I Made an Internet Time Machine

[@RichardG867]

Hey, WaybackProxy author here. Thanks for featuring my work. I had originally started working on it for the same reason you've gone through - there's such a magic element to the 2000s Web that I grew up with. It really is a bummer that the Wayback Machine doesn't archive more complex Flash and Java stuff, but I did my best to try and fill in gaps in images and such. With all this attention, I'm planning on making improvements to the proxy in the near future, like a Dockerfile for easy installation, and maybe a better API for the Time Machine to communicate with.

[@exonymat1471]

Honestly doing God's work with this proxy, the fact you made it much easier to look at older websites is so cool! I do have a suggestion for a feature that I'm not sure if it's possible or not- adding a randomizer to the proxy so that you could press a button and go to any site that was captured on a specific day

[@bluespartan076]

ruffle is becoming a more popular browser embedded flash emulator but it currenttly only supports games programmed in Actionscript 1 and 2 so your mileage may vary

[@jarnobot]

Very cool project! Just a thought, which might be way to complicated: Do you think it's doable to add more flash games to the old webpages by using the archives of BlueMaxima's Flashpoint to fill some more gaps? I can see it being a problem if websites all used different, custom names for the same flashprograms, but maybe it's not that bad . If it is causing problems, users could select a game from potential matches. And if you want to go all in: these manual selections could be saved which could be shared with a public database, smoothing out the experience over time.

[@eliotmansfield]

Could it be hosted online so users can access it just by setting a proxy in their browser?

[@bluestreak711]

Just think about the academic research that can take place!!!! Just think how confusing the ending citation would be for a webpage that no longer exists!! It is so wonderful!!!

[@cfromnowhere]

Your internet time machine can have practical uses in the film & television industry since it makes accurate depictions of technologies during the 1990s to early 2000s, which can be very helpful for historical dramas/docudramas.

[@meluckycharms111]

Oh, good call! I hadn’t thought about that but you’re right. That is a fantastic observation

[@therealgaragegirls]

Perfect use for this tech!

[@_GhostMiner]

Write that down! Write that down!

[@Ewr42]

I thought about using it to fake an old video as a joke, adding visual effects as if it were recorded in an old device but the film industry could actually use old devices to record stuff, then digitalize it and it'd look amazing. God, I really hope this goes far and becomes a staple for epoch films and recreating stuff, I mean, have you guys watched Weezer's video of take on me with Calpurnia acting as Weezer?(the lead singer of Calpurnia is the main character in stranger things and he plays Rivers Cuomo) imagine how it'd look like if they added those details instead of shooting in full HD

[@thetruemrbeard]

If you provide a tutorial, I'd be really interested to try and build this little time machine! I work at a public library, and I think patrons would have a lot of fun if we had an "internet time machine" to try out.

[@prayagsuthar9856]

OMG YES that would be the COOLEST thing! I've never seen something like that in a library, heck I never thought of that as a possibility. Just the fact that you brought this up makes me 🤯🤯🤯🤯 When you get that installed, I will WANT to come to your library 🤩

[@tvted1351]

YES that would be perfect for a library libraries are already known for info so having a internet time machine in libraries would probably be a good way to modernize them

[@dux6553]

Sure It would be awesome to have a step-by-step tutorial!

[@dustinschings7042]

I agree! A tutorial with a basic gloss-over on how to do it all would be awesome. Otherwise you will be bombarded with people wanting YOU to build one for them! I would be one of them. :D

[@SuperNerdyBros01]

OH GAWD PLEASE YES I’VE BEEN WANTING TO GET MY WINDOWS 2000 ONLINE FOR YEARS

[@archdukegrand9706]

Well the shift from desktop browser design to mobile compatible design is what really destroyed 2000s era web design. That's why youtube got rid of custom backgrounds on channels. There are of course more factors than just that but I think it's a big part.

[@wordart_guian]

ironically the modern internet is completely unbrowsable on a phone, while old/old-style websites are pretty easy to browse

[@Sb129]

Plenty of websites had mobile version even back then but they were usually a separate URL. These days, or as of 2010, most websites want the main site to be mobile formatted out of convenience.

[@TheAkashicTraveller]

@@Sb129 And yet the mobile version is still missing half the features of the desktop version for most sites.

[@HighFlyingOwlOfMinerva]

You can also thank Susan for a lot of the "improvements" she shoved down our throats. Remember the new lay-out designs after 2012? The forced Google+ integration? KZbin Heroes?

[@namesurname4666]

@@Sb129 even youtube had m.youtube.com

[@Dhips.]

Being on the internet from '99 to '07 was such a magical time.

[@OldFordTaurus]

I agree

[@commandohazelnuts]

I feel so aimless on the internet today I actually started going back to almost dead forums.

[@renussy5117]

I was born in 2007 and I’m so sad I didn’t get to experience that era

[@Adamo_92]

Oh DEFINITELY ❤

[@eatsteas]

this is really cool. going through random wayback machine pages is already one of my hobbies. i miss 2000s web design

[@tilsgee]

Yeah. Especially older Apple websites Damn, i miss that glassy look

[@unlokia]

Why is Apple ALWAYS the site everyone wants to visit, in this GARGANTUAN internet?

[@ffwast]

Basically phone users ruined everything.

[@mixialuci]

@@ffwast as a phone user, sorry😔

[@stfu699]

200th like

[@chadtronic]

tap into the power, in all seriousness this blew my mind. This seems like black magic to me. I kind of want to build my own now.

[@Luigi64]

AHAHAHAHA mommy times man

[@nathanvanklompenberg6214]

Same

[@billybobjankens12]

same here

[@rmx4087]

Old school Karen.

[@Lanausse]

Oh Hey Chadtronic

[@AntVenom]

In b4 10,000,000 views. This project is pretty incredible! It doesn’t have to be complex to be a well executed good idea. I’m old, lol, but I lived through all of the eras of the internet you showed off. I feel like you hit the nail on the head with just about everything you had to say… …including your dislike for… some executions of “material design”. I hated when that era began.

[@can2835]

I agree with you. Also, the modern internet now has so much unnecessary javascript running. I miss simple webpages with complicated visual design, rather than the complicated frameworks running on something like a recipe website.

[@ananttiwari1337]

@@can2835 Yes!!! Web pages are still too slow for computing power today. Latency is unsolvable yes, but there are far too many websites simply which are simply an excuse for bad programming

[@exoticlol]

Didn't know AntVenom watched this type of videos!

[@ananttiwari1337]

@@exoticlol haha yes

[@ThenonFun]

Antvenom and his comment has only 33 likes

[@Pixelcraftian]

I love how old logos and websites look and really want that retro skeuomorphic look of web design to return because my god it looked so much cooler. This time machine is incredible!! Really wish that most websites worked or that the style would transfer over to current day technology, but hey, I'm not a smart guy and don't know how things work haha. Awesome video!

[@cannedbeverage7687]

Winrar is one of the few big ones that's still standing. In fact, it's even more skeuomorphic than it used to be.

[@Pixelcraftian]

@@cannedbeverage7687 we love to see it, i remember seeing a logo change and was like _"oh no"_ but it turned out better

[@lovesrolopigeo3403]

yea same i LOVE skeumorhpicism!!

[@AROAH]

I miss skeuomorphic design so so very much.

[@fascistalien]

Yeaaaah, saddly when steve jobs died, the mfckers of apple, destroyed all the steve design legacy..., cause he started the skeomorphism in computers

[@matthewfanous8468]

20 years from now: “I built a time machine that reminded me of what it was like to be in VR for the first time. It’s not as interesting anymore now that we’re in it 24/7.”

[@space9465]

Even if VR became 24/7 I wouldn't use it at all.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@space9465 and then it becomes mandatory for job hunting or bill paying like phones did in the 50s or the internet has today… :(

[@elmer4090]

@@kaitlyn__L you're right and I can feel myself becoming a boomer as I read this and I hate it

[@lopiklop]

That's what people were saying *even in the 90s* though vr is the flying car of the computer world

[@medes5597]

@@lopiklop until it becomes effortless to use, solves the space problem somehow and has a use that's specific and exclusive to VR (and I don't mean a game), VR will never be the future. Its going to constantly be the "next big thing" that isn't happening yet. VR is amazing to use but the amount of hurdles it has to overcome to reach that level of ubiquity is far greater than the Internet ever had.

[@michaellacock]

I hate modern web design with a passion. I hate pop-ups asking for cookies, ads in the middle if articles, and several javascript trackers slowing down the page. Early to mid 2010s web was the peak in my opinion. I however don't mind full page images when done right, like apples site lol.

[@kaitlyn__L]

uBlock can fix all three of those things btw :) I sometimes forget how painfully slow it can be to browse without it - even with a fast fibre connection it takes sooo long just unbundling the referrer tree before it even starts to load anything!

[@TheAkashicTraveller]

The most anoying thing for me is infinite scrolling. It hardly ever works properly and even when it does it has a whole host of issues that just don't exist with seperate pages.

[@prayagsuthar9856]

Ikr!!! I am utterly in LOVE with old web design because it had _character_ and it wasn't just generic and boring. I want to make websites like that-after all, if you're using something every day, why not use something that's not just boring and flat, but that's interesting and thoughtfully made?

[@nightmarerex2035]

yea i think best was like 2003-2012 started gettign censored used to search torrent and find something now only russian sites got seeded torrents.

[@CommodoreFan64]

This really does bring back so many memories of going online in the 90's, and early 00's when it really was an event using dial-up. I met so many people during that time in chat rooms, some I'm still friends with, and even my long time girlfriend in the finally days of Yahoo chats. I'm for sure going to be looking into this with my Pentium 4 retro gaming system that dual boots 98se, and XP. 👍🏻

[@D0J0P]

I remember when you couldn't use the phone without interrupting the dial-up connection in the house. Good times.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Hearing a recording of a modem handshake still brings back those memories of being excited to play Flash games and the like :D (though I did have half of our 4GB drive dedicated to cached flash games… and another 1.5GB dedicated to CD game installs, lol. Every text file was saved to floppy disks instead of the HDD 😅)

[@AdamsBrew78]

There were so many tight communities and interesting people on early IRC chat channels. I remember chatting every day with the guitarist for Jefferson Starship’s touring band on an obscure Apple Mac channel with maybe 100-200 regulars. (sadly, he recently passed away)

[@CommodoreFan64]

@@AdamsBrew78I'm almost 41 now, and I can say It was even tighter pre-internet in the BBS, and Q-Link(Quantium Link) days of the late 80's - very early 90's with even less people being online, and I was very lucky to have experienced that as well having my own phone line extension in my bed room with a 1200 Baud Commodore modem I used with my C64, and later C128(never had a modem for my Apple IIe sadly), and there is still one person from those days I keep up with from time to time via email, as he hates modern social media, and I honestly can't blame him. BTW: I also worked for the old US Lycos chats for a couple years back in the very early 00's as an SOS Chat host/moderator, and I still have the pale blue coffee mug they sent me with the old black lab mascot, as they used vetted Lycos chat users that worked from home to be SOS Host to cut down on cost, and while their chat rooms are Long gone, they are somehow still hanging in there as a search engine, and email provider with my Lycos email still working I made all those years ago lol!

[@AdamsBrew78]

@@CommodoreFan64The first BBS I ever dialed into was run on a C64. I had a crush on the sysop’s daughter ;) … I entirely missed the 80s heyday of BBS, as I didn’t discover them until I was around 12 in 1990. You’re right though, they were very tight communities - Sysops often held real life meetups since most users were local. Even met some RL friends through my own WWIV BBS. Good times!

[@TorutheRedFox]

8:52 it actually does, but it uses the scripts that it adds to the response to replace the original, usually non-functional player with their own, which plays an archived version of the video, if archiving it succeeded maybe fixing it would be possible by having a list of URLs that have dynamically generated content and having them point to URLs that have the same functionality (either because they were moved, or to recreations because they got annihilated over the years)

[@NoReplyAsset]

12:54 "this program isn't VERY complicated..." you just made an early 2000s childhood simulator, you may as well be a necromancer at this point... a technomancer. this was an incredibly engaging video, it really took me back. back to when I was 7 years old and looking forward to going to the school library to use the computer with the internet in it. however, gaming was forbidden on those computers because they didn't want kids hogging the internet for flash games. 😂

[@rzysf59]

2002... I was in 2nd year of high school. using Intel Pentium 3, 800MbHz CPU with Windows 98, a slow dial up modem (broke immediately when there was a incoming call) and a Netscape browser... mostly i browsed Yahoo, searching for my homework, opened Napster, downloaded WinAmp skins and played some online games (flash games :D ). Thank you for bringing up some memories

[@YTPensionaru]

This brings out so many memories! I agree, there was something special and more personal about the web back in the day. I guess people were not really used to it yet.

[@gavinthecrafter]

I love this! You should put out a guide explaining how you made it so other people could make it as well :)

[@mwanikimwaniki6801]

He kinda already did. You could replicate it with some programming knowledge

[@itizjuan]

@@mwanikimwaniki6801 well it isn't really explanatory by itself so, a guide is still needed. too bad there isn't really a reliable guide either on the developer's github page or anywhere else

[@mwanikimwaniki6801]

@@itizjuan I could replicate it with a little struggle

[@lucyinchat]

@@mwanikimwaniki6801 got experience with running tiny core linux? If so, you could use that and set up a small, (potentially less than 800mb), image to do it.

[@itizjuan]

@@mwanikimwaniki6801 i wonder if you could explain to us the process

[@jer4rud0]

Nooooo way, you're that small channel I used to watch a couple years back??? Damn, you've come a long way!! It's so awesome, u deserve it!! I still remember when u got that better mic

[@stixc]

You know, if I were to collect retro computers and you figured out how to give out the schematics/some kind of kit for this kind of thing, I would 100% use this to emulate old school internet on those computers, now we just need to figure out how to get Flash and other elements working to make it even more accurate

[@GameMaker3_5]

That'd be pretty cool

[@AstraLee-Investigator_Sapling-]

You could probably figure something out with flashpoint archives being added to the pi’s sd card, and some kind of script to check games against its archive

[@ccricers]

A lot of websites in the early 2000s that used Flash as the delivery method for content are unfortunately hard to keep accurate, as Flash was known to not be SEO friendly.

[@lucyinchat]

@@ccricers and it was pretty scraper resistant, too.

[@TheOldNet]

Wow, that knob to switch years is an awesome feature!!

[@ananttiwari1337]

This did such a good job at emulating the entire feel, which is probably why it was your favourite

[@col.johnson9938]

could not help but laugh when you said “all the way back to 1996…” as i remember my first experience with the internet back in the mid 1970’s on an IBM 1130. great video, hope you do a tutorial on the build. got yourself a new subscriber

[@BillyBobDingledorf]

More of a testament to the WayBackMachine than anything else.

[@MegaManNeo]

I love this. It combines retro computing with the Internet Archive accessed through a Raspberry Pi inside a real nice looking and probably 3D printed shell that's easy to use as well. It's perfect.

[@123sleepygamer]

I'm 30 so most of my internet usage and memories was done in the early/mid 2000s, this video hit me like a wave of nostalgia so hard. I wish I had a PC old enough that would justify me hacking one of these together. I too miss people injecting the ugliest CSS and HTML into their own blogs for either pretty or hideous design and personal flare. Myspace was ripe with that sort of thing and there's just something endearing about it all.

[@maryrb9761]

Hahaha saaame😅 im also 30

[@dannystavs2003]

If this were an actual product, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

[@susangz]

Watching this video brought out all the memories in an instant. From the first time i would hang around with dial up modem internet on websites like cartoon network online flash games, then slowly by slowly moving on to KZbin and the now the technology we have now. Brought a tear to my eye. Thank you for reminding how the journey of World Wide Web was in the early time and how it has progressed in the modern times.

[@jdatlas4668]

Ooh, this is kind of an extension of that service that turns Wayback machine into a proxy server, isn't it? That seems really neat

[@markusTegelane]

Yeah, pretty much

[@terrawolf]

Seems like it

[@WedgeStratos]

The Old Net is what you're referring to.

[@jdatlas4668]

@@WedgeStratos yes! For some reason the name was completely eluding me.

[@lemau8458]

Congratulations, you watched the video then made a comment trying to convince people you haven't watched it yet and know exactly what's going to happen

[@willtaylor9091]

This is really cool! Such a neat way to streamline the experience of using retro computer hardware as it was originally intended in 2022! It's very smart to hide the wayback machine behind a proxy

[@wordart_guian]

i feel like you cater specifically to me with each new video i learnt how to do web design last week and immediately got that kind of opinions btw :-) i first logged on in 2010, but i do remember lots of the "old web" because most of the websites i browsed back then were still pretty oldschool (some were full of view counters and under construction gifs, and most were customized to infinity. forum culture thrived longer where i live, too)

[@JuicyJenitals]

Make sure you are spending as much time as you can helping other people and strengthening the kingdom of God while you are here on earth. This world is rapidly passing away. Call on the name of Jesus and pray for Him to intervene in your life. If you have any questions about scripture feel free to ask me

[@wordart_guian]

@@JuicyJenitals i'm already doing that (or at least trying) don't worry

[@jeremiefaucher-goulet3365]

A physical rotary dial to travel in time what gets sent over your Ethernet cable? Freaking genius. I so love that invention!!!

[@kFY514]

When I saw the the title, at first I thought that this has been done multiple times. But when I saw you playing with the date dial and refreshing pages, you got me sold on this. It really gives a magical feel to an otherwise mundane Internet Archive proxy.

[@JuicyJenitals]

Make sure you are spending as much time as you can helping other people and strengthening the kingdom of God while you are here on earth. This world is rapidly passing away. Call on the name of Jesus and pray for Him to intervene in your life. If you have any questions about scripture feel free to ask me

[@jas_bataille]

While I was born in 1996, I still remember dial-in internet and pre-wifi era quite well. Before Facebook - which I have now finally quitted after many years of wasted time and, unfortunately, friendships - people who did go on forums were actually passionate and interested by the very fact of going on forums. I didn't used MSN back then because I thought it was weird and that people wouldn't communicate well through a screen in real-tune - turns out I had a lot of wisdom for a 12 years old kid that was lost over the years and then gained back...! I still remember ordering a DIY Warhammer from someone oversea who made like 4 or 5 and hosted a contest. I never finished painting it, because it's so special I wanted to have the right skills. I wonder if I could get back to this guy one day to show him the finished product :D

[@EposVox]

This is so cool!

[@VirtualCarClub]

A fact to consider is that web design has turned towards simplicity not solely out of a desire for aesthetic, but also in an effort to make the web more accessible. Look into the Web Accessibility Initiative. If you're not already familiar with it, you'll get some really great insight into why web design has changed in the ways it has. Great video! edit: I feel like I didn't touch on the content of the video, haha. What you created is actually amazing and would be an awesome interactive display in a museum. Like a real museum, not some obscure internet museum. Seriously great job on this!

[@cade497]

As someone who's been on the internet since the mid 90's, creating websites with basic HTML on NetScape Navigator... this is the coolest shit ever!

[@niiiiiiisse]

Unrelated to the actual video, I couldn't help but notice that Cardigans CD and it made me excited to see someone I admire on KZbin listen to them :)

[@pabblo1]

7:28 Yeah, before 2011 or so, KZbin channels used to be really customizable. Around 2011/2012, KZbin would slowly introduce the Cosmic Panda layout, which massively cut down the amount of customization that you could do on a KZbin channel. Around 2013, KZbin would introduce the One Channel layout, which severely restricted the amount of customization that you could do on a KZbin channel.

[@pabblo1]

7:32 Also, I used to watch KZbin videos on really old Android phones, e.g HTC Desire HD, Samsung Galaxy S1-S3 & so on.

[@pabblo1]

8:16 This is because most computers had a resolution of at most 800x600. Nowadays, it's rare to find a display that is lower than 1920x1080 or 1366x768.

[@billkeithchannel]

The customization is what really cut down the speed of MySpace so YT followed suit to remove that feature.

[@pabblo1]

@@billkeithchannel It doesn't seem right, as I can easily load a KZbin webpage from 2007 on Windows 2000 (Firefox 45 ESR using an extended kernel), yet I can barely load a KZbin webpage from today on Windows Vista. (Firefox 52 ESR, the latest version that supports Windows XP & Vista)

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@pabblo1 the JS is more bloated than images nowadays, but on slowish ADSL the pictures could make a difference on the old layout. I remember I opted into the Cosmic Panda beta (though I’d forgotten that was the name) to half my channel’s load-time back then. Though removing the custom images would bring the default old layout on par, but I thought it looked too ugly without the custom images.

[@EvilCoffeeInc]

I think you nailed it with that last line, about the internet of the 2000s being rougher around the edges but more human. While the internet of today is "better" in the sense of connectivity and content, we also use the internet very differently today than 20 years ago. As much good as has been done gathering "content" together in a few key sites, I also miss the time before the consumer was the product and you had to visit a bunch of bespoke locations to get your daily updates. Though I am glad flash based websites died off.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Hoover Fusion Frenzy!! I literally found that after I’d seen a Hoover cyclone vacuum in the store and thought “couldn’t only Dyson make those?”, so I went to the website on the box and found the game there. God I played that so much. Another product placement game I have fond memories of is that Logitech bouncing flubber guy game. You have to bounce from key to key on a keyboard and the rest of the floor (I mean, keyboard) is lava. Plus there’s the Lego games like Junkbot (2 was my favourite) and, uhh, that hacking game with Lego Technic RC car. It rolled-up to the corporation’s air-gapped server and hacked-into it with a laser beam!! Wowsocool! That was the game that taught me haus is pronounced house not horse, because of the pharmaceutical company Pharmhaus in the story. Haha, that “slow loading” B-roll you showed was like when I’d first got to use ADSL. Dial-up was a lot slower than that! (But frequently-visited sites were about that speed in practice, albeit looking differently, since they’d be cached and only have to load-in a handful of new pieces.) And yeah, they certainly looked better at those resolutions. Much better than seeing all of it at once in a skinny column on the left. There’s a reason so many said “best viewed at 800x600/1024x768 in IE/Netscape”, after all! My favourite era has to be 2006-2010 though, when dynamic-scaling websites were a common thing, yet the design-language was still very 2000-2005.

[@shadowthefurryscientist]

bro left then came back then left again

[@BackTheNerd]

Probably a college student lol?

[@alwinter]

It'd be really cool to see a polished version of this on display in a place like the Computer History Museum.

[@toastyyybeats]

its so cool how you can change the webpage while youre browsing on it, literal time travel

[@SuperFromND]

oh heck, i actually did something kinda similar to this a few years ago! what i did was i downloaded a bunch of pages from the wayback machine (gotta love wget and some paitience!), and then hooked it up to a Fiddler session that would use the AutoRedirector feature to point web URLs to the downloaded copies stored locally on the target machine (a windows XP VM in my case), i never really released any of it but it was a really fun project to work on in my spare time

[@eekee6034]

"gotta love wget and some paitience!" Yep! :D

[@divisionbyzer0474]

That switch thingy to change the year just makes this BADASS!

[@user-gb7cl8np3p]

ok but are we just gonna ignore how he made a 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭 wayback 'machine'

[@decentpotatoes]

Italics. Nice.

[@theseriousaccount]

Ignore? He made an entire video about it.

[@rockpie.iso.tar.bz2]

we gotta make this comment more popular than antvenom's comment.

[@sayochikun3288]

Huh?

[@b3c8143]

yeah

[@htfkid2000]

TheWaybackMachine DOES actually store videos off youtube but it's only some of em and it's only stuff from post 2010 they're there tho...

[@jamescollier3]

The donkey party bought it. it's no longer valid

[@FoxBlocksHere]

Holy crap, I had an idea for something like this once! I'm glad someone made it a reality!

[@knowncupid7538]

That really took me down memory lane 😁

[@IsaiahManning-jw5uu]

How Did It Worked

[@luigimaster111]

Mid 2000s web design is my favorite, every websites was designed like a newspaper or collage and made full use of the screen real estate of the the time. It was so dense in info, easy to understand and navigate when done right.

[@farmerbb]

You should release a BOM for this along with any extra scripts or programs you've written to tie the hardware and the WaybackProxy together. Would love to build my own sometime

[@alexflores7652]

This was pretty cool watch. The nostalgic feels hit pretty but fun to watch.

[@TimmyJoePCTech]

I miss you

[@Berny23]

7:42 Oh My God! You have Physicus installed on this PC?! I didn't think I would see this awesome game ever again in the wild. Especially not the English version.

[@Mortebianca]

You should sell this man

[@meluckycharms111]

Woah, you should consider sharing this with museums!! This is super sweet. Seriously if you’re interested in doing that and want some help I’d be happy to participate in some way to facilitate the dissemination of this. This video blew my mind

[@kennysboat4432]

Happy to see a new post from you!

[@jgagnier]

In hindsight, this seems like such an obvious application of the Wayback Machine. Bravo! (Also, seeing BonziBuddy for the first time in two decades makes me realize how nostalgia is a hell of a drug).

[@svpracer98]

I remember pre mobile internet. The hardest thing was clicking the right play/ download button.

[@thiagolaj]

A time ago i made a serial modem with a MIPS (RTL8186) wifi router card with 32mb of ram. I used the opensource software TcpSer and the linux PPPd to emulate the Hayes AT commands and make a point-to-point connection. Makes connections at 115k or higher if the computer supports it through the serial port and dial-up PPP connection. Very useful for PCs without a network connection. It also allows connection to Telnet BBSs transparently too.

[@babblo]

You need another dial to set download speed to complete the experience!

[@Mnogojazyk]

Most enjoyable. I’ve gotten a twinge of nostalgia because that’s when I made my first website.

[@HenFilmStudio]

I always thought you'd have to be a real time traveller to see something like this, but this makes a dream become a reality. Good Work!

[@hcs8789]

This has some really interesting potential for digital archives of internet history. Archives of this kind are good at displaying the look of old webpages but often struggle to re-create the experience of browsing the internet in the past - as you say, the Wayback Machine is good but the fiddly interface and frequent broken images are barriers to full immersion. Something like this would allow archives to emulate the experience as well as the content of the historical Web, allowing people to access old webpages on retro computers using the software of the time. Really bringing internet history to life.

[@BlueMSX.]

Incredible, never thought I'd see the day. Amazing work for all those involved.

[@YavNe]

Yayyy. I always wanted to remember how the old design of web pages such as Google, KZbin and Facebook looked like back then. Thx. 😍😍😍

[@TheMinocula]

Very cool! I already support some similar projects, but this is a black magic box ;-) so cool to see other people like browsing the past on good old machines

[@suspectdown5133]

I still use a 1996 imac for my business. It is only used for invoicing,printing packing slips and tracking.

[@entertainme7523]

prove it

[@taxevasionwitt]

Awesome! This looks amazing! Great vid by the way.

[@JBBrickman]

I would love a detailed toutorial, this is a dream project!

[@RadiiRadium]

Where'd you go :(

[@dimitrischristou]

I’ve spent hours wandering around pages on the wayback machine. I’m really excited for this device!!

[@mjziborich4491]

This is truly amazing, I wish I could buy something like this!

[@TwixtheFox]

I used KZbin Mobile back in 2007. It was actually really neat being able to use it on your phone for the first time. I used it quite a bit actually :D It was very low quality, as was streaming and what not back then, but we didn't really have the high quality stuff we do today so it was fairly normal to us. It actually functioned quite well.

[@mockier]

I would like a followup video showing how the rotary encoder, and screen were connected. And how the encoder was made to work with the WaybackProxy. I really enjoyed the video, but there is a lot of work needed from anyone trying to duplicate this in rediscovering your setup and cabling. That makes the video exclusionary for the less technical viewers. It's clear that you have put a lot of love into this project and it works well. I hope that you can find the time to share more instruction and code so that others can enjoy it.

[@cancledacc]

This is extremely cool. I have a lot of vintage computers from 80's to today.

[@joethemanager1]

This would be neat to try out with a Dreamcast or PS2!

[@JoelGrant-ie4ly]

I remember going online in 1979 through the Plato system (Control Data). But this wad was between colleges and universities in the US. But after purchasing my first personal computer a Timex Sinclair 1000, and then a TRS-80 from Radio Shack I was able to go online again and connect BBSs. All this before 1985.

[@andresbravo2003]

Making this Proxy Time Machine for the Internet might’ve head back to the past. Really Cool!

[@XalphYT]

During the two pre-roll ads, I thought about how I would implement your device. I got the wayback machine for content right, but not your web proxy. That is genius.

[@arbitercs]

yay hes posting again

[@MightyElemental]

7:00 Oof, that bring back memories. I remember playing on the classic servers via the web browser. Was incredibly fun. The game is almost unrecognizable now.

[@_booth7992]

miss u :(

[@uncooked_ham]

"Life" is one of my absolute favourite Cardigans albums!

[@Iwantapplez109]

7:50 smoother? i'd say more bloated, filled with mobile-first designs even though i'm on a desktop with a 1080p screen, bland souless flat design, can't forget the tons of javascript and the necessity to spy on you everywhere you go. that's what web design has turned into, there's no personality anymore.

[@PrestonsArchiveStash26]

As Seen On TV or BulbHead or Bell & Howell really need a product like this guy! It's also great for newer computers, any new computer opens old website without this product will cause a virus and malware. but not with the Internet Time Machine!

Here's a question, and probably a side project for you related to this: does the Internet Archive can be used as search engine? Because I think that's what's missing, you could visit the old websites you know because you remember them, or they are still alive today, but I bet there's a lot of hidden websites that are there waiting to be found, so one option is to create your own little search engine to parse all the pages you visit and index them, or retrieve result data from the webarchive to create a little listing and sites to visit.

[@aydenmarietta4906]

This is definitely really cool. A lot of people in the comment section seem interested in it as well and I definitely would like to build one myself.

[@LaskyLabs]

Imagine combining this with a dreampi in order to use it on systems that only have modems.

[@celioazevedoofficial]

Wow great! Please, keep it updated.

[@laharl2k]

old 2000s web design was the best, nowadays minimalist huge image infinite scrolling trash is just a sign of decadence. The same happened to houses. Its just cultures in decline.

[@husky3g]

I completely forgot about customized KZbin channels. That was honestly one of the coolest features back in the day and I think many of us miss that level of customization. Same for MySpace. MySpace pages with custom music and CSS/backgrounds was one of the neatest things about the site. We all miss being able to have our favorite song play on our channel when users visited our page. Skeuomorphism was another really cool design concept I miss from 2000's web pages. I literally ditched IOS for Android when iOS 7 came out because I hated the look of the OS so much that I just had to make the switch.

[@DonaldTrumpFree]

Where is he

[@computerfighter2000]

THIS IS THE COOLEST THING EVER!!!! also Neil Cicierega mentioned 🎉🎉🎉🎉

[@ruthun]

Been a while. Hope you well.

[@Phlegethon]

How can you not remember how frustrating computers were back then

[@dom64c]

is there a flux capacitor included?

[@h_teresken]

jak ukrasc komentarz

[@jackburton5085]

This project is awesome! I'll do it too it's a really great idea thank you! And the funniest part is, it seems like "the internet" is contained in that little black box, like the episode of "It the crowd"

[@PiddeBas]

Thaaank you for saying web instead of internet

[@IshtiaqAlam]

So wholesome.