Hi,
I just joined the forum to find out if anyone has a solution for a problem I've run into.
I have an ancient printer that I like and works well,( Epson stylus photo), but it's so old,(20 plus years), that it won't work with anything newer than windows 98.
To allow myself to keep using it, I installed windows 98 on a separate hard drive in my computer and installed an old version of K-melon that still functions with windows 98. Any newer versions of browsers causes windows to crash.
I basically use this hard drive when I want to print something but have to put want I want to print in an email and send it to myself and then switch to the hard drive with windows 98 and open up my email with K-melon.
This procedure was working well until about 3 months ago when my email said it was loading but even letting it sit for an hour it would still not fully load to enable me to read them
I went through my emails on my regular hard drive and deleted as many as I could and made sure there were no video clips or anything with large content in them still in my saved emails. The saved emails were less than the amount that used to open with no problem.
Other than buying a new printer, would anyone have any idea as to what is causing the problem and how to solve it?
Thanks in advance.

Please, when posting anything related to K-meleon, post the version you are talking about.


You seem to be using K-meleon to check web mail.

Said that, have in mind that if you are using an old version, this is not a K-meleon bug, it is just that the rendering engine is old to display the latest web technologies correctly (www is not static, it evolves).


Ideas? Use a virtual machine with Windows 98 installed on it and share the LPT (I guess it is LPT) printer with the host Operative system you use.


If that is too complicated, use a mail client, instead check it through web. Through POP or IMAP protocols you can check mails on server and this technology isn't as dynamic as HTML. Any mail client with 15 years would be valid.

Maybe try the following: Take a new SeaMonkey, copy mail into RAM, open SM Composer, paste code into a new page and save as HTML.

Open that HTML with K-Meleon1.5.x for printing.

Quote
curious
This procedure was working well until about 3 months ago when my email said it was loading but even letting it sit for an hour it would still not fully load to enable me to read them
I went through my emails on my regular hard drive and deleted as many as I could and made sure there were no video clips or anything with large content in them still in my saved emails

Question: Where is the email at the time when You try to load?

K-Meleon does not read eml.

So I assume an web email page like YahooMail or...

Well these pages change to more modern versions of JavaScript and that loads for eternities in older browser versions. Old JS engines are slower.

Or worse the pages contain commands the old engines do not know. Opening the error console of K-Meleon will tell You about it if...
And a single JS error stops the show.


p.s John, the last K-Meleon that works with Win98 without KernelEx is 1.5.4.
Win 98 with Kernel Ex supports K-Meleon 1.6bs and 1.7as.
You posted faster then me.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/15/2016 03:22AM by guenter.

Hi again,
Thanks for responding to my question.
I'm using K-Melon 1.5.4 although I do have the kernel\ ex 4.5.2 installed, so I guess it would help to upgrade to 1.7
I'm not very computer literate and it took me ages just to get windows 98 to work on my computer as I have 4gigs of ram.
I've been hesitant lately to even play with my windows 98 hard drive as when I plug it in and boot it up it quite often tells me my yideo isn't connected and it can take take a number of tries before it finally recognizes that everything is there and properly installed.
My email is Aol@aim.com.
I did try using a virtual box but with my lack of computer skills, I could never get it working.
I'm using Clamwin as an antivirus on windows 98 as anything larger causes it to crash.
I did try getting into linux to run the printer but my lack of computer skills led me to windows 98 instead.
If I did try upgrading to K-Melon 1.7 can it be done without first deleting K-Melon 1.5.4 and if so, how?
Some of your suggestions would probably work great but unfortunately,they look like greek to me and would have to be spelled out much more simply.
Thanks for all you guys help, it's greatly appreciated.

Parallel installation of various KM versions is absolutely easy, just take the "portable" 7z-download and extract it into *another* place on your hard disk. Using just another folder name is enough.
The only difference to the "setup" version is that it contains en empty file "profile.ini" in the main folder. This file can also be created later or removed later to switch profile paths.

But a lot more difficult is to get newer KM versions running on win98.
I hope your Win98 is the SE version, 2nd Edition? Otherwise no chance for KM1.6+

What I keep riddling - is this your only printer for everything, or only a special printer for e.g. photos with high quality?
Why do you need a browser for printing files?? Are you printing only html-pages?
Or only using webmail? Couldn't e.g. jpg-photos be printed without a browser?
Or would other mail tools be possible too, like Outlook Express etc. via POP-access?
Really no other way to get files across?? Or perhaps as jpg-screenshots? Or print into a pdf-file, then transfer and print this on to the printer?
Do you actually still get ink or whatever for a 20y old printer?

Overall I feel that whole procedure is awfully complicated, there must be easier ways for just getting files into the printer, or at least into Win98....

But I fully understand your prob with endless, tiring struggles due to lacking computer skills, same prob here :-/

On the other hand: is keeping that old printer really worth such an endless struggle?? Modern printers are so much cheaper now than 20y ago, and time is precious too...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/15/2016 06:33PM by siria.

Quote
siria
Or print into a pdf-file, then transfer and print this on to the printer?

I didn't thought on suggest that, when, actually, I do it very often with webpages

But doesn't save to restart to Windows 98.



Is that really your mail curious? I don't think so.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/15/2016 07:01PM by JohnHell.

Quote
siria
Modern printers are so much cheaper now than 20y ago, and time is precious too...

You are right BUT:

These printers are cheaper because their ink/toner is so much more expensive.
The firms nowadays make their money via selling the supplies not the printers.

An old printer is free - that costs even less money than a cheap printer.

An old printer may still have needles which let You print through to a layer of carbon paper.

p.s. curious I wish I could go to see Your old printer and go crabbing at the Fraser estuary. :drool:



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/16/2016 05:04AM by guenter.

Hi again,
Sorry for the lag in replying.
I finally got around to going back into the 98 hard drive and trying some of your suggestions.
I downloaded K-Mellon 1.6 and once again tried to download my mail from Aol. but once again it continued to just hang while saying it was loading.
I opened the error consul and it was filled with well over a hundred errors although a lot of lines seemed to repeat.
I'll quote the first and last lines to see if you can make some sense out of it,

CSS https://s.aolcdn.com/webmail-static/webmail/1609191843/is/dojobBuild/release/main.css Line 1
______________________________________________________________________________
Unknown property 'border-radius'. Declaration dropped

(an awful lot of similar lines to the above)

CSS Error in parsing value for for property 'background color'. Declaration dropped.
_____________________________________________________________________________

https//s. aolcdn.com/webmail-static/webmail/16091843/aol/en-ca/styles-std-all.css Line 68

Siria, I am still able to get ink online for around $2.00 to $5.00 per cartridge, The color ink cartridge S020110 is a 6 color ink cartridge and I see the newer model epson 6 color ink cartridges are around $118.00.

Thanks again for your help.

And if you try to access Aol Mail through
https://mail.aol.com/lite
or
https://mail.aol.com/webmail-std/en-us/basic

Hi again,
I had been activating my email through a bookmark, so I deleted the bookmark and went online and opened my email from a new source.
That turned out to be the magic answer.
It loaded my email almost instantly, much faster than it does with Firefox on my regular hard drive.
I also tried something that I should have tried from day one as it is much safer than going online to retrieve emails with windows 98 as I only use that hard drive for printing.
I simply transferred what I wanted to print from one hard drive to the other via a usb data storage stick.
Once again my old printer, prints again.
Thanks again for all your help.