It’s been a long day and all you want to do is play some KidPix or Adventure. Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered. Using Hampa Hug’s PCE in-browser emulator, two programmers have built clever hacks that bring those two classic OSes to your browser.
James Friend built the System 7 implementation and comments on the legal implications on his site, saying:
So, why port emulators of outdated computers to the browser? Well, to start with, I feel very strongly about the importance of learning from the past. In other words: not making the same mistakes again-and-again due to a lack of historical perspective. I was particularly inspired by Bret Victor’s talk at the DBX conference, where he demonstrated a bunch of technologies from the 1970s which attempted to solve problems which we’re still wrestling with today, and effectively asked the question ‘Why haven’t we figured this stuff out yet?’, and more implicitly, ‘Why are people who are working on these problems today unaware of this earlier work? Why have we gone backwards?’. To this end, I wanted to make important early personal computer systems available to a newer generation of creators as working, interactive demos, so that they might have a chance to learn from the past.
The PCjr implementation was built by Jeff Par using similar technologies. The tech and the sites aren’t new (and they’ll probably crash shortly) but it’s great to see these old OSes living again on the Internet and, more important, you can also play PCjr Adventure while you watch our Disrupt coverage.