Any use for very old software?

[OldBroad]

Any anyone tell me or point to someone who can tell me whether there is any use for a bunch of very old software that's taking up valuable basement storage space?

I'm talking very old here. How about a DOS 6.1 upgrade? Not to mention TurboCad V 1.51 on 5.25" floppies! (This one is old enough that it runs on DOS 2.0) There's a bunch of miscellaneous stuff originally published for Windows 3.1 that probably won't even run on today's OSs.

Even ebay doesn't seem to have a market for this stuff, and it probably is too obsolete for even the most primitve of third world cultures, but I thought I'd ask before I toss it. I figure if it has any remaining useful life, some Doper somewhere would know.

[Sunspace]

Don't toss it!

Donate it to some outfit like the Computer Museum, or to your local collectors of antique computers. At least let someone from such a group look over it.

Antique Computer Page (Warning: annoying Geocities popups)

Google search on 'Antique Computers'

[OldBroad]

Thanks, Sunspace. I searched on "old software" and "obsolete software" but it didn't occur to me to use the word "antique".

BTW, the Antique Computer Page is itself antique having been last updated in 1999. Recursive antiquity?

[Hail Ants]

DOS 6.1 upgrade isn't ever going to be a collectable (pre-nuclear holocaust anyway ). The only versions of DOS which are semi-valuable are:

• Anything below v3.3
• Especially v1.xx
• v4.0 (NOT v4.01)

And only if they're the original disks (extra if they're in the original box).

Same goes for Windows, v3.0 and above are (less than) a dime a dozen! However, v2.x or v1.x in a shrink-wrapped box can go for several hundred dollars on eBay!

[BlackKnight]

I never should have thrown away my DOS 3.22 floppies.

Or my copy of Novell Netware 2.0, for that matter.

[Sunspace]

As for what people actually do with old software, check out the Retrocomputing Museum.