windows

Browse the [modern] web in Internet Explorer 5 & 6

Here's something fun: Enable HTTPS browsing on IE5/Windows 98 with a Flask proxy that handles SSL and rewrites web content.

Windows 98 IE 6 Screenshot

For whatever reason, I have a Windows 98 virtual machine in UTM (which is fantastic on Apple Silicon) that I like to boot in to and take a trip down memory lane. It's fun, and painful at the same time. But, the modern web has moved on from Internet Explorer 6 (and Internet Explorer in general, but we're not celebrating that in this post). Lost in the dust, Internet Explorer of the Windows 98 days doesn't quite work anymore. IE6, released in 2001, came with support for SSL 2.0 and 3.0, and later updates added support for TLS 1.0. At the time, this was sufficient. The web was a different place, less sophisticated in both the technology it used and the threats it faced (generally speaking, of course).

SHOUTcast server

As finicky as I am about music, I'm one of those guys that'll change the song halfway through it. So, I thought I'll set up a local SHOUTcast radio to prevent that and create less distractions.

Download SHOUTcast DNAS either beta or stable (I chose stable) from here. Edit sc_serv.ini in the SHOUTcast program files folder. The only thing you need to change is your password and whether you want a public or private server. Next, download Winamp to make it easier to manage. Also download the SHOUTcast plugin for Winamp (here) and the null output plugin (here).

 

Syslog server on Lenny

So, I installed VMWare Server on my Windows Server 2003 box the other day. Downloaded a Debian Lenny image and got it running. Never dealt with VMWare Server so it's pretty neat to configure virtual machines from a convenient web interface. The web interface was having issues at first, of which I tracked down to IIS. The web UI runs on port 8333 and IIS runs on port 80 of course. Disabled IIS and the web UI was up and running.

 

After that it was all down hill. Set the network adapter on the VM to bridged. Got the virtual machine running and started installing packages and such. At first, it couldn't resolve names so I had to correct /etc/resolv.conf and point it to my DNS servers. 

So it just had to be the Windows box

Photo by MarkyBon

About last week my Windows Server [2003] (I had 2008 on there, then went back to 2003) server wouldn't boot. Since it's not accessed externally, I run TVersity to transcode by movies of which I watch on my 360.  

So, it wouldn't boot up which was great. Kept going into an endless loop, after POST it would keep rebooting. Dead RAM? You'd think it would beep if it was. But nope. Swapped the power supply and still nothing. Loose connection to the case fan? Still, nothing. Only other object that was still plugged in was the hard drive. Unplugged it. Booted normally (though it couldn't since it was the only one). Awesome. Ended up re-installing Server 2003 last night, turned out fine. 

Still puzzles me that it wouldn't boot at all. BIOS detected it fine, but once it tried to boot from the hard drive an endless loop occurred. Working well now, which is a surprise.