobile. So I dug up my old router, and have configured it as such, to allow for antique drivers: 2.4Ghz network, fixed channel, B/G mode, low power (it will always be very near to me), WEP 128bit, client isolation and MAC address filtering, and a 20mbits speed restriction. Admin username and password are both changed to not be the default for the router vendo
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