Friday, March 29, 2024

Run 500 hard-to-find Apple II programs in your web browser

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Sure, it’s easy to find ways to run classic Apple II programs like The Oregon Trail or Prince of Persia. But what about that obscure educational title you remember using as a kid? Is it doomed to be forgotten? You might not have to worry. The Internet Archive has announced that its web-based emulation catalog now includes over 500 relatively tough-to-find Apple II programs that might otherwise have disappeared forever. If you remember using the likes of The Quarter Mile or The Observatory, you can fire it up without having to dig your old computer out of storage.

In many cases, it’s almost surprising that the programs are available at all. They come from an era when copy protection frequently involved hardware-specific tricks, and attempts to crack them often broke code or included unsightly credits to the cracking teams involved. Here, that isn’t an issue — the goal is to preserve the software as faithfully as possible. The Internet Archive likely can’t save everything even it keeps expanding its library, but it could prevent large swaths of Apple II history from being reduced to memories.

Source: Internet Archive

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