Hey Herb (and all), I don't think this is quite as seedy as you suspect. The author is John Kennedy who works for Microsoft and does vintage computer work as a hobby. His Github is here: https://github.com/GrantMeStrength The source-code for the project is here: https://github.com/GrantMeStrength/S100 With some explanation. There are some disk images here: https://github.com/GrantMeStrength/S100/tree/main/web/public/disks It looks like he is currently working on a debugger for the system. Other than using Copilot assist LLM, I don't see anything unsafe or shady in the source. I think this is a guy who knows some dev stuff and likes documenting vintage systems. Self promotion is probably not his goal. It looks like he also made an 8080 CP/M emulator for iPhone: https://github.com/GrantMeStrength/Core8080Manager and some various 6502 tools and toys. Pretty cool stuff in my book! -Wil On Sat, May 16, 2026 at 12:31 PM Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

I did some Web search homework on this thing: "S-100 Virtual Workbench". Looks like someone blasted social media and vintage computing Web discussion sites with a link to this thing. All references to this thing are a few days old and start with a link and a tease - no prior discussion. People respond with either S-100 nostalgia, or puzzlement, or brief compliments (so far three days out).

The thing itself, is a github site with only one entry point (apparently) to run a browser-based 8080/Z80 simulator that represents several Altair-class boards to run CP/M 2.2. Docs? - negative. Code source? - negative. History, biographies, who-the-hell wrote it?- negative.

Plausible speculation, is that someone used an AI to produce this coding. Given the modest resources needed to simulate a Z80 or 8080 and generate browser-operating code, all to not-difficult specifications - seems plausible to me.

I conclude someone is showing off some kind of skills and wants chatter about doing so. This thread is one of many threads on other sites where people respond to this thing. My response is to "look behind the curtain" and report what I found or not found. My opinion about the thing isn't the point, my opinion is that this is a set-up. "When the product is free, you are the product". Someone wants our vintage computing eyeballs but refuses to explain why and for what, and how the work was done.

I considered further commentary. But this is not my thread. The subject is some site that does something S-100-ish. I questioned the premise and suggest there is another purpose. If someone finds some better purpose or more depth than I've suggested, I think that's a fair response. Disscussion about AI or the past or future of "vintage computing" is another topic. My apologies to Christian Liendo but I honestly believe he was unknowingly *set up*, and that's not his fault.

regards Herb Johnson

Thanks to my friends for cluing me in. Apparently I don't know how github works or how Web search works (anymore). But I got no online help on searching about this thing. It's tedious to explain how I don't know something, this amounts to "proving a negative" by showing where something is NOT. But the developer did not leave a "signature", which boggles my mind. I made an effort. The link given to me in this thread, led to the result (demonstration) and not the project (source) page - I must not know how to change "grantmestrength.github.io/S100/" to "github.com/GrantMeStrength". Other references that search found to this product, also were a single link to a demonstration and nothing more. No mention of a person. Github, by the way, has changed a lot since Microsoft bought it a few years ago. I don't have content on github myself, I browse content from there, so I don't keep up with recent ways to use it, as in github.io vs github.com. When I've tried to search github.com on-site, it "chokes" and tells me it thinks I'm scraping content (like an AI would). I am less than happy about using github. The S-100 Google group has no local-search responses to "givemestrength". But when I search for "kennedy", I find a recent post by John T Kennedy of May 9th which has the link to the working emulator (which includes the string givemestrength). That says something lacking in Google group searching. I also find quite some history of Kennedy's posts in the Google group (when searching by his name), so that confirms Geff's response. I'm not very active in that Google group, that's not a negative for it from me. I know something about S-100, I have a Web presence about S-100 that's been findable. But I'm not an active participant in every discussion group about S-100 things. I can imagine people with less experiences than mine, maybe some with more experience, may also have some difficulty in finding out anything about the origins of this bit of code. I can also imagine github developers rolling their eyes at my situation. I have a point. All this may have been avoided, if Mr. Kennedy had included some reference to his github source page in his browser-based github demonstrator. There was no "help-me", no "about", no active click-on link, no signature with his name or github-source link. The oldest programs I know of, have some creation information associated with them. I don't know the lessons learned here. I think it will be easy for people to dismiss my ignorance based on my age or disposition or limitations. But I did some plausible things and got no responses; so I assumed there was nothing to respond to. Who would create content but not put their name on it? Not leave a clear trail? "Clear" depends on your experiences, my experiences are ultimately limited by my age. That's a lesson. Regards Herb Johnson