Is There Any Reason To Keep Old Software?
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Roger Wright wrote:
When MS discovered that they have no talent for writing technical manuals, instead of hiring people who can write, they just quit providing documentation.
Well, the first thing that happened was that the users stopped reading the documentation. Old memory: I was working in an office landscape then, and heard the guy in the cubicle across the walkway receive a phone call - he was a support guy for the Fortran compiler (it is that long ago!). Obviously I could hear only one side of the conversation- It went like this: Yes, what is your problem? I understand ... Do you have a Fortran manual at hand? Could you open it on page 147? Good. Will you read out to me the first paragraph on that page? Oh sure, that's what we are here for, to help you with your problems. Have a good day! The fun thing is that this support man never picked up his own Fortran manual to find the right page; he took it all from memory. So all companies stopped writing manuals, more or less. (Some environments never had any - I refuse to call *nix man pages 'technical manuals'). Those companies providing 'something' on paper should be ashamed for calling it 'documentation'. More than 30 years ago, I saved in my scrapbook a comic drawing of a totally broken down man, weeping at the psychiatrists desk. The psychiatrist tries to comfort him: "Having been diagnosed as a dyslectic doesn't mean that you have to give up a writing profession - you can still make a great career in computer documentation!" Practically speaking, no companies provide good documentation, and hasn't done so for several decades. If you ask for manuals, textbooks, tutorials, they say that they leave that kind of stuff to independent writers and publishing houses. But even those writers usually deliver mediocre quality. One part of it is the readers' expectations: I buy several books that have a very high rating and lots of recommendations on Amazon and other sites, and when I get the book, it proves to be a mess, poorly organized, terribly useless examples, extremely wordy with lots of unnecessary repetitions yet missing essential information, usually with a useless index (sometimes not updated from the previous edition, so the references are all wrong!) I never had the impression that MS documentation is (/was) any worse than the others. They are all that bad!
Technical authorship is a highly skilled job, one that developers are hopeless at (and unwilling to do anyway, if they can avoid it). The trouble is that it is the code that purchasers buy, so the first cost to be stripped away by software houses was the quality documentation created by the skilled technical authors, replaced by rubbish "online" documentation provided by reluctant developers. There's a whole generation of users now who have never experienced anything else and know no different. No doubt some claim this is progress!
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There is no such thing as cheap storage. This is physical product, not software images. I have an entire room that I cannot traverse on foot because of the piles of books, papers and CDs. Oh, and there's a few guns in there, too, along with a bunch of ammo. I have a 45' shipping container sitting in the middle of a 20 acre parcel of land filled to the brim with "stuff" that I can't even get to. I had to bury the doors with my tractor to keep the tweakers from breaking into it when I'm away. Now I have to hide my tractor to keep them from stealing it. In my back yard, I have a 10' x 10' shed full of containers of books - mostly computer related. This has got to end, but I don't want to trash anything any of my friends here can use. It's a quandry...
Will Rogers never met me.
Lose the guns and ammo. That will free up some space for non-lethal books and so on.
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I have mountains of stuff, lots of it is software like old versions of Visual Studio and older IDEs, along with books for learning a number of long obsolete tools, like MFC and TurboPascal. Many years ago, when it was impossible to afford any MS product on a normal income, a member here generously sent me a version of VS that I could never otherwise purchase, and got me up and running again. I would hate to throw this stuff away and later learn that there was someone here who could really use it, either to learn, or to support an older product. But I have no idea how to find anyone who might need what I'm about to toss. Can someone make a suggestion? I'm sure there are others here in my same predicament.
Will Rogers never met me.
Keep it. Maybe you will need after a post-apocalyptic future. And if you have a Windows XP computer, you will be the master of the world. :laugh:
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Roger Wright wrote:
When MS discovered that they have no talent for writing technical manuals, instead of hiring people who can write, they just quit providing documentation.
Well, the first thing that happened was that the users stopped reading the documentation. Old memory: I was working in an office landscape then, and heard the guy in the cubicle across the walkway receive a phone call - he was a support guy for the Fortran compiler (it is that long ago!). Obviously I could hear only one side of the conversation- It went like this: Yes, what is your problem? I understand ... Do you have a Fortran manual at hand? Could you open it on page 147? Good. Will you read out to me the first paragraph on that page? Oh sure, that's what we are here for, to help you with your problems. Have a good day! The fun thing is that this support man never picked up his own Fortran manual to find the right page; he took it all from memory. So all companies stopped writing manuals, more or less. (Some environments never had any - I refuse to call *nix man pages 'technical manuals'). Those companies providing 'something' on paper should be ashamed for calling it 'documentation'. More than 30 years ago, I saved in my scrapbook a comic drawing of a totally broken down man, weeping at the psychiatrists desk. The psychiatrist tries to comfort him: "Having been diagnosed as a dyslectic doesn't mean that you have to give up a writing profession - you can still make a great career in computer documentation!" Practically speaking, no companies provide good documentation, and hasn't done so for several decades. If you ask for manuals, textbooks, tutorials, they say that they leave that kind of stuff to independent writers and publishing houses. But even those writers usually deliver mediocre quality. One part of it is the readers' expectations: I buy several books that have a very high rating and lots of recommendations on Amazon and other sites, and when I get the book, it proves to be a mess, poorly organized, terribly useless examples, extremely wordy with lots of unnecessary repetitions yet missing essential information, usually with a useless index (sometimes not updated from the previous edition, so the references are all wrong!) I never had the impression that MS documentation is (/was) any worse than the others. They are all that bad!
Technical authorship is a highly skilled job, one that developers are hopeless at (and unwilling to do anyway, if they can avoid it). The trouble is that it is the code that purchasers buy, so the first cost to be stripped away by software houses was the quality documentation created by the skilled technical authors, replaced by rubbish "online" documentation provided by reluctant developers. There's a whole generation of users now who have never experienced anything else and know no different. No doubt some claim this is progress!
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I see! Your problem is orders of magnitude larger than mine. :omg: For CD's I made them all ISO images and put them on a NAS. I have 16TB available so I could store a bit more than 20000 CD's and I've never had anywhere near that number. Floppies and zip disks (remember those?) had the same fate. Good thing I did it before my zip drive died. Most documents have also been scanned as well as some books that I was particularly attached to. If you make a list of what you have, count me among those interested. Good luck!
Mircea
Oh my goodness, hahaha, when I started college doing graphic design, if someone had a 1GB zip, they were considered rich... 🤣🤣🤣
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There is no such thing as cheap storage. This is physical product, not software images. I have an entire room that I cannot traverse on foot because of the piles of books, papers and CDs. Oh, and there's a few guns in there, too, along with a bunch of ammo. I have a 45' shipping container sitting in the middle of a 20 acre parcel of land filled to the brim with "stuff" that I can't even get to. I had to bury the doors with my tractor to keep the tweakers from breaking into it when I'm away. Now I have to hide my tractor to keep them from stealing it. In my back yard, I have a 10' x 10' shed full of containers of books - mostly computer related. This has got to end, but I don't want to trash anything any of my friends here can use. It's a quandry...
Will Rogers never met me.
Roger, here's what I would do... Imagine that you are going to move into a new house and the move is 1000+ miles away. You can pack a couple of pods or drive a rental truck and the new house is a typical 3/2 with a garage. Then play take it or leave it. Anything in the leave-it category can get divided into groups like dumpster, thrift store, and sell. Storage isn't cheap and moving it is even more expensive. I had stuff on 5-1/4 floppies a few years ago. I gave some to a coworker for wall decorations, recycled the boxes and books and trashed other stuff. I hadn't looked at them in a zillion years, I don't have any box with a 3-1/2 drive, no less 5-1/4. I have one with a DVD that hasn't been on for years and whatever valuables that are on it aren't worth anything. If you have time, look at Ebay and see if anything has any interest. Don't look at 'for sale', look at sold. In most cases, it isn't worth the cost (and hassle) of shipping. People will often take some of the stuff for free, and they'll do the same thing you're doing with it; put it on a shelf and never look at it again. Declutter!
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A number of times I've had to dig out one or other "obsolete" piece of software, IDE, tools, whatever, to either upgrade something to work on a more recent platform or fix a bug for a customer (paying for the service). So I wouldn't ditch anything just because it's "old". And never ditch books; knowledge is never useless, just needs the right context to come along!
When I moved to another state 8 years ago I did some additional clearing. I get a Facebook memories post around March 1st showing pictures of some old Novell Netware CNE and Microsoft MCSE study books (thick ones) from the 90's from publishers that no longer exist.
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For a long time, i had a Visual C++ installer CD, the 16-bit version. Must be still at home.
Me too, the VC++ IDE ver 6.0 holds a warm place in my little black heart
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Mircea Neacsu wrote:
If you make a list of what you have, count me among those interested. Good luck!
I'll put you on the list, Mircea. This won't be soon, but it's something I have to do! I wonder if my copy of ProLog for DOS will run on Windows 11? AI is starting to look big!
Will Rogers never met me.
My old DOS based TurboProlog doesn't work on Win11.
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I have mountains of stuff, lots of it is software like old versions of Visual Studio and older IDEs, along with books for learning a number of long obsolete tools, like MFC and TurboPascal. Many years ago, when it was impossible to afford any MS product on a normal income, a member here generously sent me a version of VS that I could never otherwise purchase, and got me up and running again. I would hate to throw this stuff away and later learn that there was someone here who could really use it, either to learn, or to support an older product. But I have no idea how to find anyone who might need what I'm about to toss. Can someone make a suggestion? I'm sure there are others here in my same predicament.
Will Rogers never met me.
Software? Sure, a few years ago I turned every CD and DVD that I still didn't have in ISO format yet into a file, and put them all on my NAS (multi-TB disks are cheap and only getting cheaper). Then I got rid of the physical media. There's exceptions (games and such that can't be converted because of copy protection), but this takes comparatively so little room I haven't bothered to do anything them. At one point I suspect I'll just get rid of 'em - I don't really see myself playing Wing Commander on modern hardware...and if I ever have to scratch that itch, I suspect there's an emulator out there. Physical stuff...the odds that someone is looking for something specific, and knows you're the one to contact, are so small it's not worth the physical space the stuff is taking. Years ago I had salvaged some brand new X-Window books (low-level GUI programming for Unix), still in their shrink-wrap - a whole shelf worth of them - from a company that went under...had them in a box for maybe a decade, but then I realized I would never make use of them, and the stuff by then was already so old it was never going to be useful to anyone (certainly not me). So that went for recycling, along with many OS/2 books (to give you an idea of how long ago that was)... As others have said - technology doesn't age well. I have no problem getting stuff digitized, no matter how arcane, but physical stuff is rarely useful. I wouldn't hang onto some piece of hardware as a potential replacement for something someone needs when theirs breaks (is it really your problem to solve?) Besides, replacing something broken with something that's just as old and has been sitting on a shelf for years is just kicking the can further down the road; that system, *if* it's actually useful, needs to be replaced.
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There is no such thing as cheap storage. This is physical product, not software images. I have an entire room that I cannot traverse on foot because of the piles of books, papers and CDs. Oh, and there's a few guns in there, too, along with a bunch of ammo. I have a 45' shipping container sitting in the middle of a 20 acre parcel of land filled to the brim with "stuff" that I can't even get to. I had to bury the doors with my tractor to keep the tweakers from breaking into it when I'm away. Now I have to hide my tractor to keep them from stealing it. In my back yard, I have a 10' x 10' shed full of containers of books - mostly computer related. This has got to end, but I don't want to trash anything any of my friends here can use. It's a quandry...
Will Rogers never met me.
Do you have a copy of BitFont source code? I wrote it and distributed it for a fee in the 1980s but lost the code on unreadable floppies. There is a line of code that I want: one line I wrote to get the day from the date in any year, taking into account leap years and maybe centuries.
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I have a saying. Nostalgia is a prison if you choose to live there. Thanksgiving (USA) week 2008 a fire started in a home two doors down from us. The fire damaged seven homes including the back half of mine. Turns out those fiberglass shower remodels are very flammable. My office shared a common wall with the bathroom and most of my computer documentation, books, magazines, and physical software was destroyed. I had been a bit of a hoarder regarding computer stuff. After the fire I ended up throwing away a lot of PC XT/AT clone boards and things that I salvaged from customer upgrades over the years. Basically, I started fresh moving forward. But there are some things that I really do wish I could find a dozen years after the fact. It’s almost all documentation and some software. I had user guides and service guides for older equipment that I have seen people ask in vintage computer forums. I had never digitized them and now can’t. This isn’t older versions of current items, but unique items when CP/M, Flex and OS/9 were popular, in the late 70’s and very early 80’s. There was a lot of history there. I had a collection of manuals from the late 80’s and 90’s for PC multi-function cards and motherboards. I see retro computer channels that could have used that information. The other stuff I really haven’t missed or really would have been able to do anything with today. One recuring thought I do have is that I had a Motorola/Hitachi 6809 based PC from Canon. Same Canon that makes cameras, copiers, calculators, etc. I would have liked to see if I could have gotten OS9 or Flex running on it. All I really need is the memory map of the computer to answer the question, but I haven’t found any documentation. I keep looking.
Rich Shealer
I bought my son an old IBM Selectric typewriter for $3 that was supposedly in working condition, but back home, the main shaft was frozen. I used to fix them, but forgot a lot of details, especially about timing, and could not find an IBM manual, even from IBM, that described how to service it, so after describing to my son how it was supposed to work, I threw the IBM Selectric away. The end.
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I have mountains of stuff, lots of it is software like old versions of Visual Studio and older IDEs, along with books for learning a number of long obsolete tools, like MFC and TurboPascal. Many years ago, when it was impossible to afford any MS product on a normal income, a member here generously sent me a version of VS that I could never otherwise purchase, and got me up and running again. I would hate to throw this stuff away and later learn that there was someone here who could really use it, either to learn, or to support an older product. But I have no idea how to find anyone who might need what I'm about to toss. Can someone make a suggestion? I'm sure there are others here in my same predicament.
Will Rogers never met me.
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I have mountains of stuff, lots of it is software like old versions of Visual Studio and older IDEs, along with books for learning a number of long obsolete tools, like MFC and TurboPascal. Many years ago, when it was impossible to afford any MS product on a normal income, a member here generously sent me a version of VS that I could never otherwise purchase, and got me up and running again. I would hate to throw this stuff away and later learn that there was someone here who could really use it, either to learn, or to support an older product. But I have no idea how to find anyone who might need what I'm about to toss. Can someone make a suggestion? I'm sure there are others here in my same predicament.
Will Rogers never met me.
We recently had a member share their blog with us that contained a lot of entries about old software and hardware. Revisiting Borland Turbo C/C++, A Great IDE back in the 90s[^] It was a good reminder that some people (for whatever reason) have to use legacy code or systems and this developer's blog is dedicated to those people. If you're going to keep old things, I can see having this level of dedication and reaching that tiny niche of people who need it would be valuable. Otherwise ... My father was a pack rat. One day I looked in his closest and found books on things like Excel 3.0. I cannot imagine someone needing that book ever again. And it wasn't just books. It was hardware, software, other manuals, and empty boxes that contained hardware and software. When he died, it was difficult to explain to my Mom that none of this junk was ever going to help anyone, and the amount of effort it would take to find those people, ultimately, would not be worth it. You couldn't even put these items in a museum, because no such museum exists. The things you own end up owning you, and when you're gone, your loved ones. Those that would benefit from these relics are highly specialized and don't need your help. And because they won't live forever, the systems that these unicorns maintain will be replaced for any number of reasons. Burn it all.
Thanks, Sean Ewington CodeProject
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I bought my son an old IBM Selectric typewriter for $3 that was supposedly in working condition, but back home, the main shaft was frozen. I used to fix them, but forgot a lot of details, especially about timing, and could not find an IBM manual, even from IBM, that described how to service it, so after describing to my son how it was supposed to work, I threw the IBM Selectric away. The end.
Most companies keep a very limited history of their products. Information, like history, is ephemeral.
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Mircea Neacsu wrote:
If you make a list of what you have, count me among those interested. Good luck!
I'll put you on the list, Mircea. This won't be soon, but it's something I have to do! I wonder if my copy of ProLog for DOS will run on Windows 11? AI is starting to look big!
Will Rogers never met me.
Ah, Turbo everything. Back when I had more money than time, I bought everything Borland came up with. Aside from Pascal I never got further than the equivalent of Hello World with most of it. I should have spent the money on Microsoft stock. I may still have the box that Paradox came in. It was just the right size for an early IoT prototype.
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Do you have a copy of BitFont source code? I wrote it and distributed it for a fee in the 1980s but lost the code on unreadable floppies. There is a line of code that I want: one line I wrote to get the day from the date in any year, taking into account leap years and maybe centuries.
That's easy. If you want it in C here it is, day of the week from day, month year:
int dow (int y, int m, int d)
{
static char const t[] = {0, 3, 2, 5, 0, 3, 5, 1, 4, 6, 2, 4};
y -= m < 3;
return (y + y/4 - y/100 + y/400 + t[m-1] + d) % 7;
}I know I'm not supposed to post code in the lounge but it's for a good cause :laugh:
Mircea
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That's easy. If you want it in C here it is, day of the week from day, month year:
int dow (int y, int m, int d)
{
static char const t[] = {0, 3, 2, 5, 0, 3, 5, 1, 4, 6, 2, 4};
y -= m < 3;
return (y + y/4 - y/100 + y/400 + t[m-1] + d) % 7;
}I know I'm not supposed to post code in the lounge but it's for a good cause :laugh:
Mircea
:) Thanks! But I got it all in one single line of Turbo Pascal code. That's what I wanted to replicate, just because. :)
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:) Thanks! But I got it all in one single line of Turbo Pascal code. That's what I wanted to replicate, just because. :)
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Keep it. Maybe you will need after a post-apocalyptic future. And if you have a Windows XP computer, you will be the master of the world. :laugh:
Provided that you've got 230VAC available in your post-apocalyptic world. And replacement keyboards when the old one starts failing due to dirt. And your screen fails, but none of your spare ones can take the VGA signals from your old XP computer. And still usable ink for you ink jet printer. And ... There is a completely different problem: When your network connection fails - and in a post-apocalyptic world, it will - what are you going to use your PC for? No Google, no FaceBook or Twitter, no music or video streaming for entertainment, no weather forecast service, no whatever. You can of course use the PC to write down you private thoughts (but without a working printer, you can't distribute them to others) and a spreadsheet for keeping track of your supplies. Maybe a pencil and a few sheets of paper is good enough for such tasks.