Count on old school fun with these new calculator emulations

Because of its price, size, and features, I still remember the graphing calculator I used in high school, even though I haven’t had to draw parabolas in a long time. The Internet Archive has just made it easier to relive those days by running a series of online calculator emulations that you can click through.

Announced Sunday, The Calculator Drawer includes 14 calculators. Most of them are from Texas Instruments, including my old TI-83 Plus and a 1995 Texas Instruments TI92 handheld console. But there are also some options from HP. The oldest calculator is a 1989 VTech Electronic Number Muncher toy.

In addition to supporting keyboard input, calculators allow you to tap on-screen buttons to enter, making the process even more realistic if you’re using touchscreen emulation. Some calculators even have power buttons and sound effects.

The calculators use the Multi-Purpose Emulation Framework (MAME) Team, which has emulated thousands of older platforms and gadgets such as computers and slot machines over 25 years.

And for those who need to brush up on their calculator skills, the Internet Archive has also uploaded manuals for calculators.

The Internet Archive blog post announcing The Calculator Drawer has some details about the emulation process. He noted problems with emulating a small set of LEDs or numbers on an LCD when powering up the rest of the device, which is basically an unchanging case.

In order to “render an emulated device that needs an ‘extra’ drawing to enlarge the part of itself that reflects the device’s screen or light,”as the Internet Archive puts it, they invoked the MAME Artwork feature, which makes these calculators clickable. MAME Artwork allows the Calculator Drawer to display an image of the calculator on the screen while maintaining interactivity. It also doesn’t require “deep programming knowledge”. This method was chosen because of MAME’s ability to make vector art and is looking for volunteers to provide high quality photos of old school technology.

The Calculator Box is a fun way for math lovers to relive some memorable gadgets, despite being smaller than other Internet Archive collections. It can also provide a free way to use a high performance calculator that can cost around $100 or more.

Below is the complete list of emulators currently available in The Calculator Drawer: