Is There Any Reason To Keep Old Software?
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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.
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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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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.
dandy72 wrote:
I don't really see myself playing Wing Commander on modern hardware...
If you know how to slow down virtual hardware in a VM you can really play as old games as that or even more. Someone I know manage to get a win 98 working just to play some really old games.
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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My old DOS based TurboProlog doesn't work on Win11.
Pretty sure you can spin up a Win 95 in a VM on Windows 11. Win 95 ran on MS/PC-DOS (it was shell on top) so that instance would have it. And, if I recall correctly from somewhere (either this site or a story in the newsletter) you can run Win 95 without a license now.
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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!
haughtonomous wrote:
first cost to be stripped away by software houses was the quality documentation created by the skilled technical authors,
So back in the good ol' days it was better right? When exactly was that? What year? I remember using a library in the 90s (probably latter half.) Best documentation I had ever seen. That one library. Obviously I had seen other libraries, quite a few, which had miserable documentation. So certainly those did not have those great authors. In the 80s I learned C++ and OO programming from 3 books. One wasn't even for C++. The C++ compilers, at least two or perhaps three, that I used had virtually no documentation. One of the C++ compilers deliberately did not even match what Stroustrup (one of the books) documented and creator of C++. That 'feature' was not in any of the documentation. In the 70s the only programming book at all of any sort available to me for Fortran and Pascal were manuals that were chained to an operations desk. Those were not learning tools at all. Just a listing of methods and parameters for each. (In another post today I figured that one of those manuals, in current dollars would have cost about $1000 to buy.) Today I can probably buy 50 real books, on paper, that cover C++ in various forms. I can buy at least 10 books, again on paper, that cover Object Oriented Cobol. To me it certainly seems like there is no lack of documentation now versus way back when.
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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.
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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.
trønderen wrote:
Provided that you've got 230VAC available
Amazing what solar cells are doing these days. I saw an add for an electric mountain bike which comes with an optional solar cells which can do a full charge in a day. Pretty sure that will run the PC for a while. My next door neighbor uses them to charge up his camper.
trønderen wrote:
And replacement keyboards when the old one...
Just saying it beats the alternative of fantasizing about dirt farming using a stick.
trønderen wrote:
what are you going to use your PC for?
Entertain the kids. Encyclopedia (we are talking about old software which used to exist like that on CD/DVD.) Use Excel (not 365) to track the output of your slaves in the fields.
trønderen wrote:
Maybe a pencil and a few sheets of paper is good enough for such tasks.
Except of course those run out also. Although with the Encyclopedia you can probably figure out how to make them.