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I noticed that I tend not to dispose of old obsolete software. For instance, still in its box, I have "Microsoft Money - Version 1.0". It dates from 1991 - in computer years that seems like a long time ago. Seeing it on the shelf got me looking to see if I had anything older. I quick two-minute search located "Microsoft Learning DOS" series of disks dating 1988! I probably have a few that are even older.
Throwing away software is probably like throwing away books. I don't do that either. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] Perhaps it is because it cost so much originally it is so hard to just trash now.
Anyways, I thought it might be interesting if others looked at their stuff and reported on the oldest they could find. Also, why do you still have it if it is obsolete? Is there any significance to it or is just the stuff that clutters our lives? Sould we trash it?
Regards, Ross
<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>
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I noticed that I tend not to dispose of old obsolete software. For instance, still in its box, I have "Microsoft Money - Version 1.0". It dates from 1991 - in computer years that seems like a long time ago. Seeing it on the shelf got me looking to see if I had anything older. I quick two-minute search located "Microsoft Learning DOS" series of disks dating 1988! I probably have a few that are even older.
Throwing away software is probably like throwing away books. I don't do that either. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] Perhaps it is because it cost so much originally it is so hard to just trash now.
Anyways, I thought it might be interesting if others looked at their stuff and reported on the oldest they could find. Also, why do you still have it if it is obsolete? Is there any significance to it or is just the stuff that clutters our lives? Sould we trash it?
Regards, Ross
<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>
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I have a closet full of old software that I have loaded for review and then deleted the software.
I usually wind up donating the software to a school or charity.
Oddly enough, Goodwill, a US charitable organization (not sure if they are in Canada as well) will not accept software.
I have tons of old copies of CorelDRAW which no one will accept! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img]
Gary
Gary Priester
Moderator Person
<a href="http://www.gwpriester.com">
www.gwpriester.com </a>
XaraXone
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... game from the late eighties on a floppy somewhere. They are all packed up in a box downstair, which haven't been opened for 5 years...
I can't remember what else is in it! My wife wants me to check it out, or get rid of it. I refuse. I consider it my "time capsule"... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
Gary - I would gladly accept a copy! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]
Risto
risto@ristoklint.com
Visit my web site!
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a version of CorelDraw newer than version five. That's the one I used when I started with CorelXara. I'd like to try making a font - I hear even older versions of CorelDraw can do that.
Regards, Ross
<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>
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I've got a copy of test drive 1 on a 3 1/4 drive complete with box in fairly good shape. Must be from about 1988. I also have a box for "gunship" helicoptor game which as I recall had really cool 3d pryamid shaped mountains which seemed so real on my green monitor back then [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
Older than that but not really computer software related .... but I have an original Vectrex gaming system ( http://www.classicgaming.com/museum/vectrex/ ) which still plays from maybe 1984 complete with 4 game cartridges ... see I was even working with vectors back then .... ah memories ... I still recall my 2 million score in Mine Storm which ended with one dot which wouldn't expand into a mine like it should have to go to the next level thus ending my 2 hour marathon game in a stalemate [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img] ... I still get riled up thinking about the inhustice of it all [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_mad.gif[/img] ...... hehehe [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
David K ... www.dkingdesign.com http://www.dkingdesign.com/stuff/signature.jpg
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I have Windows 1.01 (1985) and MS Dos 1.10 (1982)
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... but I have my fondest gaming memories with litres of Coca Cola, pickled dill potato chips and the Intellivision!. That Navy warfare game rocked - at the time!
"Gunship" was hyper-realistic at the time! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
Risto
risto@ristoklint.com
Visit my web site!
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I still have my archaic QuarkXPress 3.1 for 16-bit Windows 3x, which came out in late 1992. And, almost miraculously, it works just great under W2K! And it's so small and lean by present standards that it really flies on my supercharged Athlon 1800 system. In '92 I had a 20MHz 386 with 16Mb RAM, I think.
I also still have my once-beloved XyWrite III+ DOS word processor, which I bought in 1988. It works, too, though I now prefer its Win version, NotaBene 5.5.
K
www.xaraxone.com/FeaturedArt/kn/
www.klausnordby.com/xara
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Hi Ross,
I did a major dump of all the old stuff in 1998. Before that I still had CP/M software from the late 1970s (WordStar, dBase II, Lotus 1-2-3, MBASIC, etc.) ZDOS (for the Zenith Z100 which came out a week before IBMs first PC) DOS 1.0, Window 1.0, PeachText.
Lots of computer antique software [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
Soquili
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Does anybody remember using 8 inch floppies. My first computer for my office was purchased in 1981, a DEC. The program and data were run from two 8 inch floppies (with data transfered monthly to five other disks). The two drives were about the size of a mini tower ( I had the option to buy a 10 MB Winchester hard drive, for $10,000. I passed, I new that with time they would get cheaper!). The vender gave me a disk with a few games on it...hangman and a star trek game come to mind. This machine revolutionized the business side of my office.
Joel
[This message was edited by Joel Schilling on April 22, 2002 at 18:58.]
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I got an old version of CorelDRAW 5 for sure, and who knows what else! Yea, I can't throw them away either, no matter how crappy they are
Steve Newport
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I refuse to go downstairs to cram through all the old boxes for details, only so much:
My first 'computer' was a Sinclair ZX81 (that was around 1979).
Then came a Sinclair Spectrum (~1981) for which I still have tons of software (mostly games but also programming stuff) along with the computer itself.
For the younger ones: The Sinclair Spectrum was a major breakthrough to Home Computers: HiRes Graphics (about the same resolution a Palm Pilot has today ..) with 16 colors, and an unbelievably amount of memory: 48 kB !!! (NOT MB ...kB !!).
After that came an Atari ST and I still have it, along a high pile of software. Above all, the famous "Calamus", a relative of Quark Xpress.
Guess it must have been 1985 ...
From there on, I started working on PCs, the first one being a '286 with DOS and a 20 MB (!!) Harddrive. I remember my preferred 'application' being "Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis", an adventure by Lucas Arts.
I don't have those ancient PCs any more, but two boxes with 5.25" disks are still at hand ...
It was a lot of fun to recall the halcyon days of computing once more. Thanks for the input Ross ...
Wolfgang
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Ross, you CAN make fonts with the versions of Corel Draw that you have. I've posted how to the Corel Draw forum because it was so nice to find my obsession with fonts on-topic somewhere...
Jess
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I still have a 5 1/4 word perfect, as well as lotus 123, as easy... and a few others, and of course a few games from the good ole XT years...
Amiga stuff? well I have a A1200 tower and a ton of software....way too much to even start to list...though my favorite was D-Paint, to which I have v2, v3,and the aga enhanced v4
oldest software from the modern era (pentium and above) that would be Photo Impact v4... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
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I miss Dpaint (*sniff* *sniff*)
Marcus Geduld
{ email me } { visit me }
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It's hard to throw away software even if it can no longer be used. I have software on purchased in big floppy disk format which I cannot even access anymore. Even one of the big local universities doesn't have the capability to read a floppy disk. Yet I continue to hold onto the obsolete software. It seems a waste to throw out something you paid hundreds of dollars for but I guess it's time to do some spring cleaning!
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Soquili mentions turfing all his computer trash away. I believe he also mentioned in another thread about throwing away his comic book collection that would be valuable now had he saved it. Will old software someday be valuable?
I doubt it. Hardly anyone throws it away so most of it must still be around. I remember reading that old bibles are among the least valuable of old books - because people don't dispose of bibles. The vast majority of bibles ever printed are still around today and the market for old bibles is saturated.
I'm tempted to do some serious spring cleaning. It might be good to relieve myself of some of this useless "stuff" that clutters my life. I came into the world with nothing - I'll be leaving it the same way. Perhaps some of the "stuff" has to go...
Regards, Ross
<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>
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Wolfgang, I also had a Sinclair ZX80 - or is it 81? I was never able to use it for much, though. But in 1984 I bought a Sinclair QL, and that sure was usable! It had a full office suite of word-processor, database, charts and something else. It used small cartrides of tape, holding 256Kb of data and it had 128Kb of RAM! It was great software, too, made by Psion - I used that machine until 1987, when I bought a 286 AT. A 20Mb harddrive - what a luxury!
K
www.xaraxone.com/FeaturedArt/kn/
www.klausnordby.com/xara
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Hi Klaus,
fellow Sinclairian ...
The ZX80 was the predecessor of the ZX81. Practically the same, but I think the ZX80 was never sold in Austria. It really was a quite unbelieveable thing. It had 1 kB (!!!!) of RAM and there even was - believe it or not - a chess game for it !
I totally forgot about the QL. I sort of had one, because I talked a former boss into buying one. Quite clever of me, I did not have the money to buy one myself, but I was the only one using it [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]
The cartridges were called 'Microdrives' and they were blazingly fast compared to the former compact cassettes or even the C64's floppy drive.
It came with an 'Office Suite' with a word processor, a spread sheet and a program for charts called "Easel". Remember it ??
I wrote a piece of software for easily printing price tags and my boss loved me for it !!
As far as I can remember, Sir Clive Sinclair invented a very small car called 'Cursor' after the Home Computers. It flopped (like nowadays the "Smart") and I have no intelligence of what happened to poor Sir Clive or what he might be doing today ...
Those were the days ...
Wolfgang
P.S.: Look what I just found: Sir Clive holding the QL ...
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Ah, Wolfgang, thanks for the memories and the pix of Sir Clive and my beloved QL! Yes, the Microdrive cassettes were cool, with their whirring sound, as was the Psion software - I now recall the chess app, it was very advanced. At least better than I!
K
www.xaraxone.com/FeaturedArt/kn/
www.klausnordby.com/xara
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Ross ... maybe this site would buy your stuff [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
http://www.oldsoftware.com/
David K ... www.dkingdesign.com http://www.dkingdesign.com/stuff/signature.jpg
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My first "computer" was a Timex Sinclair, not sure if this is the same "Sinclair" as everyone else is referring to.
I then upgraded to a portable Kaypro unit with two 5 1/4 floppy drives and a daisy-wheel printer. I stored all that stuff with family at one point, but am not sure if it's still there.
.joroho.
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Sir Clive Sinclair
See the section on this web page which considers using the Arm chip, which of course was the heart of the BBC Archimedes computers and now dominates cell phones.
In my loft I have software for my old Archimedes and also even older software for a Tatung Einstien. I no longer have either of these machines, but I've hung on to the software!!!!!!
Egg
[This message was edited by Egg Bramhill on April 24, 2002 at 08:00.]
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sortof related
it's all very interesting... I read on this site the history of the internet year by year .... I learned a lot
http://www.computerhistory.org/
David K ... www.dkingdesign.com http://www.dkingdesign.com/stuff/signature.jpg
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A Radio Shack TRS-80 (I think that's what it was called). I learned my first programming on that one, with spaghetti code; all the gotos and such.
I gave it to my brother, and he still has this "computer". I think this was about 1985 or so. Several of the programmers I've met did their first programming on a TRS-80.
It had a great Asteroids-clone game!
http://eyesitewebdesign.com/dale2.gif
Why, I’m afraid I can’t explain myself, sir, because I’m not myself, you know...
- Lewis Carroll
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which is why I guess I'm with Eky. My wife doesn't understand why I won't throw out stuff but I can't, it was precious. If anyone wants to sell something, or even buy something old (!), have a look at
null
Recently, I found a copy there of Analytica for $99, which I wanted (the publisher's price for a later version is $1,000) and I found them OK.
Jon
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hehe my wife would love this thread as I am one of those people who keep everything.
Here, some of the old stuff is even in use. My daughter likes the Atari MegaST still for some of the games on it (Onyx).
Me too used the Sinclair Series of Computers with the QL being veeery attractive as QDOS had something Bill Gates had no idea about, Multitasking .... Was one of the OS I liked to write software for. Was pretty interesting that it was Schneider who bought Sinclair and disposed all the computer stuff.
Oldest Software I found which runs on current Hardware is Framework. Complete office package on one 5 1/4 " disk. I checked around on the web and dont laugh: Framework is still available for sale [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
What I found prettz interesting is that some of the software I currently use is around a long time already like WinZip where I own a floppy from NikoMak Computing and UltraEdit from Ian D. Mead. Both products are pretty old and have the same owners still.
Would have to dig deep though to find out what the first Version of Framemaker is I still use.
Greetings,
juergen
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Corel Xara, first one, and I have the thick printed manual with the nice section of clipart pages. Nice and I'm keeping it, kinda like a treasure to me [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
Actually I'm in the process of moving my home right now and am in the middle of going through 16 years of crap that I've accumulated while living here in Redwood City, and that includes about 20 software titles that I'm not taking to the new house. It's just a waste of space and I'm tired of being a pack rat [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]
RAMWolff [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]
