Getting online was an event. You picked a moment when nobody needed the phone, opened the Dial-Up Networking folder, double-clicked your connection, and then listened to about twenty seconds of noise while two modems worked out how to talk to each other.

PressConnect, or double-click the connection icon, and it plays out properly. The smallConnecting to… box counts you through Dialing, Verifying user name and password, and Logging on to network. Then it is replaced byConnected to…, with the speed, the duration ticking in that odd three-digit hours format, and the bytes going up.Details opens out to show the server type and the modem.

Turn your sound on. Connect plays the original dialing and handshake recording by William Termini, fromthis reference video. The audio is hosted locally using thepublic-domain copy on Wikimedia Commons. The connection waits for the recording to finish before verifying your user name and password. The Modem speaker checkbox mutes and unmutes it without restarting the sequence. Cancel stops it immediately. The drop-down still lets you simulate an engaged line, no dial tone, or someone picking up the phone.

A recreation of the original Napster client from 2000, guided by screenshots of v2.0 Beta 7. Search by artist or title, sort results by connection and ping, add users to the Hot List, and watch simulated downloads appear in your Library.

The network, chat and transfers are local simulations. Song titles are metadata examples; the player uses an original instrumental demo composed for this exhibit. Download time is compressed.

A recreation of Netscape Navigator 1.0 from 1994, inside the Vault desktop. Follow the directory, search the sample pages, load images and collect bookmarks. The pages are original period-style exhibits, not archived websites; no external addresses are loaded.