Before the smartphone, before the Palm Pilot, before…I dunno, actually, I’m not that old. But at some point in the nebulous past, you didn’t have an ounce of nerd cred if there wasn’t some kind of advanced graphing calculator in your backpack. Thanks to the Internet Archive (of the Wayback Machine fame), you can now see how these classic machines operated without having to spend a fortune on eBay.
Spotted by Ars Technica, the Calculator Drawer is a collection of emulated calculators that can be run online from any browser. Emulating graphing calculators is nothing new — you can find any number of them for your phone. But this is surely the most complete collection as yet assembled in one place. At launch there are 14 classic models to choose from, mostly from the Texas Instruments catalog. Heavy hitters include the TI-83 Plus, the TI89, and the “big daddy” TI 92.
A few models from HP (popular with accountants and economics majors) are present as well, along with the “Electronic Number Muncher” from kid’s electronics manufacturer VTech. And if you really want to nerd out, you can peruse 10 different uploaded text manuals as well.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer
Michael is a former graphic designer who's been building and tweaking desktop computers for longer than he cares to admit. His interests include folk music, football, science fiction, and salsa verde, in no particular order.