I have a few beige Macintosh computers from the era of System 7 through Mac OS 9. Web browsers exist for these. Netscape Navigator was certainly available for 68k Macintoshes running System 7, but only one of the computers - a Power Macintosh G3 from 1997 - even has an RJ45 Ethernet port. There's no WiFi hardware, of course. Home users would have been using modems, which isn't much of an option for me.

(There's also the issue that web browsers from this era all have long-expired SSL certificates, so can't access contemporary SSL-only websites, which is most webites. It looks like this can be worked around by using a proxy server: I'm going to try the WebOne proxy for this.)

A couple of them have proprietary AAUI-15 ports, which seems to be easy enough to work around, with these Farallon EtherMac 10Base-T Ethernet AAUI transceivers, which I found at Tech by Androda.

Farallon EtherMac 10Base-T Ethernet AAUI adapter

The oldest one, a Centris 610, doesn't even have an AAUI port, and it's not easy to find an Ethernet expansion card that's compatible with the Centris's Quadra Processor Direct (PDS) slot. In fact, I don't even see any compatible cards on this list of classic Macintosh expansion cards. What I was able to find were a lot of NuBus-compatible Ethernet cards on eBay, as well as this PDS-to-NuBus adapter (M1402LL/A) made specifically for the Centris 610. Let's try them out!

Macintosh Centris 610 NuBus Adapter Card package, NuBus Ethernet card, Macintosh Centris 610

The adapter card is straightforward, the NuBus card fits snugly in, then the whole thing fits easily in the case.

Adapter card Adapter card with NuBus card installed Adapter card installed into Centris 610

I need to get some software onto the computer to get it online, which I'll transfer using LocalTalk over a serial cable. I'll admit I can never remember which of these icons means "serial cable" and which means "ADB". It's especially convenient that the serial cable symbol doesn't match either of the icons on the case next to the ports it attaches to.

Serial and ADB cable, or maybe ADB and serial cable Cables attached

The shared folder on my Beige G3 shows up in AppleTalk, and I begin the very very slow process of copying files over LocalTalk. First order of business, Connectix Speed Doubler, for its fast network file copy feature - to maybe speed up subsequent copies...

AppleTalk connection Copying files

Installing Open Transport and Netscape Navigator...

Open Transport installer splash screen Open Transport installer

Netscape installer on desktop Netscape installer splash screen Netscape installed

And... it doesn't work. The ethernet lights are blinking, but the operating system isn't connected to my network. So, time for more troubleshooting. More updates to come.