AOL offered an easy way to get on the Internet using a MODEM and an Install Floppy or CD-ROM.
I ran a PC Shop in 1995-1997 I was run out of business by Big Box stores offering low cost PCs using the AOL $500 Internet Rebate that locked people into a 3 or 5 year AOL $35/month contract. I tried to convince people that they could get on the same Internet with Brick.net and if they paid for a year in advance they would only pay $9.99 a month total and save money over using AOL. I sold a $700 PC Clone with GNU/Linux or Windows 95, and the Big Box stores sold the Packard Bell system with the same specs for $200 after the $500 Internet rebate.
I hear there are people still paying AOL for dial-up access on older Macs and PCs. So I am not surprised to see the old AOL clients still work mostly.
The Basilisk II emulator needs some system files to get CD and TCP/IP networking to work in Windows. http://basilisk.cebix.net/
You also need an old version of SDL and GTK+ to make it work with Windows.
These Mac emulators could be upgraded to the latest technology for the latest SDL and GTK+ libraries, the source code is available.
The hard part is getting the Macintosh ROM, Apple made System 7.X available for free, but getting the ROM is hard. You'd need access to a 68K Mac and a floppy drive to copy the ROM to and copy it over to a modern computer using a USB floppy drive and only the 1.44M format is supported not the 880K format. Some ROMs are on the Internet and I won't link to them for piracy issues, but they should be found via web searches.
In the case of SheepShaver at least, there’s a Mac ROM that can be extracted from a freely available Mac OS update that works just fine. Not sure of the legality of that, but it’s got to be better than downloading ROMs of Macs you don’t own.
There was once an Apple Development CD that was given out with all sorts of Mac ROMs and System install files and other things. I used to have a copy of it but lost it.
I think it was given out before Steve Jobs came back to Apple. It was at a developer conference. They wanted developers to support the Macintosh at a time when Apple was struggling financially. The files on the CD could be used with emulators so they could get more Mac developers that way.
I remember people well selling copies of that CD online for a while. Then it ended up on The Pirate Bay before it was taken down or lost seeders.
Actually for years if you were a registered developer (which cost ~$500/year iirc) you got a monthly CD-ROM and issue of develop magazine (which was very good). The CD-ROMs periodically had archives of pretty much every major stable OS release (along with the current and bleeding edge releases, developer tools, and an On Location free text retrieval index that worked better than Spotlight does now).
I ran a PC Shop in 1995-1997 I was run out of business by Big Box stores offering low cost PCs using the AOL $500 Internet Rebate that locked people into a 3 or 5 year AOL $35/month contract. I tried to convince people that they could get on the same Internet with Brick.net and if they paid for a year in advance they would only pay $9.99 a month total and save money over using AOL. I sold a $700 PC Clone with GNU/Linux or Windows 95, and the Big Box stores sold the Packard Bell system with the same specs for $200 after the $500 Internet rebate.
I hear there are people still paying AOL for dial-up access on older Macs and PCs. So I am not surprised to see the old AOL clients still work mostly.
The Basilisk II emulator needs some system files to get CD and TCP/IP networking to work in Windows. http://basilisk.cebix.net/
Here is how to get online: http://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/basilisk_ii_online_guide
Some people use Sheepshaver instead http://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/sheepshaver_online_guide
You also need an old version of SDL and GTK+ to make it work with Windows.
These Mac emulators could be upgraded to the latest technology for the latest SDL and GTK+ libraries, the source code is available.
The hard part is getting the Macintosh ROM, Apple made System 7.X available for free, but getting the ROM is hard. You'd need access to a 68K Mac and a floppy drive to copy the ROM to and copy it over to a modern computer using a USB floppy drive and only the 1.44M format is supported not the 880K format. Some ROMs are on the Internet and I won't link to them for piracy issues, but they should be found via web searches.