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A VAX emulator for the browser

An HN comment about building the missing VAX for the PCjs emulator collection.

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Credits

  • HN commenter baron3dl Source ↗

Earliest dated source: 31 Jul 2026

The full story

When the PCjs emulator collection hit the Hacker News front page, a commenter noticed it had no VAX. Claude Code with Opus 5 carefully ported the KA655 VAX from the SIMH emulator to PCjs, and it now boots OpenVMS 7.3 in a web browser. They demo VMS 5.5, which is a tenth of the size and even more nostalgic.

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Sources

From a passing comment or social post, so the details are thin.

  • Hacker News: When PCjs hit the front page a couple weeks back I noticed VAX was conspicuously missing and couldn Forum threadnews.ycombinator.com
    HN commenter: baron3dlPosted 31 Jul 2026

    The comment and replies.

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