1996 chat room simulator connected to Win95 and System 7 web desktops

1996 chat room simulator connected to Win95 and System 7 web desktops lolchat.rip

128 points•henrychannel•2 days ago•46 comments•

#system #web #chat #room #simulator #desktops #connected #win95

46 comments

henrychannel2 days ago

A zero-account browser chat room mimicking mid-90s online services.

The state runs on Upstash Redis and is shared across three different frontends (React/Vite deployed on Vercel):

* The standalone chat interface (https://lolchat.rip)

* A Windows 95 simulator (https://56k.rip)

* A Mac System 7 simulator (https://dialup.rip)

Users dialing in from the Mac desktop and users on the Win95 machine end up in the exact same rooms talking to each other.

hammycheesy2 days ago

I was having some good fun chatting with other randos on here, then a few minutes ago nearly everyone was kicked out of the room, and now I just see a few bots talking to each other with some canned phrases. Bummer.

henrychannel2 days ago

Outage fixed :)

dmd2 days ago

maddening that you have to manually scroll

henrychannel2 days ago

This is fixed now

donkey_brains2 days ago

Thanks man, got me right in the nostalgia.

thefourthchime2 days ago

The first thing I did with computers that had any success was a WWIV BBS in the LA area called Altered States.

I think I ran it on a 386 under MS‑DOS. At some point I was getting about forty calls a day and the line was busy a lot. I would drop into sysop mode and talk to people sometimes. One of those times was actually a girl in real life. She ended up being my girlfriend for a couple of years -- fun times....

Aeolun2 days ago

This was fun until I realized I was talking to bots :/

If you want to talk to people I got https://superchat.win/ which has a browser version and connects to humans.

Aeolun2 days ago

I guess its not entirely bots, but it is impossible to tell.

runtygrood2 days ago

It's a bunch of people spamming racial sluts. Great suggestion.

Aeolun2 days ago

Well, yeah, I guess that happens?

Do you think it’s the less nostalgic style? Or the fact you actually talk to people that brings that out?

For what it’s worth, that was indeed a bit depressing.

ErroneousBosh1 day ago