In these smartphone-studded days, it’s easy to forget how computers worked. Once you had to run programs off of floppy disks and wait ages for everything to load. Luckily for your nostalgia, some bored developers are keeping the past alive with full-featured emulators that run in your browser.
The latest from emulator-builder supreme Jeff Par is the almost ancient Windows 1.01. This is the operating system that started it all, folks. Released in 1985 as one of the first operating systems with a graphical user interface (GUI), Windows 1.01 would become the foundation for the Microsoft empire that keeps the brand alive today. It was not, however, terribly sophisticated. With limited multitasking abilities and barebones graphics, the operating system amounted to an extension of MS-DOS. Windows 1.01 did come with some classic programs like Notepad, Paint and Writer — all of which you can tinker around with in the emulator.
Of course, this is hardly the only vintage operating system emulator out there. Par’s made a few other emulators, including one for PC-DOS 2.0. Australian hacker-type James Friend has your early Apple needs covered with an emulator for Mac OS System 7 as well as a comparatively flashy Microsoft product, Windows 3.0. You can even get weird with a Windows 95 emulator for iPhone or a Nintendo 64 emulator for Android.
You should remember one thing before your walk down OS memory lane: Computers don’t work like they used to. Back in the day, everything was slow, and little made sense. So do brush up on your user manuals before tying to accomplish anything ambitious in these decades-old operating systems. If you can find them… [Jeff Par via TNW]