Online emulators for vintage/retro computers

Have you ever wanted to see what it was like to use one of the first personal computers or play some early video games?

Or maybe you are old enough to have used personal computers and games consoles in the 1970s and 1980s and want to relive old times?

Thanks to the efforts of some very clever people, and the power of modern hardware, there are emulators available for almost every vintage computer.

Although many emulators can be installed and run on your own modern computer, the focus of this post is online emulators. These require no effort and no skills to set up, you can just go to a web site and immediately experience an original personal computer or play a classic game.

You can play games on an Atari 2600, one of the early successful games consoles. When I was in primary school, my friend had one of these and I remember playing Asteroids and Pacman.

The Commodore 64 is the top-selling personal computer of all time. Like many computers in the 1980s, they boot immediately into BASIC. There were other popular systems at the time, such as the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum.

Here in Australia, the Microbee was very popular in schools.

Maybe you would like to see some of the early graphic user interfaces like the Xerox Alto, Apple Lisa, Macintosh or the early days of Windows?

You could try out or relive the 32-bit personal computers that were introduced around the second half of the 1980s like the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and Acorn Archimedes.

You can even find emulators for more modern PC's and Apple Macs, and there is one for the Commander X16, a modern retro-inspired computer.

Here's a list of online emulators that I have found:

• Acorn
  • Archimedes
    • https://archi.medes.live/
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/emularity.html?machine=aa310
  • Electron
    • https://elkjs.azurewebsites.net/
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/player.html?machine=acornelectron
• Amstrad
  • CPC
    • https://retroshowcase.gr/cpcbox-master/
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/tinyemu.html?type=cpc464
• Apple
  • II
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/player.html?machine=apple2
  • IIe
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/player.html?machine=apple2e
  • IIGS
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/emularity.html?machine=apple2gs
  • II Plus
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/emularity.html?machine=apple2p
  • Macintosh
  • Macintosh II
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/emularity.html?machine=maciichs
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/emularity.html?machine=macii
  • Macintosh Plus
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/emularity.html?machine=macplus
    • https://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/
  • Mac
    • https://infinitemac.org/
• Applied Technology
  • Microbee
    • https://nanowasp.org/
• Atari
  • 2600
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/standalone/javatari.html
  • 800XL
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/player.html?machine=atari800xl
  • ST
    • https://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/atari-st/
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/emularity.html?machine=emutos
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/emularity.html?machine=ataristmono
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/emularity.html?machine=atarist
• BBC
  • Micro
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/player.html?machine=bbcmicro
• Commodore
  • 64
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/player.html?machine=commodore64
    • https://c64online.com/c64-online-emulator/
  • Amiga
    • https://amiga.oszx.co/
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/emularity.html?machine=amiga500
    • https://www.taws.ch/WB.html
  • Pet
    • https://c64online.com/commodore-pet-online-emulator/
  • VIC-20
    • https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/vic20-ui.html
    • https://www.mdawson.net/vic20chrome/vic20.php
• IBM
  • PC/XT
    • https://www.pcjs.org/machines/pcx86/ibm/5160/mda/
• Sharp
  • PC-1500
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/standalone/sharp-pc1500.html
  • X1 Turbo
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/emularity.html?machine=sharp-x1turbo
• Sinclair
  • ZX81
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/player.html?machine=zx81
  • ZX Spectrum
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/player.html?machine=zxspectrum
• TI
  • TI-99/4A
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/player.html?machine=ti99-4a
• Xerox
  • Alto
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/player.html?machine=salto
• Tandy
  • TRS-80 Model III
    • https://www.compumuseum.com/player.html?machine=trs80model3

There are also many emulators for applications and games. Here are a few that were of interest to me:

• PC
  • Doom
  • Lotus 1-2-3
  • Microsoft Windows 1.0
  • Microsoft Windows 1.1
  • Microsoft Windows 2.0
  • Microsoft Windows 3.0
  • Microsoft Windows 3.1
  • Microsoft Windows 95
  • Multiplan
  • Visicalc
  • Microsoft Word 1.1