SerialPort

Archie is online

Added 2024-05-08 15:46:21 +0000 UTC

Over the past few weeks, our journey with Archie, the pre-web internet search engine, has been both educational and challenging. As we revived and set up Archie from a beta release, we encountered several hurdles inherent to working with legacy code - complete with its fair share of bugs and glitches.

One significant technical challenge we navigated was how Archie interacts with FTP servers. Historically, Archie uses FTP in "active" mode. This mode requires the server to connect back to the client, which worked well in the early days of the internet but poses compatibility issues today. Modern FTP servers predominantly use "passive" mode, where the client initiates all connections, enhancing security and firewall traversal. So, we implemented a FTP proxy to sit between Archie and the real FTP servers to translate between these two modes.

We're thrilled to announce that we've successfully overcome these challenges! Soon, we'll share a hands-on demonstration via a new YouTube video, giving you a close look at Archie in action.

Our Patreon supporters have exclusive first access to our Archie web interface, available now at: https://archie.serialport.org

Stay tuned for the video release, and in the meantime, you can explore our current index of FTP sites, including a local copy of the Hobbes OS/2 software archive- try entering "os2" as your search query.

We appreciate your continued interest and support in bringing vintage technology back to life!