I created an enhanced fork of the popular MacProxy project called MacProxy Plus, which makes it possible to browse the modern web on vintage hardware. You run MPP on a machine on your local network and configure the Mac (or other vintage computer) to use it as a proxy server. MPP converts HTTPS to HTTP, strips out CSS, JavaScript, and other tags the Mac's browser doesn't recognize, then serves super-simplified HTML that actually loads pretty fast on the nearly 40 year old machine. Custom handling is enabled by "extensions" (individual python scripts) which intercept requests for given domains (like chatgpt.com) and return simple HTML interfaces. Current extensions include Weather, ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, Wikipedia, Reddit, Hackaday, WayBack Machine, Web Simulator, and (not) YouTube. Though this solution was developed with early Macs in mind, it should also work to get many other vintage computers online.
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Show HN: MacProxy Plus – Surf the Modern Web on Vintage Computers | Heykuki News