[selfhoster11]

It just occurred to me that the situation is isomorphic to any runtime environment. I cannot imagine transplanting a shell script, C program, Java program (OK, maybe except for a Java program), Win32 app (OK, maybe that also), or a web-app from 20 years ago onto a modern version of the runtime and expect it to work without any major changes or fixes to account for the inevitable cases where the outside world simply decided that "we do not do things this way" any more. Cross-site scripting, password strength, political and timezone changes, many of those trip up applications too.

[lanstin]

Shell and C should be fine. To be honest any pure computation should be fine. Your interactive HyperCard stack if you get the right emulators would be ok. MAME, sure. But anything depending on the persistence of networked resources will not work. Other than Phil Greenspun all the endpoints have changed. CGI with no external dependencies or Ajax should work except it got pwned along the line.

[pjmlp]

Except most likely it wasn't bash shell, or maybe it was, but it was written on an HP-UX and never ported to anything else.

Likewise the C code might eventually be written in K&R C still, make assumptions of byte ordering on the MIPS and memory access semantics of workstation it was originally targeted for, and with luck use SGIPro extensions.