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Michael MJD has a video on Escargot, which hosts a server instance that knows how to talk to clients using the MSN protocol (official clients need to be modifie

by rzzzt 6y ago

Michael MJD has a video on Escargot, which hosts a server instance that knows how to talk to clients using the MSN protocol (official clients need to be modified, however, so connection attempts don't go to the now defunct servers): https://youtu.be/yrvNyvFwCJg https://youtu.be/yrvNyvFwCJg Source code is available at https://gitlab.com/escargot-chat https://gitlab.com/escargot-chat .

derefr 6y ago
> official clients need to be modified, however, so connection attempts don't go to the now defunct servers Presuming they don't use any form of encryption (and I think that's a safe assumption for that era), one could keep the clients official, while routing the packets themselves using a virtual Ethernet driver (or via software-defined routing, if the relevant copy of Windows is running in a VM.)
- boardwaalk 6y ago
  Using hosts.txt or a local DNS server seems simpler.
- parliament32 6y ago
  You just need a destination NAT. One liner in iptables, not sure what the MS equivalent would be.
Fabricio20 6y ago
This just made my day, I was having some nostalgia on windows xp last week and was pretty sad MSN wouldn't open. Thanks for sharing, will look into it!
znpy 6y ago
this is unbelievable, thank you!!
peterburkimsher 6y ago
I set up a local Escargot server for chatting with homestay family kids aged 6 and 9 (too young for having their own email accounts). They had a LOT of fun with the fonts and animations, dancing pigs and that kind of thing. The trouble is, Escargot is a real pain to set up. Certificates need to be patched into the hosts file every 30 days. The server must run on Windows 7 x64. The Windows XP client never worked for me; only on Windows 7 x32 and Windows 10. If I were able to run an Escargot server from my MacBook Pro, that would make it a whole lot more fun. In practice it takes me hours just to set it up, while they'd rather be playing.
- toyg 6y ago
  > Certificates need to be patched into the hosts file every 30 days Sounds like a job for letsencrypt... > The server must run on Windows 7 x64. It's Python code, might just need some love to go crossplatform (?)

by rzzzt 6y ago

derefr 6y ago

> official clients need to be modified, however, so connection attempts don't go to the now defunct servers Presuming they don't use any form of encryption (and I think that's a safe assumption for that era), one could keep the clients official, while routing the packets themselves using a virtual Ethernet driver (or via software-defined routing, if the relevant copy of Windows is running in a VM.)

boardwaalk 6y ago
Using hosts.txt or a local DNS server seems simpler.
parliament32 6y ago
You just need a destination NAT. One liner in iptables, not sure what the MS equivalent would be.

Fabricio20 6y ago

This just made my day, I was having some nostalgia on windows xp last week and was pretty sad MSN wouldn't open. Thanks for sharing, will look into it!

znpy 6y ago

this is unbelievable, thank you!!

peterburkimsher 6y ago

I set up a local Escargot server for chatting with homestay family kids aged 6 and 9 (too young for having their own email accounts). They had a LOT of fun with the fonts and animations, dancing pigs and that kind of thing. The trouble is, Escargot is a real pain to set up. Certificates need to be patched into the hosts file every 30 days. The server must run on Windows 7 x64. The Windows XP client never worked for me; only on Windows 7 x32 and Windows 10. If I were able to run an Escargot server from my MacBook Pro, that would make it a whole lot more fun. In practice it takes me hours just to set it up, while they'd rather be playing.

toyg 6y ago
> Certificates need to be patched into the hosts file every 30 days Sounds like a job for letsencrypt... > The server must run on Windows 7 x64. It's Python code, might just need some love to go crossplatform (?)