I just did something neat-
I tried out the install of Windows 3.1, which has a version of Visual Basic installed. I created a small program in Visual Basic, with a window and some buttons to press, and then saved the program as an .exe (remember how easy this used to be! you could make your program and then just... save the executable out of VB! No compiler knowledge needed!)
I then saved this .exe to a disk image, and then saved that disk image back to my modern mac that I'm doing this on via downloading that in the browser.
I then took that .exe and the only dependency - vbrun100.dll - and put it on a floppy (a real one) and then took that floppy over to a vintage computer I have that has Windows 3.1 on it still (an old 25 MHz Intel486 DX industrial computer I have sitting in a closet with no real use for). Popped in the floppy, copied the .exe and .dll.
And ran the program, no problem!
A real GUI windows program, made in VB running in Windows 3.1, inside an entire emulated machine in Javascript in a browser window running on an Apple Silicon macbook in 2026....
Exported and saved to disk and then ran without issue on a piece of hardware made in *1992*!
Now I need to do the reverse... make some software with a copy of VB installed on this old machine of mine and run it on my mac inside the browser.
Those who consider every little JS framework, iPhone and AI iteration "revolutionary", go check the thing labeled "Visicalc (1981)" on this site to learn what a revolution looks like.
PS: Nine Princes in Amber was an interesting choice alongside the others!
I have my IBM PC set up (to go through a Peter Norton assembly language book again) but I got a file read error for the first time recently on the 20 MB (Seagate ST-225) hard drive and parity errors from the RAM (again). I have chips (pretty cheap, industry standard chips) I can swap out to fix it hopefully. Anyway, I could just be emulating it instead (lol).
Cool, they have Exploring the IBM PC. It was a bootable disk with a tutorial to teach you how to use the computer (like what the scroll lock button was meant to do, and all the other keys on the original keyboard). I loaded up the CGA version on the CGA IBM PC emulator, which also plays music. The sound was cutting out though. In a later part (the Fun Writer) when you can turn on the "radio", the music seems to be missing the rests. I guess it's not perfect. The program always struck me as doing strange things with the hardware, so that might be why. (I'll have to look into some local emulators to try out. I really only need DOS for what I'm doing. I also have a MisterFPGA...)
I have a couple of enthusiast friends who use CompactFlash-to-IDE adapters, and that’s one of the upgrades that almost makes it worth it. You still get the full retro experience (well except for the actuator arm seeking sounds), but on the plus side you don’t have to worry about failing magnetic hard drives.
Totally agreed. Related, I actually wrote a satirical blog post on the brilliant but equally frustrating experiences of playing King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella when I was a kid. Just call me Captain Ahab because I hated that damn whale...
I tried getting my kids to play sierra games with me, and they seemed uninterested. What a bummer, as I have very fond memories of playing these games with my otherwise uninterested parents.
DeskMate in 1988 came with my family's first computer, a Tandy 2000 TX. One of the first mainstream consumer PCs with a 3.5" disk drive. (We had to later buy a 5.25" drive in order to share software--er, I mean data--with our neighbors.) DeskMate was marketed as, "Finally! No need to use complicated MS-DOS!" Of course, you couldn't _really_ use it for much, as MS-DOS programs of the time were much more powerful and interesting, but it was a nice tech demo I guess.
I just did something neat- I tried out the install of Windows 3.1, which has a version of Visual Basic installed. I created a small program in Visual Basic, with a window and some buttons to press, and then saved the program as an .exe (remember how easy this used to be! you could make your program and then just... save the executable out of VB! No compiler knowledge needed!)
I then saved this .exe to a disk image, and then saved that disk image back to my modern mac that I'm doing this on via downloading that in the browser.
I then took that .exe and the only dependency - vbrun100.dll - and put it on a floppy (a real one) and then took that floppy over to a vintage computer I have that has Windows 3.1 on it still (an old 25 MHz Intel486 DX industrial computer I have sitting in a closet with no real use for). Popped in the floppy, copied the .exe and .dll.
And ran the program, no problem! A real GUI windows program, made in VB running in Windows 3.1, inside an entire emulated machine in Javascript in a browser window running on an Apple Silicon macbook in 2026....
Exported and saved to disk and then ran without issue on a piece of hardware made in *1992*!
Now I need to do the reverse... make some software with a copy of VB installed on this old machine of mine and run it on my mac inside the browser.
Odds are good that EXE you made will run on 32-bit Windows 10, too.
Those who consider every little JS framework, iPhone and AI iteration "revolutionary", go check the thing labeled "Visicalc (1981)" on this site to learn what a revolution looks like.
PS: Nine Princes in Amber was an interesting choice alongside the others!
VisiCalc Link: https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/app/other/visicalc/1981/
I have my IBM PC set up (to go through a Peter Norton assembly language book again) but I got a file read error for the first time recently on the 20 MB (Seagate ST-225) hard drive and parity errors from the RAM (again). I have chips (pretty cheap, industry standard chips) I can swap out to fix it hopefully. Anyway, I could just be emulating it instead (lol).
Cool, they have Exploring the IBM PC. It was a bootable disk with a tutorial to teach you how to use the computer (like what the scroll lock button was meant to do, and all the other keys on the original keyboard). I loaded up the CGA version on the CGA IBM PC emulator, which also plays music. The sound was cutting out though. In a later part (the Fun Writer) when you can turn on the "radio", the music seems to be missing the rests. I guess it's not perfect. The program always struck me as doing strange things with the hardware, so that might be why. (I'll have to look into some local emulators to try out. I really only need DOS for what I'm doing. I also have a MisterFPGA...)
I have a couple of enthusiast friends who use CompactFlash-to-IDE adapters, and that’s one of the upgrades that almost makes it worth it. You still get the full retro experience (well except for the actuator arm seeking sounds), but on the plus side you don’t have to worry about failing magnetic hard drives.
Also this looks pretty neat as well
https://picoide.com
So many goosebumps going down memory lane.
A somewhat relative list of in-browser VMs https://gist.github.com/SMUsamaShah/6379649c0cbade9abc02b242...
I know I could've done this at any time, but I cannot wait to sit my kids down in front of full-screen Oregon Trail and King's Quest experiences.
Be cautious with this. My firstborn's first complete sentence was "King Graham fell" (from the sledding scene in King's Quest V).
Oregon Trail held up well but, man, Kings Quest is brutal with the killing you and having to start over.
Totally agreed. Related, I actually wrote a satirical blog post on the brilliant but equally frustrating experiences of playing King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella when I was a kid. Just call me Captain Ahab because I hated that damn whale...
https://mordenstar.com/blog/kqiv
https://archive.org/details/MECC_A157_v11_4amCrack
I tried getting my kids to play sierra games with me, and they seemed uninterested. What a bummer, as I have very fond memories of playing these games with my otherwise uninterested parents.
Would love to see Tandy DeskMate on here!
DeskMate in 1988 came with my family's first computer, a Tandy 2000 TX. One of the first mainstream consumer PCs with a 3.5" disk drive. (We had to later buy a 5.25" drive in order to share software--er, I mean data--with our neighbors.) DeskMate was marketed as, "Finally! No need to use complicated MS-DOS!" Of course, you couldn't _really_ use it for much, as MS-DOS programs of the time were much more powerful and interesting, but it was a nice tech demo I guess.
Dune II, Wolfenstein 3D and Commander Keen - all games I used to play. Very nice!
Related:
Tiny Emulators
https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48884395)