The emulator collection lets you use historical computers. These laboratories explain the mechanisms underneath them — beginning with switches, logic and arithmetic, following stored information from a latch to magnetic disk, and finally joining CPU, memory and I/O into a complete Apple-1-class computer.
Start with one electronic switch, combine switches into logic gates, make XOR and AND perform binary addition, propagate carry through four bits, then single-step a complete 4-bit CPU.
Give logic feedback so it can retain a state, capture data with a clock, build a register, then compare SRAM, DRAM, ROM, magnetic core memory and a rotating magnetic disk.
Put the pieces together around a 6502: boot the museum’s original VMA Monitor, then watch live address/data buses, memory decoding, the 6820 PIA, keyboard handshaking and the unusual shift-register video terminal.
Why these labs belong in the museum
Once a visitor has watched a carry bit propagate, seen feedback hold one binary state, waited for a disk sector to rotate under a head, and watched a 6502 select RAM, ROM or I/O on a live bus, the architecture descriptions elsewhere in the museum become much more concrete. A historical computer is no longer just a case, CPU name and ROM image: it is an arrangement of physical mechanisms with very different timing and persistence.