ClassicConnect

[parasquared]

IBM WebBoy for DOS is.. interesting. it's an entirely DOS based browser and e-mail client for Japanese DOS systems, seemingly designed specially for the Palmtop PC 110 (although will run on standard PCs of course). i found it while scrolling on archive.org, and immediately knew i had to try it. getting it actually set up kind of SUCKED, though. a combination of the language barrier as well as using a minimal copy of Microsoft LAN Manager in the backend(?????) which i haven't used myself made it difficult to actually get it functioning initially.

screenshots (or screenies if you fancy):

screenshot of the built-in about page for WebBoy 4.0

screenshot of lesliefield.com (ironically this site made the entire machine lock up after trying to enter)

screenshot of a ClassicConnect reply notification email

setup instructions:
- install DOS/V (it doesn't work at all with a regular copy of DOS from what i can tell)
- insert the first disk and run `install C:\webboy` (or replace that with where you want to install it to)
- the installer asks fairly simple stuff. here's a basic rundown:

- webboy 4.0 has a "feature selection", basically for whether or not you want printing and JavaScript support (which takes up more ram). select the top one unless you need to use less RAM
- screen res; pretty self expanatory
- network connectivity method (LAN or dial-up)
- connectivity settings; doesn't seem to support any kind of auto configuration? (even though DHCP is mentioned in protocol.ini and PPP literally has auto configuration in the protocol)
- it'll ask for a "dictionary file". not sure where this is, but you can skip it without any real consequences
- it'll say something about "12-dot and 24-dot" fonts not being enabled (at least on my setup); no idea how to enable these but they're also optional (if someone knows, chime in perhaps?)

if you need to reconfigure the settings you set after install, you can run `int15ext`then `wbconfig`

dialup via PPP should just work once setup is complete (i was not able to test this myself though. for some reason using the modem in my Toshiba laptop with VMware's serial passthrough causes the modem to behave strangely and never finish the handshake, and 86Box's modem emulation doesn't emulate PPP, which this requires)

for LAN, you'll need to provide an NDIS / Microsoft LAN Manager driver. the program comes with zero drivers of any kind (other than i guess for modems, but that's not a LAN so lol)
- try running LAN Manager 2.2c and see if it has your network card, if not find one on the internet somewhere (is there a shim for packet drivers somewhere? that would be nice since those are easy to find and would be a lot more setup-agnostic)
- in the case of the NE2000, that is included on the LAN Manager disks. install LAN Manager, copy the NE2000.DOS file from `\LANMAN.DOS\DRIVERS\ETHERNET\NE2000` (they are compressed on the install disks, hence why you have to install it) into `[webboy install dir]\NTSDOS` and edit the protocol.ini file inside of it; something like this:

[xX_D4rkW1ng_Xx]

[VCSMaster]

"Setting up IBM software sucks"

This does not surprise me in the last. At least their little mascot guy is cute.

What does this return for it's compatibility string?

[europa]

[parasquared]

[VCSMaster]