I really, really doubt I can run most 1980s software on a modern machine without effort.
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary
You literally click a button in your browser and emulate right there. Have fun.
It’s getting harder now with 64bit windows not supporting 16bit apps — they are living on a “legacy” Linux VMs tenant in Azure now, and probably will continue until around 2030. Possibly longer, as they are on emulated DOS now!
It would be interesting to have a solution which allowed you to progressively wrap software to allow it to run in just as much isolation as it needs, from the ultra-lightweight scripts that just futz with LD_PRELOAD (when most of the environment is still there) to actual Docker images (when the OS is still there) to images to run in a hypervisor (when the hardware is still there) to full-on heavyweight system emulation like SIMH, for when even the hardware has gone.
It's all very Tao:
When the userspace libraries have gone, there is LD_PRELOAD
When the filesystem hierarchy is gone, there is Docker
When the OS is gone, there is Xen
When the hardware is gone, there's SIMH. Hi, SIMH!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkfpi2H8tOE Laurie Anderson — O Superman
As long as you reindex often enough, your Clipper apps should last forever, in my experience.
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...
The only one I can think of offhand is Harpoon II Admiral's Edition, which had its own built-in memory manager that doesn't play well even with virtual machines. But that is one where they did eventually re-release an updated version that runs on modern systems.
Edit: The original release was 1989, Admiral's Edition was 1996. I don't know if they did those memory tricks in the original, but it's doubtful.