MS-DOS MS-DOS
MS-DOS
Microsoft DOS is a lot like Candy Man.
You say it's name 3 times into the mirror, and nothing happens.
What-so-ever.
Because Candy Man is a fictional character in a Bernard Rose horror movie.
What DOS does share with Candy Man, is that they were both knocking about in the early
90s, and in a similar twist of fate, the world wide web was also in it's infancy at that
time.
World Wide Web World Wide Web
Shut the hell up.
As a feverish user of DOS in the 90s, it strikes me that I never used it to browse the web.
Sure I setup IPX networks to play games like Duke Nukem 3D with friends, and even jumped
onto bulletin boards and services like BT Wireplay.
But the internet was solely the domain of Windows, and in my case, Windows '95.
I didn't really start logging on until around 1997, and by that point with Netscape Navigator
and Internet explorer 4 there was little need for a DOS browsing environment, especially
given Graphical User Interfaces such as Windows were much more tooled up for the task.
But yet, that doesn't phase the hardcore DOS enthusiast and there were indeed browsers
for DOS.
I'm going to show you 3 browsers which operate in DOS, and then after that I'll briefly explain
the setup process involved in connecting to the web from this command line interface.
Let's start with the basics; A text based browser called elinks.
Starting life in 2001 as an experimental development fork of the 1999 Links browser, this console
browsing environment is actually quite a pleasant experience.
Out of the window go all those huge images and crappy CSS formatting, and we're left
with text.
Raw, unadulterated text.
How refreshing.
Originally developed for Unix like operating systems like Linux, this is a source port
over to DOS, and it's got all the tools you'd expect in browser, from bookmarks to multiple
tabs.
When it comes to websites secured with a certificate, it falls over, so modern sites like Youtube
and even the Yahoo home page are unable to load, but others are perfectly usable, including
Google, which kindly drops to the unsecured protocol without issue.
When I think of DOS, THIS is the kind of browser I think of.
You may have noticed that when I tried to get on Lazygamereviews.com under Windows 98,
it crashed Internet explorer.
But given Clint's site works like a DOS prompt, I thought it was worth a try in eLinks.
But unfortunately, it doesn't get further than trying to Boot to DOS... that's understandable
as the site actually relies on a lot of scripting to create this pretend DOS environment.
Next up we have Arachne, released in 1996 and developed by Michal Polak.
Now Arachne might be one you've seen before.
It's the easiest browser to setup and it's pretty fully featured, even including a file
explorer for your hard drive.
I've got the browser running in a VESA 800x600 resolution and indeed, everything is identifiable
as the internet.
I mean, the browser ignores CSS and so formatting is pretty much out the window, but the sites
you can get on, you can generally navigate.
You might think Google would be no trouble here, but it
ends up in a perpetual loop, probably whilst trying to re-direct from the secure version
of the site.
Bing just crashed it entirely.
But give it a site like Steve Benway's blog and you're quickly in DOS heaven.
Beautiful.
You even get this very 90s electricity flash when loading up a site.
Which you will need because loading modern websites is painfully slow here.
and last, but certainly not least, Dillo.
Originally released in 1999 and designed as a multi-platform browser, running in DOS was
almost part of it's job description.
Dillo is pretty feature packed, and much more like a modern web browser, including partial
CSS support, bookmarks, images and tabbed browsing.
Most websites work to some degree, and some will appear pretty perfectly.
Even Bing works...
Errr, maybe a little too well.
Dillo is actually pretty fast as well, with some nice caching features, and it's probably
the best choice if you want to experience the internet as it's intended in DOS.
Now, accessing the web like this isn't quite as easy as connecting up to our Wi-Fi and
going as we do now days, and even in getting these browsers up and running I took a simplified
route by using a virtual machine.
The web in the 90s may have been very exciting, but it was also a pain in the bloomin' neck.
I'm using Virtual Box for the virtual machine, and within that I've installed a Free DOS
environment.
It's perfectly possible to use MS-DOS, however Free DOS has some better memory management,
which is pretty handy for bulky programs like Arachne.
It also handles the mouse and CD-ROM drivers, without having to dick about in config.sys
and autoexec.bat too much.
After installing the FreeDOS additional networking components - because I forgot - the next task
is to activate the provided packet driver, which can latch onto the emulated network
card.
The next step isn't essential, but it's handy for file sharing and the like, plus I enjoy
seeing those familiar Microsoft setup screens.
The Microsoft network client can be setup with this AMD network card driver, which is
compatible with the Virtual Box emulation, and then we're pretty much good to go.
Installing Arachne is straight forward.
The other programs need some configuration file editing.
But Arachne should be able to automatically detect the packet driver, leaving a few manual
network settings to enter via.
it's lovely interface and we're good to go!
Internet browsing in DOS... in 2017.
Lovely job.
I'll drop some links and default values in the video description if you're off your chain
like me and fancy trying this yourself.
Otherwise, thanks very much for watching.
Here's another video you can watch.
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In any case, have a great evening!