Arachne Frequently Asked Questions

In 1996, Internet was not well integrated with everyday computing at all, and I had many ideas which I considered original; at the same time, it looked like Microsoft wants to have total monopoly in all categories of software - especially the general purpose software for end users. Major web sites suddenly started to attract millions of visitors, while web pages of normal internet users had little chance to become popular without advertising - it seemed like Internet won't be this wonderful free place where people can share ideas and emotions (and it isn't, BTW ;-) I was simply student with insufficient funds to upgrade my PC - if someone had given me something more powerful than 386 with 5 MB of RAM, I would had probably installed Linux and spent rest of my life trying to compile Enlightenment windows manager ;-)

Yes. xChaos software licensed full source code of Arachne to Caldera UK. People from Caldera added their own animated GIFs and Novell dialer, completely changed the design of the browser, implemented their own support for frames, and succeeded in compiling all this stuff as 32 bit application, while DOS Arachne is 16 bit application.

Caldera doesn't have exclusive access to Arachne in any way, so you can choose from two DOS browsers.

DOS version of Arachne will probably never support binary Java applets (<APPLET> tag), but it will support JavaScript (<SCRIPT> tag) - we are working on it.

We are planning to add Hercules and full CGA support later, because it is essential for compatibility with hand-held devices and Personal Digital Assistants, which usually use monochrome graphics.

Arachne partly works on HP-LX series palmtops, and further optimization of Arachne for these palmtops is planned.

However, our ability to support nonstandard hardware is limited. We suggest you to buy (or rather find in trashcan ;-) some second-hand ISA SVGA card with 512 or more KB of memory - Arachne would look just terrible on monochromatic screen anyway. You can check experimental CGA support if you don't believe me.

There's a long list of methods how to speed DOS version of Arrachne up - that list is part of documentation distributed together with Arachne. Because the list is quite long and confusing, let's summarize it: You need at least 33 Mhz processor to anything useful with Arachne. This usually means 386 or 486 compatible CPU. You have to use some kind of disk cache (SMARTDRV, NWCACHE) or run Arachne from some kind of virtual disk - "RAM disk". This totaly disqualifies PCs with less than 2 MB of memory - on such hardware, you can use Arachne to occassionaly view short HTML pages with few images, but don't expect anything more. If you have only 2 MB, dedicate 512 KB for EMS or XMS, 512 KB for disk cache, and pray. If you want rather to read mail than view web pages, you should maybe allocate as big RAM disk as you can, point your %TEMP% enviroment variable to it and let Arachne "swap to disk" and cache local objects to %TEMP% directory. Of course, it is optimal to have all three accelerators: lot of free XMS, enabled disk cache and TEMP enviroment variable pointing to RAMdisk.

Arachne eMail reader is simply not really usable without at least 4 MB of memory used for heavy disk caching (1 MB DOS/1 MB XMS/1 MB disk cache/1 MB for %TEMP% on RAMdisk). If you don't have 4 MB, you can try to use text mode Pegasus mail for DOS to read and compress messages downloaded by Arachne.

Our dialer setup screen is not able to deal with some extremely non-standard modem configurations. (for example, with modem on COM4 and with no COM3 device, you may have to pretend it is on COM2 and manuly select correct base address and irq which belongs to your COM4; you can also try to manualy enter your parameters to ARACHNE.CFG)

Arachne Labs are not responsible for any included or recommended PPP dialer: we only wrote user friendly HTML setup screens for the DOSPPPD. This DOS port o Linux pppd seems to work on many typical DOS based PCs. Plug your external modem to COM2 (mouse on COM1) or internal modem to COM3, irq 4 (mouse on COM2), and everything's gone be all right.

Many problems are with Windows-specific internal devices - Winmodems. They require specific drivers to be used, and if such driver is not available for DOS, you are lost. When buying internal modem, always make sure that it will be visible for your BIOS/DOS as third serial port - otherwise you won't be able to use it with operating systems like Linux or DOS.

Some PPP implementations are more standard, some less standard. DOSPPPD dialer included in Arachne package should be able to manage both PAP and CHAP password authentication. But there can be other problems, eg. dynamical assignment of DNS server. Arachne needs to know IP of at least one fixed DNS server to run.

Another problem is, that the fact that MINITERM managed to tell your modem to connect with your provider's modem doesn't automaticaly mean, that the DOSPPPD will accept the same port settings as MINITERM dialer. They are two different programs...

JPEGs images are very slow to decompress - well, there are some ultrafast JPEG viewers, but usually viewing BMP is much faster than viewing JPEG. Imagine that on PCs, which are not able to handle Virtual Screens, Arachne would have to decompress all JPEGs each time you scroll the page! And even on PCs with Virtual Screens enable, Arachne would have to decompress JPEGs each time you return to previous or cached page.

If you prefer images in CACHE to be stored as GIFs, rather than BMPs, you can do some changes to your MIME.CFG (you will find some tips how to do it in this file). It will occupy less disk space, but it will be also much slower. The image quality of GIFs may be better for 16 color modes - but you will loose quality if you are using HiColor modes.

With PNG format, the situation is more complicated. PNG format should replace GIF in future. But currently, there are only very few PNG images online, and adding PNG support directly to CORE.EXE would be inefficient.

Maybe in future, Arachne will convert JPEGs "on fly", while downloading them - but they will be always converted to some faster image format.

It is part of Hotlist ! You add any mailto: type URLs to hotlist, either when writing e-mail, or manually, or you can right-click the mailto: type links before actually clicking "Add to hotlist" icon.

Merging of "bookmarks" and "addressbook" to one simple HTML file is my invention; I believe that it may be useful to be able to very easily transfer your "Personalized Internet" on floppy or by e-mail in single file.

Of course - if you don't want your Hotlist to look too messy, you have to use Hotlist manager regularly...

In Czech, I prounounce Arachne as "ur-uch-nae", where "ch" sounds the same ways as in German word "Ich" ("me") and "u" sounds the same way as in "under". xChaos sounds like "iks-chu-os", with the same "ch" and "u".

But in english, most people usually pronounce Arachne as "A-rak-ne", where "a" sounds the same way as in "about" and "e" sounds the same way as in "eat". xChaos is usually pronounced like "iks-keios".