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"Accessing the internet" is a fairly broad term. In general, all machines supporting IPv4 and some sort of interface (UART for SLIP/PPP or Ethernet) can access

"Accessing the internet" is a fairly broad term. In general, all machines supporting IPv4 and some sort of interface (UART for SLIP/PPP or Ethernet) can access the internet. However, older machines will not be able to use more modern services like ssh or the web due to compute power or memory limitations and you will obviously not be able to connect to IPv6-only hosts. So, for example a PDP11 running 2.9BSD (e.g. a 11/70 from 1975) should suffice, but there are other machines of similar vintage that support IPv4. You can also try putting a virtual PDP11 on the net using the simh emulator (http://simh.trailing-edge.com http://simh.trailing-edge.com) and 2.9BSD from TUHS (https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/UCB/2.9BSD/ https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/UCB/2.9BSD/).

tbenst 6y ago
Thank you for the history lesson! I had no idea IPv4 was so old
- eloisant 6y ago
  Yes Internet is old, the web is more recent (1990)
- throw0101a 6y ago
  * https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/Katie-Hafner/9780684832678 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up... * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/281818.Where_Wizards_Stay_Up_Late https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/281818.Where_Wizards_Sta...
Hizonner 6y ago
OK, but wait. 2.9BSD is from like 1982. And I think SLIP was later than that, and PPP was definitely much later than that. So you don't have a "pure" 1975 machine; you're using later software. What does "support" mean, then? If you're allowed to use software that's later than your hardware, then you can write a stack for almost anything, so the idea of a machine "supporting IPv4" becomes kind of meaningless. You need 576 bytes of memory for a packet buffer, plus your program. Any mid-sixties mainframe, maybe even older. If you do count the age of the software in deciding what's "supported", and you require that the TCP/IP stack run locally and communicate with modern computers without translation, then you'll have a hard limit at about 1980 or 1981, since the TCP and IPv4 protocols weren't defined until then, and there was therefore definitely no software. You could allow using NCP as a "legitimate Internet precursor" to TCP/IP, but if you do that there's no real reason not to just allow serial terminals as "legitimate precursors" to NCP. So 1980 or 1981 seems like the limit for a "pure" system with its own software. If you allow software newer than the hardware, but limit yourself to not writing that software, my guess is that the oldest thing would be a KA-10, which is a 1968 computer. RFC 801 says that as of 1981, there was a stack for TENEX, which you could run on a KA-10. You could at least do Telnet, maybe FTP. That's assuming you can find another old computer to gateway whatever ancient serial protocols it was using at the physical layer.

tbenst 6y ago

Thank you for the history lesson! I had no idea IPv4 was so old

eloisant 6y ago
Yes Internet is old, the web is more recent (1990)
throw0101a 6y ago
* https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/Katie-Hafner/9780684832678 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up... * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/281818.Where_Wizards_Stay_Up_Late https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/281818.Where_Wizards_Sta...

Hizonner 6y ago

OK, but wait. 2.9BSD is from like 1982. And I think SLIP was later than that, and PPP was definitely much later than that. So you don't have a "pure" 1975 machine; you're using later software. What does "support" mean, then? If you're allowed to use software that's later than your hardware, then you can write a stack for almost anything, so the idea of a machine "supporting IPv4" becomes kind of meaningless. You need 576 bytes of memory for a packet buffer, plus your program. Any mid-sixties mainframe, maybe even older. If you do count the age of the software in deciding what's "supported", and you require that the TCP/IP stack run locally and communicate with modern computers without translation, then you'll have a hard limit at about 1980 or 1981, since the TCP and IPv4 protocols weren't defined until then, and there was therefore definitely no software. You could allow using NCP as a "legitimate Internet precursor" to TCP/IP, but if you do that there's no real reason not to just allow serial terminals as "legitimate precursors" to NCP. So 1980 or 1981 seems like the limit for a "pure" system with its own software. If you allow software newer than the hardware, but limit yourself to not writing that software, my guess is that the oldest thing would be a KA-10, which is a 1968 computer. RFC 801 says that as of 1981, there was a stack for TENEX, which you could run on a KA-10. You could at least do Telnet, maybe FTP. That's assuming you can find another old computer to gateway whatever ancient serial protocols it was using at the physical layer.