emulate this

Pictured above is the Tandy TRS-80 Model I, unleashed on the world in 1977 as one of the first mass-produced desktop microcomputers available to consumers. Unusually for its time it sported a full QWERTY keyboard.

These devices were a lot of fun at the time, and with some work and some highly-priced peripherals it was even possible to get some genuinely useful functionality – yes, even something approaching the modern concept of productivity – out of them. Users could either program the machine themselves in its native floating point BASIC programming language, or shell out a bit more dough for commercially available software to run the thing.

Naturally these machines are no longer available on the market, unless you can find a working relic on eBay or somewhere. So, users of modern-day 21st Century machines are unlikely to ever experience the thrills-and-spills of operating what was a cutting-edge product of its day. (Of course, if it’s thrills-and-spills you want, then there’s still Microsoft Windows.)

And yet, there is a reasonably low-cost and convenient way to experience the awesome technology of yore. The answer is to run a TRS-80 emulator.

Yes, it may seem outrageously implausible that you could emulate a

• Zilog Z80-based, 8-bit, 1.77 Megahertz, 16 Kilobyte RAM, cassett-tape-storage  machine

on your

• Intel Quad Core, 64-bit, 3.2 Gigahertz, 8 Gigabyte RAM, multivarious storage, state-of-the-21st-Century PC

But through the magic of modern software technology anything is possible, requiring only the will to realise it.

If you have a hankering for the archaic and too much time on your hands, you might start here...