Emulation is something that many developers are passionate about, especially when it comes to taking us back in time by testing old operating systems or programs; plus it’s a great way to assist in the preservation and appreciation of older software.
This is something the developer is obviously passionate about. Andre Wissflog, who has been working on a site called Tiny Emus for years or Tiny Emulators, a website where you can find a beautiful collection of 8-bit chip and game “emulators”.
A trip to the past to play like in the microcomputers of the 80s
Tiny Emulators includes multi-microcomputer emulators that appeared in the 1980s (or early 1990s), such as the Amstrad CPC, or the super famous ZX Spectrum. But these are not the only ones, Andre continually adds support to emulate more of these systems.
Tiny Emus recently added emulation for the KC85 / 2, / 3 and / 4 to his repertoire that already included him Acorn Atom, the Z1013 and Z9001, and the C64. The emulators work from basically any modern browser.
Total there are almost 150 tiny emulators The ones you can access on the site, most are games, but you can also upload your own files to some that only emulate the system. All the project is based on Emscripten, a name that may sound familiar to you if you are used to reading about web emulators.
Emscripten is an especially popular compilation tool from which many emulation projects have been born, it has been used to create from versions of Windows 95 for the browser, to mini versions of Windows XP that run in a browser tab.
All this project and the code of the emulators is open source and you can find it on GitHub, along with the schematics, manuals and research material. The Tiny Emus website basically serves as a website for examples and demos of what can be done with this. It’s pretty cool.