The Internet Archive lives up to its name, creating a backup of information and content that would otherwise be lost to history as technology barrels forward. The archive hosts web page snapshots, Android APKs, and a new project from the MAME emulator team: The Calculator Drawer. This collection of calculator emulators runs the gamut from the kid-friendly Electronic Number Muncher to the venerable TI-83 Plus. And they all work just like the originals.
You probably know “MAME” mostly for its arcade machine emulation — it originally stood for “Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator” but was merged with a general emulation project to cover a wide array of vintage devices. Hence, the new MAME Calculator Drawer on the Internet Archive.
The drawer includes both graphing calculators, as well as simple calculators, all emulated in MAME. Most of them even have an additional layer on top to represent the original hardware. That means you can click on the keypads and controls as they originally existed, right down to the “on” button on many of the more advanced machines. Like the real deal, they won’t do anything until you turn on the power. Without the MAME Artwork system, the emulated part of many of these devices would simply be a string of LCD block numbers. MAME can create vector graphic representations of the hardware, but most of the calculators use real photos of the device for the artwork layer.
The TI-92 cost $180 when it came out in 1996. Now you can emulate it for free in your browser.
It’s a lot more fun to see a representation of the calculator itself rather than using your keyboard to input numbers. That said, you can use your keyboard for input if you prefer. To use any of the emulated calculators, just open the page and click the Start button. Each page includes some basic information about the devices, including the release date, price, and hardware specs. There’s also a full-screen option if you want the technology of yesteryear to fill your screen. That’s more useful on mobile — most of the calculators are roughly smartphone-shaped.
As you can imagine, there are a lot of Texas Instruments graphing calculators, including some of the more advanced versions you rarely, if ever, saw in the wild. The TI v200 and TI-92 (above) are more like tiny computers than calculators, and they’re much more complicated to operate as a result. If you need a little refresher on how to use these retro tabulators, The Internet Archive also has a collection of manuals linked on the Calculator Drawer page.
Now read:
- Internet Archive Adds 2,500 Playable MS-DOS Games
- The Great Graphing Calculator Ripoff
- In a big shift, MAME is going open source
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