A "digital rosetta stone" for translating obsolete computer files

boing
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Well, where to begin:

for x86 (PC) platforms, you have virtualization, either through vmware (esxi/fusion/etc.) or Hyper-V. Hardware pass-through for things like dongles are ‘sort of’ supported- your mileage may vary.

for non-PC platforms, it’s entirely dependent on if someone’s written an emulator for that platform, and how well it works. I can tell you that no one that I’m aware of has written anything like an OS/400 / iSeries emulator (at least not outside of IBM; they might have something buried away in an R&D lab or archive somewhere that’s unlikely to see the light of day.)

There are emulators for Apple ][e, Commodore 64 family, and various Amiga iterations; hardware connectivity for peripherals can be… interesting to finagle; there are hardware dongles and programs to capture disk images.

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Great! Makes me think of what Jason Scott is doing for games & software, at the Internet Archive:


(start at 8:41 if you’re in a hurry)

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And if you’re not in a hurry, you should watch every talk by Jason Scott: http://ascii.textfiles.com/speaking :smiley:

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Well it might be useful one day.

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Huh. You were lucky. My RML380Z CP/M-ly created thesis is on 8" floppies.

- Awaiting punched card - mag tape - paper tape etc fish stories.

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