As my friends know, I’m a huge fan of classic computers (and LEGO, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post). My personal collection includes an original Macintosh, an IBM PC Jr, Atari 600, Timex Sinclair 1000, a new-in-box TI 99/4a, several Radio Shack Color Computers, two Coleco Adams, a 20th Anniversary Macintosh and many more.
In light of having too many toys and not enough space, I ended up getting rid of the two CRT displays that I had in the game room (errr, guest room), which left me with just our rather large OLED TV’s to use. While it’s great fun to connect a computer from the 80’s, such as the Color Computer, to a 65″ OLED TV, the reality is it doesn’t work well – a text resolution of something like 24×20 characters means really huge letters, and of course the games / apps from those days are archaic.
While I do dream of someday setting up a wing of a mansion with ancient computers, attached to time appropriate monitors, that dream depends on winning the lottery, which is by no means guaranteed. So in the meantime, messing around with emulators for a few minutes every now and then manages my classic computer urges, without requiring me to rewire things in the house and question my life choices.
For your enjoyment, here are some links to emulators and other goodies that can be fun to play with. They’re all browser based, so no effort needed to get started!
ZX 81 (Timex Sinclair T1000)
https://zx81stuff.org.uk/zx81/jtyone.html
ZX Spectrum
Atari ST
http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/atari-st/
Commodore 64
https://c64emulator.111mb.de/index.php?site=pp_javascript&lang=en&group=c64
Commodore VIC 20
https://www.mdawson.net/vic20chrome/vic20.php
A Big Pile of Emulated Apps and Resources
This site has emulators for a ton of apps, ranging from Oregon Trail, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 1 (!), all the way through a TI-57 Programmable Calculator!
It also has a large library of public domain software and shareware.