Historical Software Archive lets you use vintage software in your browser

October 26, 2013

The Internet Archive’s new Historical Software Archive brings old software to your browser through the magic of JSMESS emulation. The Internet Archive has protected and preserved old software for a while now; archivist Jason Scott claimed back in April that the organization possessed the largest historical software collection in the world. Software is so transient, though. It’s sometimes hard to get a program from 2003 to run on a modern machine, let alone a program from 1983. For most people it wouldn’t be worth the trouble to, as the Internet Archive puts it, “track down the hardware and media to run [old software], or download and install emulators and acquire/install cartridge or floppy images as you boot up the separate emulator program, outside of the browser.” I’m a lemonade mogul. Pure capitalism. An easier way The Historical Software Archive, announced Friday, changes that. There’s no need to fuss with stand-alone emulators. Instead, the Internet Archive runs MESS (short for Multi Emulator Super System) with Javascript in Chrome, Firefox, Safari—any modern browser. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2058087/historical-software-archive-lets-you-use-vintage-software-in-your-browser.html#tk.rss_all