5 Dilemmas this engineer faced while getting his 1986 Mac to surf the web

Getting an old computer hooked up to the Internet is not as easy as signing into Wi-Fi on your gadgets.

Keacher’s Macintosh Plus surfing the web. (Image via Keacher.com)

Software engineer Jeff Keacher connected his 27-year-old Macintosh Plus machine to the Internet, but encountered some issues along the way.

1. The computer is old

The Mac Plus only has an 8-MHz CPU, 4 Mbytes of RAM, a 50-Mbyte hard drive, and a black-and-white 512 x 384 resolution screen. Keacher makes note in his blog that his current computer is 200,000 times faster — not including the GPU.

2. A loud “pop”

A cracked cap from the external hard drive’s power supply. (Image via Keacher.com)

At first plug-in, the computer seemed to be in good condition until he heard a loud “pop” and smelled smoke. There seemed to be an issue with the external hard drive’s power supply. After rectifying the issue with a cap and soldering iron, he was back to the restoration process using a web browser, a TCP/IP stack, and finding a way to connect the dusty old Mac to his home network.

3. No Ethernet port

Keacher used a Raspberry Pi to connect to his home network. (Image via Keacher.com)

Since Keacher’s Mac Plus didn’t have an Ethernet port, he fashioned something with a Raspberry Pi, old adapters, and a level shifter to connect it to his home network.

4. No name-based virtual hosting

Since Mac web developers did not equip HTTP 1.0 with name-based virtual hosting, which 99% of modern websites rely on, Keacher had to create a proxy solution involving Python programming language and an HTTP library.

5. So, so slow

The 1986 Mac Plus looking at its own Wikipedia page. (Image via Keacher.com)

Keacher found that the Mac Plus, once connected to the Internet, was very slow, taking minutes to read and render a page, but he did accomplish his goal. His pages appeared and he was able to click on links.

To learn more about the restoration project, visit Keacher’s blog.