Web browsing with CosmosEx?

[Sowden]

Hey guys. Since our Raspberry Pi is connected to the Internet and all, I was wondering if there was a way to browse the Web on our STs. Nothing complicated like HTML5, but easy stuff like e-mail, facebook, twitter, atari-fourm. Is it possible? Thanks.

[umberto1st]

They are working towards that

[mzry]

Just FYI Facebook is not simple... even a 2.5ghz quad core Apple G5 has trouble rendering Facebook, you'd be surprised how demanding the internet is these days.

[Ektus]

Even the RPi that powers the CosmosEx is quite slow when used for web browsing, and that's a GHz-class ARM machine and not an ancient 68k with 100Mhz (CT6x) or less. E-Mail, Newsgroups and simple web pages like this forum will work okay, but nothing fancy. No video (except animated GIF), almost no JavaScript (netsurf is very slowly gainig in this area, but also quite big and slow), no Flash (okay, it's dead anyway).

It's very sad that highwire hasn't seen any progress in recent years, it would make a decent browser for our Ataris.

[Sowden]

Good to know that its making progress. And when I said facebook, I meant the m.facebook.com. I would think that the text based site would be easy on the Pi. No facebook live though, not by a long shot.

[khooke]

CE_STING.PRG was added to the Cosmosex config drive a few months back. If you run it to startup the STiNG driver, and then run an ST browser like CAB, you should be good to go. You'll need the OVL file to integrate with STiNG too. I tried it on my 1040 but get out of memory errors so didn't work for me. A good reason to maybe upgrade my RAM

[Estrayk]

[off topic] ok, browsing not, but ftp or irc? any IRC program for standar ST ?

[nanard]

You should find irc.tos I have been using it a bit.
For ftp I recommend litchi

[Estrayk]

You should find irc.tos I have been using it a bit.
For ftp I recommend litchi

Thanks nanard.

[xfalcon]

Hi I try to do some web browsing with CosmosEx and my Falcon.
I only need the ce-sting driver in the autofolder, right?
CAB and Highwire can not get any website.
But I can ping my rooter.

I have a working sting setup with a DaynaPort. There is no problem with CAB, Highwire, and FTP-serv.
But it don't funktion with the CosmosEx.

[joska]

We can not expect to be able to do anything but the most basic web browsing on this platform. Even with our most advanced browser (Netsurf) on the fastest real hardware (FireBee), even this forum is barely usable.

The only realistic solution is to render the webpage as a bitmap on a proxy server of some sort, and then display this bitmap on the Atari. With the CosmosEx and it's ACSI/SCSI interface this would be fast enough for animations and even basic video.

[Ektus]

IIRC, STinG does need some configuration file with DNS and routing info, should be c:\stik_cfg\default.cfg
Without this, neither STiNG (or STiK) nor GlueSTiK will work properly.

Regards
Ektus.

[xfalcon]

IIRC, STinG does need some configuration file with DNS and routing info, should be c:\stik_cfg\default.cfg
Without this, neither STiNG (or STiK) nor GlueSTiK will work properly.

Ok, do you mean ce_sting need a stik configuration file?
In the moment there is only c:\sting\default.cfg


Or do I have to edit the DNS in the CosmosEx config?
I try to edit the DNS in ce_config but i can not save it. When I open the network settings again the DNS field is empty again.

[xfalcon]

The only realistic solution is to render the webpage as a bitmap on a proxy server of some sort, and then display this bitmap on the Atari. With the CosmosEx and it's ACSI/SCSI interface this would be fast enough for animations and even basic video.

I thing, that's not necessary. For me it would be enough, when I can use the CosmosEx with sting, in the same function as the DaynaPort.

[Ektus]

I don't know as I don't have a CE. Ask the author of ce_sting maybe? Anyway, putting the correct info in default.cfg won't do any harm.

[edit]
In viewtopic.php?t=27528#p294305 Jookie states that there's no configuration necessary nor possible. But then, why does ping work, but nothing else?
[/edit]


Regards
Ektus.

[joska]

I thing, that's not necessary. For me it would be enough, when I can use the CosmosEx with sting, in the same function as the DaynaPort.

In the future I don't think it will be possible to be online with our ancient computers without some sort of local proxyserver.

[Ektus]

I thing, that's not necessary. For me it would be enough, when I can use the CosmosEx with sting, in the same function as the DaynaPort.

In the future I don't think it will be possible to be online with our ancient computers without some sort of local proxyserver.

The problem being that more and more pages are only available with transport encryption (HTTPS), and that requires lots of computing power and memory. Even without flash and JavaScript, the transport encryption alone taxes our machines


Regards
Ektus.

[xfalcon]

I try with CAB.2.8 to reach the goolge.com website.
As cab.ovl I use the version from Oliver Booklage

This is the output of CAB:
resolving horst....
Error #-311

Massage from the cab.ovl:
The modem disconnected
created by cab-ovl v5.68

Maybe this help to find the problem.

[Jookie]

This is the output of CAB:
resolving horst....
Error #-311

If using DHCP, then the following questions is irrelevant, but if you're using static IP - do you have DNS configured in CE_CONF?

Massage from the cab.ovl:
The modem disconnected

Now for that to solve if would be nice to have sources of cab.ovl, and being able to compile them, so I could see what it does at that point and how it does it. Without that it might be hard(er) to fix.

The other thing is - I'm not able to work on that, as I'm under a load of things to do on the device, but the better way to go than fixing CAB would be to either alter CAB (if sources are available) to use some features of CosmosEx for better performance, or create a newer but thiner browser for Atari, which would rely on massive pre-processing under linux in Raspberry Pi of CosmosEx.

Jookie

[mikro]

You shouldn't need any configuration files at all, CE_STING is not a STiNG driver, it's a STiNG replacement, therefore it doesn't use any of its configuration files.

However, apps supplied in STiNG package (ping, traceroute etc) should give you a good overview where the problem is. If you run CE_CONF, press F8 (console), can you ping something from the RPi's command line?

[calimero]

I also agree that only valid solution is some proxy server that will serve light version, or only image, of web page.
But this would require custom proxy server and custom "web browser"... I remember that Opera for mobile had something like this.

Web turn into most useless junk. We spent MB i GHz to read text. Requirements for Web skyroof but usability remain same as two decade ago: search information with crap search engine, read text and filter by youself validiti of information you read.

[vido]

Yes. But at least Atari sites should take care to be Atari browsers friendly. This forum was two years ago much more Atari friendly as it is now. I really hate that. I can still browse it with NetSurf but it renders much slower and it is uglieer as it was before

[calimero]

^
My site with Atari software was optimised for Atari at beginning but I kept adding javascript, css and other stuff and over time it is no more Atari friendly (but site now have additional functionality)

My idea is that my "site" should be used as Atari specific service! E.g. if you have Atari with Cosmosex than you should be able to browse my site not via HTML but with custom browser for this archive with functionality to browse, search and install Atari software directly to Cosmosex mass storage.

Same is with this forum (or any other phpbb or vbuletin forum) it has no more functionality than QWK or BlueWave message exchange systems 30 years old. From user point, there is no advantages with this forum (except it is SLOWER on 2GHz machine than QWK on 8MHz!)

For rest of web, proxy could be solution.
Btw is it possible to exchange message in QWK or BlueWavw format over internet?

[joska]

Btw is it possible to exchange message in QWK or BlueWavw format over internet?

There used to be qwk-capable NNTP-clients back in the day. I used this with Kiwi some 20+ years ago, but IIRC stopped due to some annoying restrictions in the qwk format. Message size or something.

[xfalcon]

If you run CE_CONF, press F8 (console), can you ping something from the RPi's command line?

I tried it, but how can I stop ping? If I press control+C, CE_CONF return to desktop.