You can also run dozens of other operating systems some are easier to install than others including Linux, Darwin, and Net/Free/OpenBSD. Microsoft's Virtual PC, formerly Connectix Virtual PC, has been letting Mac users run Windows and DOS on their Macs for years. Both are capable of running Linux comfortably. Microsoft's Virtual PC is capable of running even the resource-hungry Windows XP quite comfortably on current Macintoshes, and the open source QEMU comes close, although it's not quite as fast as Virtual PC. But what's fantastic is how you can emulate near-current PC hardware on your Mac.

Given the speeds of today's Macs, it's not surprising that you can easily emulate a 1 MHz computer from the old days. There are a several sites with information about vintage game and computer emulators for the Mac, including:

If your favorite old game isn't shareware or in the public domain, there are some legal issues involved with obtaining copies of your old game, but at the time of this writing, there weren't any effective barriers that would keep you from finding and running them. Repeat as necessary for Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari VCS, and more. Have a favorite Atari 800 game but your old Atari won't boot? You can download the emulator, point it at the disk image containing that old game, and start playing.

It's emerged as a way to defeat obsolescence by letting you run software for obsolete computers. Emulation has been a hot area of the past few years.

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