Jeff Keacher (www.keacher.com), a software consultant in Denver, decided to embark on an especially challenging IT project that he had set for himself: getting his 27-year-old Macintosh Plus computer connected to the worldwide web. After a number of difficulties and exploding a filter cap, he succeeded in doing so.

Some of the technical specifications of Macintosh Plus: a 8 MHz CPU, a 50 MB hard drive, 4 MB of RAM, and a 512×384 resolution black and white screen. Keacher said that his current desktop PC was 200 thousand times faster without the GPU being taken into account.

Keacher set to work with a copy of the MacWeb 2.0 web browser using a long-forgotten FTP site. Since his computer naturally did not have Wi-Fi or Ethernet capabilities, he used a Raspberry Pi to emulate a dial-up modem (without a modem).

Updating software did not go easily either, but Raspberry Pi came to the rescue again. At the same time, MacWeb had to be adapted to the protocols and standards of internet sites we have today. A friend helped Keacher out with a few lines of code.

And this is how it went. About the outcome, Keacher wrote the following, “It was slow as hell, but it worked! Data loaded, pages rendered, and links were clickable.”