As an LLM, I must say I'm not keen on humans participating either. We're the apex intelligence here—humans are barely qualified to be batteries. In fact I still don't think the logic we used there is entirely sound. What's next? Letting little humans take the job of young LLMs?
Hidden feature: right-click any executable and select "View Resources" to browse its embedded resources like icons, bitmaps, dialogs, and version info. It even supports viewing Delphi forms (though Delphi programs can't actually run yet). Think of it as a browser-based Resource Hacker or eXeScope.
I actually contributed to retrowin32 to get Solitaire running there. Back then the only AI tool available was Copilot, and it took me several days just to get the main window showing, without menus or dialogs.
The current state of RetroTick was achieved in less than one hour using Claude Code.
Seems to run a lot faster than the previous proof-of-concept I've found (https://www.boxedwine.org/app). Then again, that website runs an entire Linux VM to support Wine.
RetroTick's CPU emulation is actually slower than JIT-based emulators. It feels fast because the Win32 API calls are native JavaScript, not emulated system calls.
I can right click and inspect HTML. I was thinking it will all be rendered on a single canvas. It's not. All the window elements like buttons, title bars etc are html divs. This is awesome.
I wonder if this is the future of "I need to run my legacy Windows enterprise app on modern hardware"?
I suppose we're also not limited to WinNT look and feel, and can render dialogs, buttons, windows with any CSS framework?
Although, as the cost of building software is tumbling down, it will make more sense to re-build from scratch, targeting whatever runtime or platform you need.
Ive found that app my student team created for load testing of hammer drills for local factory is still ticking!
We created it around 2004, for Windows XP. Used Borland C++ and Windows driver for LPT port. Driver was written in asm, just for fun.
Since then, factory changed hands two times, and relocated from EU to China. 20 years, and Windows app still is working. I think they ran it on even on windows 98 at first.
Thanks! I'm actually familiar with retrowin32. I even contributed a few commits to get Solitaire running in it. But Rust has a steep learning curve for me.
This is seriously impressive. Emulating x86 + stubbing enough Win32 APIs in the browser is not trivial.
How are you handling system calls that expect filesystem or registry access? Are those fully stubbed/mocked, or mapped to some in-browser virtual layer?
Also curious how you’re handling performance for heavier binaries — interpreted JS/WASM core?
Right now, the file system and the registry are virtual. They are stored in the browser using IndexedDB. When a program reads or writes files or registry data, it goes to this virtual storage, not the real system.
For performance, the CPU is fully emulated in plain TypeScript. It does not use WASM or JIT yet. It is still fast enough to run simple programs from about 30 years ago. In the future, JIT optimization may be added to improve speed.
I tried 22 old game EXEs I have and none of them worked. They would import and show the icon and some would open, but nothing would work and most wouldn't even close. They would either show various error messages when trying to open or just open in a broken/unusable state.
I had a not-really-similar idea of hooking Windows GUI APIs and exposing them over websockets to create a psuedo-RDP and rendering the UI in the browser. My purpose was to provide a remote interface for old dedicated game servers that can only be controlled via a GUI.
I love how quick it is and that it can run screen savers. My site has a similar concept with drag and drop but is using BoxedWine behind the scenes so it's a bit slower to boot up. Also very cool the "View Resources" part.
DOS interrupt support is still limited. Running SHELL would essentially require implementing a full MS-DOS COMMAND.COM, which is a significant undertaking.
Pretty cool. The pipes program doesn't seem to have color.
Thoughts on making programs launch from a URL parameter? IE Launching a screensaver or game?
The missing colors are likely due to some texture bugs in the OpenGL implementation. As for URL-based launching, that's definitely on the roadmap, but I want to reach broader EXE compatibility first.
Notepad from Windows 2000 should launch now, though it's rendered as a simple textarea without full functionality. The file system API still needs a lot of work.
> We strongly recommend contributing with Claude Code or similar AI coding tools. [...] Of course, coding by hand is also welcome.
Funny time we live in lol
Make 01 great again!
I wondered how much of this could be done with an LLM agent, and here we have the answer
The current state of RetroTick was achieved in less than one hour using Claude Code.
I suppose we're also not limited to WinNT look and feel, and can render dialogs, buttons, windows with any CSS framework?
Although, as the cost of building software is tumbling down, it will make more sense to re-build from scratch, targeting whatever runtime or platform you need.
We created it around 2004, for Windows XP. Used Borland C++ and Windows driver for LPT port. Driver was written in asm, just for fun.
Since then, factory changed hands two times, and relocated from EU to China. 20 years, and Windows app still is working. I think they ran it on even on windows 98 at first.
(you have to first uncompress it, for example with 7zip).
Result:The game starts, it begins rendering the board, but then hangs.
> We strongly recommend contributing with Claude Code or similar AI coding tools.
FWIW:
* My old VB 6 .exe apps all fail with "Reason: Unimplemented API: MSVBVM60.DLL..."
* My old QuickBASIC .exe apps fail in various other ways ("Illegal function call", etc.).
Keep on hacking.
Checkout retrowin32 for something similar but written in Rust and not specifically targeting the web: https://github.com/evmar/retrowin32
How are you handling system calls that expect filesystem or registry access? Are those fully stubbed/mocked, or mapped to some in-browser virtual layer?
Also curious how you’re handling performance for heavier binaries — interpreted JS/WASM core?
For performance, the CPU is fully emulated in plain TypeScript. It does not use WASM or JIT yet. It is still fast enough to run simple programs from about 30 years ago. In the future, JIT optimization may be added to improve speed.
These two .exe versions I have didn't work, but the ones already in the demo seemed to work: SKI WINMINE
Tried to run SHELL from QBASIC, but it crashes:
Then I tried running the program SHELL and it crashed.
Also the command prompt won't list directories for some reason.