I remember joining the school news paper publication and was introduced to the Macintosh and MacOS for the first time. Up until that point I had used my Commodore 64 and IBM Compatible 386 for all my computing and gaming needs. To a teenager that loved computers the whole 90’s era felt like the Wild West.
Back to the future with emulation:
The Internet Archive has been around quite a long time with their Wayback Machine. This Internet marvel has been saving copies of web pages to be archived for all time. Who knows maybe some day this blog will be archived for future generations to enjoy.
One thing I didn’t realize was they were also archiving entire operating systems that could be launched and run in a browser.
I found this beauty while rummaging through the archive the other day. Its a fully operational MacOS_7.0.1
There is something about that original back and white interface that stands the test of time. When computing was in its infancy, free of advertising, malware, threats of hackers stealing your identity. Just you, a keyboard, and a single small black and white screen. Maybe if you were lucky a 1200bps modem to connect to the outside world. Its amazing how far we have come with processing power that we are able to emulate an entire piece of classic hardware and operating system within a web browser, and have it perform just as good as the original.
I tried the emulator on Firefox, Edge, Internet Explorer and Chrome, and was able to obtain the best results using Chrome. I also found a large collection of other classic Macintosh software in the archive including: Lemmings, Lode Runner, Frogger, Connect 4 and many other classics.
Finally after a little more searching, the archive had a complete run of MacWorld magazine and some old books relating to Macs
I hope you enjoyed this trip down Macintosh memory lane, happy exploring!
Thanks for reading
-Joe
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