Scratchers,Can you run Scratch on ancient systems with a modern browser?



When i mean by ancient,i meant Pre-2000s systems,something like a Pentium 2 or 3 and AMD Athlon with old gpus or components. Pentium 4 ain't ancient to me but you're free to try scratch on those systems.

Let's see…

The minimum requirements is that you have a browser that supports ES6 and HTML5, along with a relatively new version of CSS (although this isn't technically required, as long as you can still use Scratch).

Scratch also relies on WebGL, which will run much faster if OpenGL is supported by your GPU and/or OS. Regardless, if your GPU doesn't support OpenGL (or you don't have a GPU), the browser needs to do extra work- but it does have to be there, even if it's a software-based alternative.

honestly I don't have anything that old lying around my house so I can't test any of this myself

Edit: wait, you might be able to run a really old version of the 0.x editor on older systems, but what emulators you have available to you become important because very early versions of the 0.x editor certainly didn't have cross-platform support (in any way).

Of course! My latest project features the Scratch 2.0 offline editor running on a K6-2 system.

SuperSonicmario wrote:

Of course! My latest project features the Scratch 2.0 offline editor running on a K6-2 system.

I saw your project and i see you used scratch 2.0 and AIR 29. But it isn't AIR 32,right? I think Flash 32 works on non-sse2 pcs while AIR 32 does not. But i might be spectaculating.

I'm glad pentium 4 isn't considered ancient, because I used to run scratch (1.4) on a pentium 4 normally.

novice27b wrote:

I'm glad pentium 4 isn't considered ancient, because I used to run scratch (1.4) on a pentium 4 normally.

By my standards,yeah,since it is from 2000s and supports SSE2,something required in modern windows prior to 11 and expected in many Linux distros.

Heck,even modern apps require sse2 due to their compiler using SSE2 instructions by default,although you can recompile it to not use them.

BigNate469 wrote:

Edit: wait, you might be able to run a really old version of the 0.x editor on older systems, but what emulators you have available to you become important because very early versions of the 0.x editor certainly didn't have cross-platform support (in any way).

If I remember correctly they were made in Squeak just like 1.x, so all you should really need is a Squeak VM.

LukasDoesCode wrote:

BigNate469 wrote:

Edit: wait, you might be able to run a really old version of the 0.x editor on older systems, but what emulators you have available to you become important because very early versions of the 0.x editor certainly didn't have cross-platform support (in any way).

If I remember correctly they were made in Squeak just like 1.x, so all you should really need is a Squeak VM.

And scratch 1.4 doesn't work well with squeak VMs that ain't Classic, The most every scratcher did to make it work with modern systems is just……Squeak.JS.

i have attempted to run the scratch browser on new 2ds xl (which uses netfront browser, mozilla/5.0) and i could only run barebone html from 2.0 pages. maybe i could run the project player or even an older version of it on a custom homebrew app, assuming the handheld has enough resources to run what is known as a mouthful.

LaughabIe wrote:

i have attempted to run the scratch browser on new 2ds xl (which uses netfront browser, mozilla/5.0) and i could only run barebone html from 2.0 pages. maybe i could run the project player or even an older version of it on a custom homebrew app, assuming the handheld has enough resources to run what is known as a mouthful.

New 3ds XL isn't ancient, It's a new model of an old product,and it's a modern browser, right?

LaughabIe wrote:

i have attempted to run the scratch browser on new 2ds xl (which uses netfront browser, mozilla/5.0) and i could only run barebone html from 2.0 pages. maybe i could run the project player or even an older version of it on a custom homebrew app, assuming the handheld has enough resources to run what is known as a mouthful.

New 3ds XL isn't ancient, It's a new model of an old product,and it's a modern browser, right?

leogames2016 wrote:

LaughabIe wrote:

i have attempted to run the scratch browser on new 2ds xl (which uses netfront browser, mozilla/5.0) and i could only run barebone html from 2.0 pages. maybe i could run the project player or even an older version of it on a custom homebrew app, assuming the handheld has enough resources to run what is known as a mouthful.

New 3ds XL isn't ancient, It's a new model of an old product,and it's a modern browser, right?

Far from modern by today's standards, but I guess you're right.

the 3DS XL did not have a modern browser, it's latest ssl certificates and web standards are like internet explorer by now

Ran on Debian Bullseye with Edge, works like a charm.

All 2.0 pages work on my kindle paperwhite. Studios as well as the main page work. Projects worked until a week ago
My browser / operating system: Android Linux, AndroidBrowser, No Flash version detected

-Happyx wrote:

Ran on Debian Bullseye with Edge, works like a charm.

Dagriffpatchfan wrote:

All 2.0 pages work on my kindle paperwhite. Studios as well as the main page work. Projects worked until a week ago
My browser / operating system: Android Linux, AndroidBrowser, No Flash version detected

These aint ancient hardware!

dumorando wrote:

the 3DS XL did not have a modern browser, it's latest ssl certificates and web standards are like internet explorer by now

But it doesn't mean it is ancient. Its something like Serpent 52 IA32 on pentium 3 or scratch 1.4/2.0 on non-sse2 systems.

leogames2016 wrote:

-Happyx wrote:

Ran on Debian Bullseye with Edge, works like a charm.

Dagriffpatchfan wrote:

All 2.0 pages work on my kindle paperwhite. Studios as well as the main page work. Projects worked until a week ago
My browser / operating system: Android Linux, AndroidBrowser, No Flash version detected

These aint ancient hardware!

dumorando wrote:

the 3DS XL did not have a modern browser, it's latest ssl certificates and web standards are like internet explorer by now

But it doesn't mean it is ancient. Its something like Serpent 52 IA32 on pentium 3 or scratch 1.4/2.0 on non-sse2 systems.

A kindle paperwhite is fairly ancient - scratch always gives me the unsupported browser thing and a good chunk of sites won't let me on or I am blocked by recaptcha…

Dagriffpatchfan wrote:

A kindle paperwhite is fairly ancient - scratch always gives me the unsupported browser thing and a good chunk of sites won't let me on or I am blocked by recaptcha…

Just not OP's criteria.

leogames2016 wrote:

These aint ancient hardware!

If it's running Scratch on unconventional/obscure/fun things or things other than a normal desktop OS which are oldish but not ancient, it belongs on the broader topic Running Scratch and things in odd programs. I wish there were more posts on that topic that weren't just about navigating to the Scratch website in any old iframe or embedded Chromium. (bonus points if you can get further than just navigating to the website) [/meta]

I know that Scratch 1.4 will work on classic Mac OS on a pre-2000 PowerPC Macintosh (at least), in spite of not ever being released for classic Mac OS AFAIK, but I've only tried it in the Classic environment on an eMac, and in Qemu.

Jonathan50 wrote:

Dagriffpatchfan wrote:

A kindle paperwhite is fairly ancient - scratch always gives me the unsupported browser thing and a good chunk of sites won't let me on or I am blocked by recaptcha…

Just not OP's criteria.

leogames2016 wrote:

These aint ancient hardware!

If it's running Scratch on unconventional/obscure/fun things or things other than a normal desktop OS which are oldish but not ancient, it belongs on the broader topic Running Scratch and things in odd programs. I wish there were more posts on that topic that weren't just about navigating to the Scratch website in any old iframe or embedded Chromium. (bonus points if you can get further than just navigating to the website) [/meta]

I know that Scratch 1.4 will work on classic Mac OS on a pre-2000 PowerPC Macintosh (at least), in spite of not ever being released for classic Mac OS AFAIK, but I've only tried it in the Classic environment on an eMac, and in Qemu.

Thanks for saying this,but im unsure how you got this to work on classic Mac OS? Did you use some sort of….VM?

leogames2016 wrote:

Thanks for saying this,but im unsure how you got this to work on classic Mac OS? Did you use some sort of….VM?

Nope (though I was emulating Mac OS 9 in QEMU, my only PPC Mac is too new) just download an old enough Squeak VM (squeak.org, pretty sure 3.0 is good and it supposedly even supports System 7) and run Scratch.image

https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/post/7015734
https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/post/7210782