I was trying to find and Download the software Cool Edit 96, the other day. It’s freeware, with limited functions, and if you register, you’ll get the full version. The company who makes it has pulled it from its website, since it’s marketing a much newer version, which stops funtioning after 30 days or some such. For my purposes, the old version is good enough.
It got me thinking, though. I still have my diskettes with Win3.0, somewhere, but is there some sort of library collecting this stuff? Obviously, Microsoft will have old copies, but say a smaller company goes bankrupt - will there ever be a chance to retrieve say * Duke Nukem* 50 years from now?
I checked the website for Library of Congress, but couldn’t find anything there.
I have a feeling, that these things should be preserved. Maybe, it’ll just be for a giggle in the future, but then, maybe not. It’s not for us to decide, really.
So - anyone have any ideas if there is a collection/museum/library that saves this stuff?
p.s. I found Cool Edit at a private website.
There are folks who preserve and sometimes distribute old software, but there are serious copyright issues involved. The folks who provide such websites refer to old software no longer distributed or supported by the makers as “abandonware.” They see themselves as providing a valuable public service. However, many software publishers, Microsoft included, regard it as piracy, pure and simple.
Do a search for abandonware on Google, and you’ll find lots of old software. However, much of it will be pirated (particularly games, in my experience). You’ll have to decide for yourself about the ethics of downloading and using such software.
I was going to post some links to some abandonware sites, but decided that the mods might consider this out of bounds. Rather than risk incurring the wrath of the mods, I’ll just provide the two following links.
I’ve still got some software from my C64 kicking around. Last year I fired the old girl up and loaded Flight Simulator II (circa 1983?) and it still worked. My god, I have absolutely no idea how I played that “sim” for hours.
There’s always E-bay. In another thread, I asked about what to do with an old 386 computer. I want to re-format the drive, but I don’t have my original Windows 3.1 or MSDOS 6.22 discs (they apparently did not survive various moves). I found both on E-bay for about $20 each.
Y’all know that the Microsoft empire was founded on it’s first product, Altair BASIC ?
Well a year or two ago I found a binary of this landmark product, and since it was so small (just 4K) I reverse-engineered it.
It was quite fascinating to find that the c. 21 year old Bill Gates, along with his two associates Paul Allen and Monte Davidoff, were very competant programmers.
A complete analysis explaining how this historic program actually worked is here :
The site also has an Altair BASIC emulator that runs in a web-browser so you can see what it was like (and how far we’ve come!), unfortunately I can’t remember the URL for it and I can’t find out from behind this firewall here at work.
One interesting discovery was that Visual Basic 6.0 error numbers had inherited from that first Altair BASIC… all the way over 20 years of products!
All of my computers have been Macs, and I still have most of the software I cut my teeth on back in '85/'86. Some of it will still run directly on my current Mac, including “Leather Goddesses of Phobos”. Other titles are not 32-bit compatible and require me to use the vMac emulator and run System 6 (MacWrite, the Uninvited) or even System 4 (FONTastic).
I still haven’t beaten “The Uninvited” after all this time. :o