Most retro-computing projects emulate old software.
Pieter decided to bring back the protocol.
The page is wonderfully explicit: this is a real FTP server with anonymous login, part of a non-commercial preservation project. The server lives at ftp://ftp.pieter.com and exposes directories for applications, games, MIDI files, MP3s and other material.
That matters because modern browsers quietly removed FTP support years ago. Chrome, Firefox and other mainstream browsers stopped behaving like general-purpose clients for ftp:// links, turning a once-routine part of using the internet into something younger users may never have seen.
Pieter’s page therefore does two jobs at once.
It hosts files, and it demonstrates the older network model directly.
Before every file needed a web app
Anonymous FTP was brutally simple.
You connected to a server, logged in as anonymous, moved through directories and downloaded files. No account dashboard. No JavaScript bundle. No infinite-scroll card grid. No recommendation engine deciding which ZIP file had better engagement.
Just directories and files.
Pieter’s server deliberately preserves that experience. The web-facing index explains that browsers no longer support FTP and points visitors toward software that still does. It also makes clear that the server exists for preservation and community use rather than as a commercial download service.
The surrounding Pieter.com project goes even further into living retro-computing: old operating systems, dial-up experiments, IRC and other technologies are presented as things you can still interact with rather than merely read about.
That distinction is useful.
A screenshot can show what an FTP client looked like. A working server teaches you what connecting to one actually feels like.
The server index was still being updated in September 2026, so this is not a corpse somebody forgot to unplug. It is a modern reconstruction built with enough fidelity to remain useful as a teaching tool and historical toy.
CacheRat’s 1,967 Ancient Web Domains research list is mostly about surviving old pages. Pieter’s FTP server represents the other side of preservation: sometimes the best way to remember an old system is to make the damn thing run again.
The ancient web was not only HTML.
Some of it was a blinking cursor asking for a username.