Hi TC,
As far as I can tell, nothing has been recently updated or altered
(regarding the SMF forum software) that would cause your specific problem.
I have also checked all of the 29 different IP addresses that you have used since joining this forum and there are no bans or restrictions related to any of them. There are no logged instances of any error messages connected with your user account either.
I therefore suspect that the problem you are experiencing has nothing to do with the forum itself, however, I am wondering whether the server that hosts the website may have recently updated its version of php, somehow making the GM website incompatible with your gen 1 iPad.
According to
Wikki.php.net it would seem that a version change
(RC 6) was listed for 14
th November 2019, which seems to be around the same time as you first experienced the problem.
Perhaps the
(GA) version will sort the problem on 28
th November 2019 if RC 6 was the culprit.
I don't know whether Apple are still automatically updating older iPads, but that could be another contributing factor if they are.
Perhaps a newer version of the ios
(or an upgrade of the Safari browser) running on a Gen 1 iPad could cause this problem.
With my Windows 7 PC I have previously experienced regular problems when trying to login to one specific online banking website using Google Chrome. I would often encounter a "service unavailable" page with Chrome, but I was able to instantly login OK if I switched to using the Internet Explorer browser instead of Chrome.
I originally Googled the problem that I was experiencing, but did not find anything that was helpful, but after some trial and error, I found that I could also logon every time without experiencing the security problems if I used the
Beta version of Google Chrome.
I later discovered that I could also log on easily with the non-Beta version of Chrome if I accessed the site in an "incognito window" instead of the default one.
It has been several months since I last experienced that particular problem, so I'm presuming that a Windows update, or a later version of Chrome, has eventually cured the access problem.
Alan 
