This lesson is being piloted (Beta version)

Using Emulators to Resurrect Recovered Data

Key Points

Introduction and Icebreaker
  • Keep your earliest software/computer you ever used in mind. We’ll try to circle back to it later!

Anatomy of a Computer
  • Emulators recreate computing hardware in software. These are called ‘virtual machines’ to distinguish from physical machines.

  • You will need disk images to load software and files into emulators.

  • Virtualization and emulation are technically very similar but usually employed in slightly different contexts.

  • Different emulators are designed for different brands or models of hardware, and may refer to similar components in different ways. The variety of possible applications and vocabulary is confusing, but surmountable.

Emulation and Virtualization Applications
  • Running an emulator can require a challenging combination of troubleshooting legacy software/operating systems and the emulator itself.

  • Mac hardware is more unique than generic PC hardware, so emulation is more challenging and requires extra files to recreate particular Mac models. These extra files are called ‘ROMS’.

Emulation as a Service
  • Emulation-as-a-Service offers a technical platform to simplify the use of emulation in broad-ranging digital collections.

  • Standardized description of software and hardware is a difficult but essential task for collaborative recovery and preservation efforts.

  • The doctrine of ‘Fair Use’ is a flexible legal tool that can potentially be used to legally many software preservation activities - but be mindful that context matters, and that these recommendations are as of yet unproven in court.