CREEPINGNET'S WORLD
NETWORKING WITH VINTAGE PCS
Ticking Off ArmChair Infosec Nerds One 486 at a Time
How's that for a contrary sounding title. This section deals with vintage computer networking. Here we're going to talk about all kinds of internal LAN and even cross-link in the O/S Specific Internet stuff as well. As to how does this tick off Armchair InfoSec Nerds you ask? Well..okay...

Since 1995, the COmputer Industry has changed from largely a specialist/hobbyist market into a Consumer market. As such, advertisting and sensationalist news articles have worked very hard to twist cold, hard facts into FUD - Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt - when it comes to your old computer gracing the corridors of information Superghetto. See, they think none of these ancient PC's exist, and/or, they think that they run Windows Office XP Vista on a Pentium 486 II x64 Microprocessor with a 64KB Hard Drive RAM and a Apple NVIDIA G-Core RSYNC 1000 AGP that's vulnerable to the Sceptre and MeltedCheese viruses that exploit the Space Time Contiuum - and if none of that made sense, that's becase it does not. Unless it's Jurassic Park, the computer information is erronious at best, after all, the part Janus Babbs on the 6:00 news never lets us see, is her talking ot I.T. to get her password reset for the 9,295,351,235th time because she refuses to remember anything past 4 letters and 4 digits and refuses to read the e-mail from the CIO about security changes because she's "busy" (trying to get around Group Policy).

The real truth is anything before a Pentium is pretty darned safe on a network in this day and age. You're stuck on a 32-bit or 16-bit machine running a single-user, single-tasking O/S (DOS), with a Network Stack and Packet Driver that can be turned on and off like a light switch via some plaintext batch files. The Server Message Block is stuck on version 1.0 so your Windows 10/11 machine and Macintosh Running Catalina refuses to talk to the old geezer running Windows For Workgroups 3.11, the browser that DOES have TLS 1.2 compliance is the one nobody uses or has heard about (Links), and you're on a machine where the worst "Disaster" due to the lack of a flash BIOS
Basic Networking Information for Vintage Computing
Basic Networking Hardware Information for Vintage Computing
PCMCIA WiFi Card Networking in the 21st Century
Using a Wireless Bridge to connect your Vintage Machines Wirelessly