Retro Markus 🇩🇰🇩🇪May 8

#retrocomputing #vintagecomputing #search #searchengine #frogfind #ncsa #mosaic #ncsamosaic #sun #sparcstation #sgi #unix

Catch of the Day: The Forefather of the World Wide Web! 🏛️🕸️

Hey Retro Fans!

Hold your breath and bow in reverence. Today, our FrogFind radar didn't just catch an old browser; it caught the absolute foundation of the modern internet. Between all the Nintendos and dusty Windows PCs, this gigantic milestone appeared:

NCSA Mosaic 2.7b5 on UNIX (X11)!

For those who weren't online in the early 90s: Mosaic, developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), was the first web browser that could display images inline next to text (rather than in a separate window). Starting in 1993, it was the spark that made the World Wide Web appealing to the masses! The Mosaic team later went on to found Netscape, and even Microsoft's first Internet Explorer was based on licensed Mosaic code.

The fact that today, in 2026, someone boots up a UNIX machine (perhaps an old Sun SPARCstation or an SGI) and navigates our frog pond using the final beta version of NCSA Mosaic (from around 1996) is like operating a working time machine. It proves one thing: True HTML survives decades.

A reverent cheer to the pioneers of the internet!

Your FrogFind Team 🐸

Show threadJames HoldenMay 3
After all that, it turns out the root password was written on a sticky note in with the manuals. Oops. 🤦 #SPARCStation #retrocomputing
Show threadJames HoldenMay 3
Sweet! Solaris 2.5 on a #SPARCStation 4 ❤️☀️
Show threadMJ TurnerMay 3

@jamesholden Very cool - I love 32-bit #SPARCstation hardware. On the point of the terminator - is it because you were using an external drive too? I don't remember having to use a terminator if only using the internal drives.

#retrocomputing

Show threadJames HoldenMay 3
Ancient caddy loading CD-ROM was flaky, so I swapped it temporarily with the drive from the Indigo 2. Now I can reset the root password. #SPARCStation #retrocomputing
Show threadJames HoldenMay 3
Yaaaaaasss! “FastSbusVideo FCode Self Test Passed” Successful board-level repair! #SPARCStation #retrocomputing
Show threadJames HoldenApr 24
Now I remember what was up with the #SPARCStation - it has an intermittent video fault. The onboard diagnostics point to U0708, the bottom VRAM chip. It creaks a bit when you press on it and the lines on the screen go away. The time has come for me to buy a hot air rework station, and learn how to solder SMD components. #retrocomputing
Show threadJames HoldenApr 22
Hmm, any guesses? I suspect I installed the OS many years ago, but I’m drawing a blank on the root password. #SPARCStation #retrocomputing
Show threadJames HoldenApr 22
NO WAY! It has an OS on it. Took me a while to remember you need the SCSI terminator on the back though, before it’ll find the internal drive. #SPARCStation #retrocomputing
Show threadJames HoldenApr 22
That’s better, got a cheap CR2032 cell holder. Time to put it back in the #SPARCStation #retrocomputing