In the 1970s and 1980s, a lot of us learned to program using good old-fashioned BASIC on machines ranging from Altairs, Commodores, Apple IIs, and the like. Sometime in the 80’s the IBM PC running MSDOS because the de facto standard, but it was still easy enough to launch BASIC and write a simple little program. Of course, there were other programs, some serious like C compilers, some semi-serious like flight simulators, and some pure fun like Wolfenstein 3D.
If you read Hackaday, you’ve probably noticed that a lot of people emulate old computers–including old MSDOS PCs–using a variety of techniques, including Raspberry PI boards running DOSBox or another emulator. Honestly, though, that’s a lot of effort just to run some old software, right? You can load up DOS emulators on your desktop too. That’s a little easier, but you still have to find software. But if you are as lazy as we are, you might want to check out the MSDOS collection at archive.org.
The collection has over 7,000 old MSDOS titles which is impressive. But what is fascinating is that they will all run inside your Web browser. You are two clicks away from running BASIC, Borland C, flight simulators, or even Commander Keen. Be careful, though. Some key strokes (like Control+C) may not work in the browser.
If you are really hardcore, you can even boot some old versions of Windows in your browser. Or, if you want to go further back in time, try emulating DOS in your browser and then emulating a TRS-80 under DOS. There’s even old versions of Microsoft Word and Wordperfect if you want to write blog posts old school.
If you wish to do some hardware hacking, you don’t have to do all this in the browser. There are also plenty of old computers you can emulate in your browser. There’s even a Windows 95 in a browser (see the video below).