We brought back the internet's first search engine

We continue our quest to find and bring back Archie, the internet's first search engine.
PART 1: • How the internet becam...
Visit and search our Archie server: archie.serialport.org
The original Archie documentation: files.serialport.org/archie/a...
Want more content like this? Support our mission! Send us a Super Thanks and check out our Patreon + Discord community: / serialport
Got some retro gear you want to donate? Get in touch with us at serialport.org.
Our second channel: ‪@TheParallelPort‬
Huge thanks to:
Kinissue for the incredible "The Realization"
Watch: • Kinissue - The Realiza...
Listen: open.spotify.com/intl-fr/albu...
Above music provided by Lofi Girl.
References:
Emtage, Alan. (2024). Interview conducted by Serial Port.
Landweber, L. H. & ISOC. Archie Servers Map. web.archive.org/web/199904270...
Friedlander, David & NASA/GSFC. (1996). Photo of Sun tape.
Smith, R. J. & Gibbs, M. (1993). Navigating the Internet. Sams.
NapoliRoma (2011). Sun SPARCstation 20 workstation, with plenty of stickers. commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...

[@theserialport]

The Archie 3.5 source code and binaries can be accessed at files.serialport.org/archie/archie-3.5-beta/. Thank you everyone for your patience while we got that sorted out. Please feel free to distribute and modify.. we can't wait to see what the community comes up with!

[@sonicSnap]

no internet archive download? i appreciate the source code but i'd prefer multiple sources of download for ultimate archival

[@ZacharyClaretScott]

I think internet archive and a github link would be a great idea

[@-_._._-]

Github would be amazing, could lead to the addition of new stuff like sftp support via community contributions

[@sonicSnap]

@@ZacharyClaretScott github too, you're right! i'd absolutely love to see some modern forks of this with sftp

[@FLECOM]

thank you for both finding and sharing this! I have a bunch of FTP archives I've saved over the years, a while back was thinking of putting up an FTP server with them and having an Archie front end again would be fantastic since I actually recall using Archie a couple times back in the day...

[@TAK-YON_]

even in the 1990s people couldn't resist letting us know they're an archuser

[@GeekIWG]

"I use Archie BTW." 😂

[@digitaleswerken]

yay -S archie

[@bcredeur97]

LOL

[@rockpie]

neofetch when someone runs it on arch(ie): how the hell-

[@Dumb_Killjoy]

​@@rockpieRIP Neofetch

[@LarenOz]

As an archivist this is a great demonstration of how easily digital history can be lost. Well done for the hard work of bringing it back.

[@rhythmdude]

your... an.... archievist? (im so sorry i had to say it)

[@krazownik3139]

As a Pole I am not at all surprised that you found a copy of archie exactly here. I worked for a local government so I can guarantee that government offices (including educational institutions) here very often rely on a truly ancient software. Even during my work I was destroying old floppies containing sensitive data (EU regulations) and I stumbled upon many 5.25" floppies including one brand new sealed pack.

[@pawepiat6170]

Decommissioned in 2023 aswell!

[@SomeMorganSomewhere]

Undoubtedly there's some of that in the bowels of the former monopoly telco here too, I recall being at one of their sites in the 2010's and seeing old Sun workstations in the back room still powered on and doing *something*

[@Reichstaubenminister]

As a German, I was not even a little surprised that they still had the files. Eastern Europe is known to have an incredibly strong sense for preservation (and piracy).

[@DanielixKlimax]

@@Reichstaubenminister Just little clarification, Poland like Czech Republic is in Central Europe. (Sidenote: I wonder how many files in my archives are last copies in existence... that reminds me, I should finally sort out Simtel. Several mirrors were a mess so many files are misplaced)

[@Space_Reptile]

I hope you put those files you got for archie also on the Internet archive, it would be a shame to lose it again in the future

[@iamwisdomsky]

right? would be good it it's uploaded on every popular public git hosting platforms.

[@krozareq]

No doubt. And builds for modern Linux systems as well as with MinGW.

[@NickAc]

I haven't seen anything mentioned regarding that

[@jirehla-ab1671]

is it possible to implement sftp support for archie?

[@krozareq]

@@jirehla-ab1671 I don't see why not. The connection and download of the files are handled by the user anyways, so they would provide their own sftp support. It would just need the support for the backend binary that does the scraping and indexing. Archie is proprietary anyways. Would be better to just write an open license implementation from scratch with modern security, databasing, dependencies, Arch/OS support, etc.

[@VauxhaIIOpel]

As a Pole I am _very_ proud that we could help out in restoring a significant piece of history back to working order like this. Great video as always! Do you think that now the source code is available anyone's going to make homebrew updates to archie?

[@michalkap9859]

Polska górą

[@mysterious_czrs]

My country never disappoints with keeping old stuff for ages. I was an it admin for a brief period at another university in Poland and they still had (in 2023) some itanium machines in storage just in case.

[@inrit]

This kind of Internet history preservation is critical, thank you! And I'm delighted to see the Archie inventor, Alan Emtage, who I didn't know anything about but have enjoyed learning more about.

[@Zizzily]

This is really amazing. Glad enough people came together that you were able to find Archie. This channel has gone from really interesting tech retrospectives to actually preserving, and even reviving, some of the ancient Internet and past technologies.

[@juanstdio]

This is one of the videos that I truly like.. I was a volunteer of the Argentina's Computer museum ( Museo de informática de la República Argentina) and I truly understand the frustation and challenges to get back old data and binaries. Nothing more satisfactory to see it working again ... Amazing work folks!!

[@Leftylove22]

You Guys are shining the light on such interesting history of the early internet! I truly appreciate the work you put into it.

[@NCommander]

I actually used archie back int he day, its' good to see put back online! EDIT: It would be quite nice if we could get those source/binaries archived

[@codenamemakaveli]

A man who likes to make himself hurt. Greetings NCommander!

[@renerpho]

You're going to like the pinned comment ;-)

[@kostis2849]

You are not nearly that old. Or are you???

[@fendant123]

Another former Bunyip person here. So great that you got this found and an instance up and running!!

[@Frebergguru]

Are you going to release the source and install files for Archie too? 🙂

[@rdmclark]

Would be fun to spin up more archie servers

[@oldgrizzlygamer1669]

Please do this? Would love to spin up a server.

[@bounceysteve]

Can they respond to this? I'd really hope these files don't become lost again.

[@oscarcharliezulu]

Yeah let’s get onto this!

[@Alexvideosama]

Would be great! Please publish the Source code so everyone can bring back to life Archie!

[@kborak]

So are you going to share the source so this can take off again? This is what some of us have been dying for.

[@theserialport]

Yes, they're now available! Check the pinned comment.

[@davidew98]

please put on internet archive!

[@clamhammer2463]

Or torrent it

[@johhnyknoxville3948]

@@clamhammer2463 internet archive automatically creates a torrent of the file

[@Mykolai_Vasylyovych]

@@clamhammer2463that one miner:

[@MitchellWilsonII]

Oh wow! This is so nostalgic. I love the work you guys are doing! We need to get the community to spin up some more servers and get them talking!

[@mrsna]

Thank you for these high quality videos! Keep on the great work!

[@sardaukar99]

This channel is great. You guys are doing amazing work!

[@alexiekola]

What a journey!!! keep up the amazing work you guys do.

[@MyAmazingUsername]

This is such a cool piece of digital archaeology! Thanks for doing this! 😊

[@rwdplz1]

Can you bring back Google search from 10 years ago? I miss being able to find stuff, now the results go to the highest bidder.

[@mpf1947]

Ten years might not be enough to get functional boolean operators, better make it twenty.

[@christopherbartleson8918]

Great work fellas!!! I look forward to whatever you put out in the future.

[@jts64083]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane! Amazing work.

[@MatteoFogli-is-pecus]

Great work and great video! Thank you for preserving this bit of history and documenting it so well

[@defaultroute]

I love this, the feels hit hard. I connected to the Patreon until I couldn’t afford it. But I’m grateful you share your work freely. It really is amazing. Thank you.

[@ultraswank]

Amazing work! We salute you!

[@ronsmith4325]

You guys are bringing back childhood memories, one video at a time!

[@Badutspringer]

'Tis a pleasure to follow you on your quest for this, and taking us along for the ride... Lovely work and lovely production. Thank you for your time. No really!

[@yeeterextra6831]

really cool of y'all bringing back some old internet history

[@joeschneider1994]

Thank you for all your hard work. I miss the old internet and happy to see effort to keep it alive.

[@goo3r]

This is so great. Great work!

[@RacerX-]

Wow that is so amazing. What an awesome thing you have done.

[@seekingagreatperhaps6391]

This is fantastic. I have wanted to do this for years. Only one of these old services is left in the dust -- WAIS. Everything else I remember from my first shell in 1991, is up and running in some form now, thanks to your work on this. Serious hats off.

[@jomoho3919]

Seeing the believed to be lost code found and compiled gave me a special feeling. Thanks for the great work.

[@georgegrubbs2966]

Amazing determination and creative searching!! This software old timer appreciates the effort you guys invested in this project. Good job.

[@Zenas521]

To understate just what you were able to do, cool, that is swell. I really hope you are able to go forward with the project and Archie becomes more than one server.

[@toslaw9615]

Great to know the last copy came from my country. Good luck with your projects, I love your channel!

[@TeslaTales59]

Nice work. This is a very cool channel. Brings back lots of memories.

[@Daniel15au]

What an amazing video. Really fantastic work.

[@KrishnaDraws]

I really enjoyed this video. I remember Archie from back in the day...

[@markmonroe7330]

This is great. Thank you. I’m going to try some search’s tomorrow.

[@bigMax1337]

Thank for reviving Internet history, crazy that all this was still around til last year an i never knew about it

[@alexitanguay]

incredible work!

[@JK-mo2ov]

Incredible work

[@whophd]

Really well done. I went online when I started university - there must have been a brief period where that was "the way to do it" - and 1996 was still being told about Archie and that it was useful to learn. With a side-helping of disclaimer that the WWW was, obviously, the new hotness and also worth spending time on. Altavista was already a thing, and wasn't the first search engine - but these were "just" for the web. You had to know about the other protocols, FTP particularly, and Archie was a part of that. And in my course you had to learn about TCP and IP of course, while we were still all learning off each other about DNS (it seems, even now).

[@henrik2117]

Wow! Watching this gave me goosebumps! Thank you everyone who made this possible and for sharing the journey! It made me feel so alive and remember how things were "in the old days" when nerds exchanged ideas and created things.

[@theserialport]

Thank you!!

[@OneOfThePetes]

Awesome work!

[@Bluebed]

This is so amazing!

[@koysdo]

amazeballs… love the VFS implementation

[@c.n.crowther438]

This is mad interesting. thanks for sharing.

[@srobak]

very cool... thanks for doing this. bringing back the golden age of the internet - one system & protocol at a time :)

[@stavoxnetworks9757]

Way too cool. I remember Archie well from the 90s.

[@HansdeBruin]

Wauw, thanks a lot for this

[@Kwpolska]

An amazing effort.

[@frederickontour1478]

Sick goodjob!

[@MrDeekaph]

Great work guys! It’s amazing to me that it almost disappeared. It’s just a few megs.

[@ziran80]

I think it's great they used the term ANZAC to refer to the AU and NZ domains instead of the boring Oceania

[@Juttutin]

It's kinda weird tho, because the NZ to US links were so much bigger and better than the NZ to AU connections. It wasn't too unusual to see pings from NZ to AU sometimes take the scenic route. Something to do with support for the US research in Antarctica being provided out of Christchurch, and Victoria university in Wellington doing something collaboratively with some US colleges I think. Regardless, the US govt basically provided an undersea cable from NZ to Hawaii, and because of that, data bandwidth to Australia remained a low priority for a long long time. This is all according to ancient memories, so possibly quite wrong.

[@TAK-YON_]

Oce encompasses the islands to the north of Australia as well, Anzac is just au/nz

[@LarenOz]

I noticed that too!!

[@drewmitchell9554]

​@@Juttutin That tracks. Reuters recently released an investigation where they found the US DoD paid for one third of the cost of an Oman to Australia cable, so they could piggy back on to it for a connection to the naval base at Diego Garcia.

[@dzheliezniak]

I like the editing.

[@LuneLovehearn]

I didn't knew about this, but ... the preservation and conservation of the old internet is a must, you don't want all the progress to turn into lost media. history must be preserved.

[@breezie1337]

Haven't ever heard of Archie but have fond memories of napalm ftp indexer. That one's still around.

[@enricoligia.]

Complimenti!

[@scooter4196]

This is really awesome! Thanks for the content. That pages loads really quick. Are you hosting it locally?

[@apl175]

In the mid 90s, when I first had the realization that the Internet might be a "big thing" - the three tools I remember were: Archie, Veronica and Gopher. None of them were "insanely great" - so it was inevitable that other tools and search algorithms took their place.

[@szymontoda3155]

Poland moment 🎉

[@Povilaz]

Very interesting!

[@maxvideodrome4215]

Veronica next?

[@hg-sx5nk]

Yes, please!

[@TSteffi]

This is really awesome. It seems like archie would be rather easy to access. I wonder if this could be tied in with the recent developments towards a sort of retro-web. Since the NABU wave hit the scene, there have been great developments towards hooking up 8-bit micros to the internet, especially with the NHACP protocol. That already allows retro systems to download files via http, and ftp could probably be implemented as well. It would be really awesome to have a search engine that would allow users to easily search for the software they want directly from their NABU or AgonLight or RC2014 running CP/M.

[@RealEngineer]

What a great adventure🎉

[@Drkmirror]

This is cool, I remember using archie a little but but it was dying off at the time along with Gopher and Veronica.

[@philippegeneva1]

and another ex-bunyiper here, really awesome to see Archive come back to life!

[@m4rt_]

12:22 even the creators of Archie didn't know the difference between Scandinavia and the Nordic. Scandinavia: Norway, Sweden, Denmark Nordic: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Faroe Islands, and Greenland.

[@gus473]

🇦🇽 😎✌️

[@CoffeeOnRails]

Not at all surprised that it was an old university back up that had this archived. So much weird old software hides in university archives that’s probably lost everywhere else.

[@drewpaschal9294]

Very cool. You could do gopher and WAIS next.

[@glynnetolar4423]

And Veronica too? Yes, that existed.

[@der.Schtefan]

I think I just blanked out and had an out of body experience when I saw CuteFTP flashing by

[@AviDrissman]

Straight to the Computer History Museum.

[@veryrandom08]

Amazing

[@nixielee]

Good work, can't lose stuff like this to history. It sounds really strange using "we" when it's you doing the work, nothing wrong with "I"

[@AK-vx4dy]

I used once about 1990 on university mainframe green terminal, probably some DEC...in my country Poland :) More fun, i was awarded about 1994 with book "Internet for Dummies", where WWW was on last page as a new curiosity and whole book was about archie and other old tools ;)

[@PhaizKannon]

When I saw the video title I guessed wrong and thought this would be about Gopher.

[@paullee107]

Awesome!! Can I add my FTP server with a HUGE vintage archive??

[@win7best]

Cant wait to try to host my own archie server

[@andresbravo2003]

This brings it back to the modern age.

[@bichela]

I used to use archia quite a lot in the early 90s

[@nono1271]

So when are the release and beta sources going on the Internet Archive?

[@gdp3rd]

I remember using Anarchie (later Interarchy) on an almost daily basis.

[@EnigPartyhaus]

Trying to deprecate FTP is one of the dumbest moves ever thought possible seeing as FTP clients are still the fastest method for drop-and-forget file adding for servers

[@nickwallette6201]

That intro montage was insane to me. What kind of idiot would deprecate and remove FTP support?? It's a solved problem, a useful protocol, and there's nothing else quite like it.

[@SeverityOne]

Funny. I'm old enough that I should remember Archie, but I don't. Or perhaps I'm so old that I no longer remember it... Gopher, yes. I've used that, although I never found it very useful.

[@supersat]

Will archie be archived somewhere so it doesn't get lost again? Those CVS directories might be interesting too...

[@bichela]

I also loved webcrawler and altavista

[@paulwratt]

awesome

[@bentyler]

Would it be possible to get a copy of Archie?

[@realsharpninja]

Absolutely fantastic job, guys!

[@lachlanlau]

Not smart enough to know what the computer magic you are doing but i love that people are archiving the magic of the old internet. not having been there I only dream of how wonderful it might have been..

[@urufusan]

Is the source code available?

[@lukasmuller4820]

Check the pinned comment :)

[@HappyQuailsLC]

I don't remember Archie. I remember guessing at newsgroup subsets and printing massive lists of servers.

[@diobrando1882]

Just imagine some prof. dr. hab. inż. preserving a vital piece of internet history simply because he forgot to throw out the old server

[@bunkermatty]

Will you make the source public?

[@curtismenzies428]

How long was it from start to finish to get everything running in the terminal? I think what amazes me was how similar some of the config was for a modern setup.

[@DonaldTubbs]

Onward to Veronica and Gopher!