Off-Topic : Have any really old software?

[joel]

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.]

[Steve Newport]

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

[Wolfgang]

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

[JF Slater]

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

[gidgit]

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]

[mgeduld]

I miss Dpaint (*sniff* *sniff*)

Marcus Geduld
{ email me } { visit me }

[eky]

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!

[Ross Macintosh]

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>

[Klaus Nordby]

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

[Wolfgang]

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 ...