Welcome to the exhibition extras! Here you’ll find links to emulators, videos, user group periodicals, and more. Scroll down to explore resources for each section of the exhibition.
Since replicating the experience of using older personal computers includes long load times, emulators may be best enjoyed when you have some time to spare, so hold onto this page in case you want to revisit them later.
Hobbyists and the Heart of Personal Computing
If you’re intrigued by the user group resources on display, you’re in luck – many of them are available on the Internet Archive. You can browse BMUG newsletters and explore some of their shareware through emulators here. We recommend the HyperCard stacks – they work best from a device with a keyboard and mouse, so they’re great to save and browse later.
Making Personal Computers Work: From Offices to Classrooms
If you’re interested in trying the first automated spreadsheet software for personal computers for yourself, you can emulate VisiCalc here. While it has a little bit of a learning curve, it looks remarkably similar to the spreadsheet software we rely on today. The reference card below the emulator lists all the commands you need to get started.
If you’d like to explore early 1980s word processing, you can give WordStar a try here. It’s a big departure from the “what you see is what you get” word processing we’re used to in the present, so be sure to open and read through “EXAMPLE.TXT” if you need to get oriented.
Our display has a little more to say about the office, but if you want to learn more about educational software, check out our post on the Apple II, the rise of “edutainment” games, and the Carmen Sandiego franchise here.
Gaming with Personal Computers
For a library of Commodore 64 games ready to emulate in your browser, you can check out this site, which has a library of 615 games across wide range of genres.
Users of the BASIC Computer Games books in the early days of personal computing had to type the source code in themselves, but you can find the source code for these games here. The linked page includes code you can copy and paste alongside scans of the original pages that show off their illustrations. If you want to give these games a shot, you can try them out in a web-based BASIC emulator like Commodore 64 BASIC and Applesoft BASIC.
Interested in learning even more about Infocom text adventures? You can check out our post on them here. If you’d like to try them yourself, you can also emulate Zork I here. It works on mobile devices, and the page has links to Zork II and III in case you get hooked.
Portability and Computing on the Go
Among the portables we have on display, the IBM 701C’s “butterfly” keyboard deserves a full demonstration. This commercial from 1995 shows off the award-winning design in action.
Getting Online: Networking and the World Wide Web
If you want to revisit the early days of the Web or experience them for the first time, check out some tools that interact with the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to access snapshots of websites past.
OldWeb.Today lets you explore snapshots through a range of older browsers, including several versions of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer.
If you’re not sure what to browse, Wiby is a search engine for the classic web that has a “surprise me” button that will take you to a random site on the old web.
In case you want to look through websites using a more modern interface before opening their snapshots, the Web Design Museum is a great resource.
Communicating with Computers: Interfaces and Input Devices
Want to see what was up with the first ever commercially successful GUI? Infinite Mac hosts online emulators of Macintosh systems from the very first System 1.0 up until the early 2000s. These emulators are mobile-friendly, and your touch screen device is a great way to try out MacPaint.