May 13, 2026
Floppy Disks, Big Feelings
S-100 Virtual Workbench
A retro computer toy just sent old-school fans spiraling into joy, chaos, and complaints
TLDR: A browser-based simulator now lets people experience an early home computer setup without needing the real vintage machine. Fans in the comments were wildly nostalgic and delighted, while one grumpier voice sparked mini-drama by complaining the retro-styled page is too hard to read.
A charming little web project called S-100 Virtual Workbench lets people play with a virtual late-1970s personal computer right in the browser, complete with blinking-front-panel vibes, old disk drives, and a do-it-yourself machine setup. On paper, that means emulated chips, memory cards, floppy controllers, and classic machines like the Altair and IMSAI. In the comments, though, this instantly turned into a full-blown nostalgia stampede.
The loudest reaction was pure delighted disbelief. One commenter clicked in expecting a fake-out and came back beaming: it really was the old S-100 bus era they remembered from computer magazines and sci-fi-tinged home computing dreams. Another admitted that this kind of thing only matters to “about 0.06% of us,” which somehow made it even sweeter: yes, it is niche, and yes, the niche is ecstatic. The funniest mood shift came from the person who simply declared, “Thanks! Now I will procrastinate the whole day,” which feels like the most honest product review possible.
And then came the emotional plot twist: one user shared that their dad brought home what turned out to be an actual Altair 8800 when they were a kid, and their reaction was basically, what am I supposed to do with this glowing metal mystery box? That’s the whole vibe here—part museum piece, part toy, part family memory.
But every internet lovefest needs at least one villain, and right on cue someone dragged the site’s visuals for using hard-to-read dark text on dark backgrounds. So the community consensus is: amazing retro playground, catastrophic for productivity, and maybe somebody please turn on a light.
Key Points
- •S-100 Virtual Workbench is a configurable virtual S-100 computer environment centered on Intel 8080 CP/M 2.2, with controls for loading, running, stepping, resetting, rebooting, and loading HEX files.
- •It supports multiple CPU and memory configurations, including Intel 8080A and Zilog Z80 processors, RAM cards, and ROM cards with configurable address ranges and optional phantom-port paging.
- •The platform emulates several serial and floppy peripherals, including a generic UART SIO, a WD1771-style floppy controller, the MITS 88-DCDD, the MITS 88-2SIO, and a WD1793-based FDC.
- •Graphics and display hardware include the Cromemco Dazzler color graphics card, the Processor Technology VDM-1 text display card, and SOL-20-specific on-board I/O emulation.
- •The displayed preset is an Altair 8800 CP/M 2.2 chassis populated with CPU, RAM, MITS 88-2SIO, and MITS 88-DCDD cards, with an AltairCPM22.dsk image mounted in drive A.