Do any of you Windows users have any 20 year old software that runs now?

[benburch]

I was looking at Google Groups and happened across a binary I
posted to Usenet in 1986.  

It was a Macintosh compression program called ShrinkToFit
(stf) that came out that year and which I believe I was
running on MacOS version 3 on my 512K Macintosh.

I downloaded it, and found a program that would extract an old
version of the BinHex format.  When I extracted it, and opened
it, it RUNS.  It even still can compress and expand files.

I am just wondering if there are any of you old Windows users
who have any software from that era (Windows 2.0) that still
runs on your modern, fully updated Windows XP boxes?

Here is the software, should any other Mac users want to try
it out;

(This file must be converted with BinHex 4.0) 

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!!4[-!3$rrb!!"@S!!4[3q8N: 

[rusty_parts2001]

1. very meaningful post...

[Crabby Appleton]

57. I've got a couple of pieces of 15 yr old

16-bit dos software we run at work. One an old version of Monarch (very simple ascii text presentation sw) and a scripting host that came with a mainframe program that runs in conjunction with a 16-bit terminal emulator (Attachmate Extra 16 bit)

[maxsolomon]

2. mods move this to the Lounge

[madokie]

9. why be a spoil sport? I don't go to the lounge usually and this would

be something of interest to me that I would only miss. :shrug:

[maxsolomon]

23. ok keep it here

i thought it might get more play there that's all.

i could give a fig.

[rock]

3. Sure do

As long as you have a DOS window you can run the old stuff. Kinda twichy though.

[benburch]

6. Yes, but do you have any WINDOWS software from then that runs?

We're talking a GUI application.

[madokie]

11. AutoCad 2000

[Kellanved]

17. Sure.

It's pretty much a matter of emulating the old enviroment. Both Windows and MacOsX have the tools to do that. As to Windows: you'd be surprised at the loads of functions and components still lurking in the API for no other reason than Windows 2.0/3.1/3.11/95 compatibility.

[VolcanoJen]

38. Off-topic... Hey, Kell?

Is that an Ampelmännchen in your avatar?

Damn, that brings back some memories. :-)

[Kellanved]

51. Yup !

One of the things where the east prevailed.

[Karmakaze]

41. In fact that is one of the major criticisms of Windows - BLOAT.

And it is due to the compatibility issues. In fact I believe XP was an attempt to remove a lot of this old worthless compatibility, but it can - as you say - be put back using emulation.

[Kellanved]

50. Yup. And the worst thing is the 16-bit compatibility

Lot's of constants and flags have different meanings and stuff like that. The pure Windows API(s) is/are probably the worst programming platform in existence.

[Toucano]

24. There was very little GUI software for Windows 2.0 in the first place.

Windows 2.0 was very dependent on DOS. All file utilities were still essentially DOS commands. The only GUI programs were like the clock and calculator programs that came as part of windows.

MS Word for Windows wasn't even available until 1989.

[wtmusic]

4. I love line 44

36Pj1G8j@!!")j`JB*Qi!##KZ!!ai!%M%Z+i!%'`H%$4!!-#m!*!$rh)86VS8-#4

:rofl: gets me every time!

[madinmaryland]

5. Uhh. . . .

010101101010101101111100011010100101011010101011011111000110
101001010110101010110111110001101010010101101010101101111100
011010100101011010101011011111000110101001010110101010110111
110001101010010101101010101101111100011010100101011010101011
011111000110101001010110101010110111110001101010010101101010
101101111100011010100101011010101011011111000110101001010110
101010110111110001101010010101101010101101111100011010100101
010101101010101101111100011010100101011010101011011111000110
101001010110101010110111110001101010010101101010101101111100
011010100101011010101011011111000110101001010110101010110111
110001101010010101101010101101111100011010100101011010101011
011111000110101001010110101010110111110001101010010101101010
101101111100011010100101011010101011011111000110101001010110
101010110111110001101010010101101010101101111100011010100101
010101101010101101111100011010100101011010101011011111000110
101001010110101010110111110001101010010101101010101101111100
011010100101011010101011011111000110101001010110101010110111
110001101010010101101010101101111100011010100101011010101011
011111000110101001010110101010110111110001101010010101101010
101101111100011010100101011010101011011111000110101001010110
101010110111110001101010010101101010101101111100011010100101
010101101010101101111100011010100101011010101011011111000110
101001010110101010110111110001101010010101101010101101111100
011010100101011010101011011111000110101001010110101010110111
110001101010010101101010101101111100011010100101011010101011
011111000110101001010110101010110111110001101010010101101010
101101111100011010100101011010101011011111000110101001010110
101010110111110001101010010101101010101101111100011010100101
010101101010101101111100011010100101011010101011011111000110
101001010110101010110111110001101010010101101010101101111100
011010100101011010101011011111000110101001010110101010110111
110001101010010101101010101101111100011010100101011010101011
011111000110101001010110101010110111110001101010010101101010
101101111100011010100101011010101011011111000110101001010110
101010110111110001101010010101101010101101111100011010100101
??

[NoPasaran]

15. Reminds me of the time we ran out of Ones

And had to write an entire program with nothing but Zeroes.

[Karmakaze]

42. Now THAT takes real skill!

You don't find that sort of skill nowadays - I, for instance, could not live without my ones. Sure I can cut back a lot, but giving up on them altogether is harder than quiting smoking and heroin on the same day!

[madokie]

7. xp has a program compatability wizard that allows me to run

a program of years past, it just adds an autoexec.bat file to set some variables. The program works great and it actually runs faster than it did it win98 for which it was written. :shrug:

[benburch]

8. Okay, but that was 7 year old software. nt

[madokie]

13. I missed the 20, my bad

[TornadoTN]

10. Best post ever!

This sums of the Bush administrations logic perfectly!

[ironflange]

12. WinXP has trouble with WordStar

:(

[dysfunctional press]

14. why would anyone want to run pretty much ancient software anyway?

i still have audio cassettes laying around too- but why would i want to bother with them when i have newer formats with better quality...?

same with software.

[benburch]

19. For example...

...if you had a file from back then with something you wrote, and you wanted to get access to that data, you would want to be able to run the software that created it.

I had a friend with some old Apple II spreadsheets he needed for a tax case, and we opened them up in an Apple II emulator.

[tridim]

21. I run Commodore 64 software on my PC

All computers are capable of emulation.

[Igel]

31. No, but not because of software.

I was running into this problem when I was a grad tech support, people had their data files on media that were no longer supported. Stuff that seems weird now.

Superdrives died quick and hard. So did Bernouilli drives (as a specific type of drive). But 5.25" floppies vanished surprising quickly. We finally dug up an "old" machine and ensconced it in a back office for the sole purpose of converting between archaic media formats and more recent formats.

Now I notice PCs don't even regularly come with 3.5" drives. Well, floppy drives. (For the days when floppies were.)

But backwards compatibility is still a problem. With newer PC operating systems the character encoding is different, and old text files in any non-English-compatible encoding are simply misinterpreted. As far as Mac goes, we have to use native OS9 for our psycholinguistics experiments. OSX doesn't support the software, the emulation doesn't work, and the software folk don't plan on rewriting it.

[dysfunctional press]

49. i don't have any that i need access too that i can't get.

although macs can't necessarily do it either- my wife has run into old mac files that won't open due to them being written in much older versions of software...quarkxpress maybe...?(i honestly don't remember which- i'll have to ask her when she gets home)

[Junkdrawer]

16. I have command line utilities I wrote in C in the early 80s...

They run fine.

[ima_sinnic]

18. I do remember Enable but don't have the 5" floppy drive to run it.

I think it was on seven disks. It was an all-purpose word processing and spreadsheet program. Docs could only be 8 pages max. When italics or bold were needed, a new floppy had to be inserted.
For a while I hung onto the binder with all the disks thinking it might appeal to a computer "geek" someday in the future but wondered how someone could get it off those outdated 5" floppies.

[tridim]

20. Yes, most 20 year old software will run on XP

as long as it didn't use direct hardware calls. People wrote software back then that took advantage of hardware "hacks" to gain speed, therefore it was often tied to specific video and audio cards. If you don't have that hardware any more (who does?), you're SOL.

Can your current Mac run MacPaint 1.0?

[benburch]

22. Probably not.

As it did use the screen buffer directly. I don't have a copy any more to try.

I can run MacPaint Pro.

[donco6]

25. All I can say is, Why?

I can honestly say it's never crossed my mind to even KEEP 20 year old software.

[MsUnderstood]

26. I have a game that runs from the old DOS days

it is a game called ROGUE

http://users.tkk.fi/~eye/roguelike/rogue.html

And I bought a magazine 3 years ago that had the 100 best computer games ever that included this game (in dos format).

I played it when I was a kid so I think it is about 22 years old. . .and still runs in xp. Does that count?

[Marnieworld]

27. perhaps if Macs evolved as progressively as PCs it wouldn't run

Windows used to be based on DOS but now it is a more secure and stable NT based platform. I think that it's not necessarily a good thing in technology for things not to change that much in 20 years.

[wtmusic]

53. If Macs were as "secure and stable" as NT they'd crash a lot more too

Rue the day.

[LynneSin]

28. It's the DaBurchi Code

:loveya:

[benburch]

29. Line 37 proves that Jesus Christ was a Macintosh User. nt

[LynneSin]

30. Can you imagine the impact on society if the world knew this

:wow: :wow: :wow: :wow:

[frylock]

37. bullshit!

lies make Jesus v.0.5 cry.

[LynneSin]

48. You must be one of those Opie Duh members

trying to repress the truth. Go flog yourself or something!

[Beelzebud]

32. With emulation, absolutely.

Not sure why I'd want to open 20 year old programs or files, but with emulation it's certainly possible.

[Jersey Devil]

33. My first word processor, PFS:Write still works fine, about 1985

I still have to retrieve material from it from time to time.

[Strelnikov_]

34. This Visual Basic Program From Four Years Ago Seems To Still Be Running

. . .

n = 1

:WillIgnore

TargetState=AgainstUs(n)

Call PetroQuotient(TargetState,ProfitPotential)
Call MilitaryPushover(TargetState, CanFightBack)

If ProfitPotential < 10 Or CanFightBack Then
Call BlameClenis
Call EmptyThreat
n = n+1
GOTO WillIgnore
Else
GOTO GrabOil
EndIf

GrabOil:

Call BlameClenis
Call PreemptiveStrike(TargetState,FoundWMD)

If FoundWMD = 1 Then
GOTO OilMoney
Else

Do Until ProleResponse > 50 And ClientState>50
Call BlameClenis
Call FlogDemocracy(ClientState)
Call FocusGroup("FightTerraists",ProleResponse)
Loop
GOTO OilMoney
EndIf

OilMoney:

Call StealResources(TargetState)
Call ReEquipLegions

Do Until Democrats = "StillPussies"
Call BlameClenis
Call FocusGroup("FightTerraists",ProleResponse)
Call FocusGroup("Politics",Democrats)
Loop

n=n+1

GOTO WillIgnore

. . .

[Jed Dilligan]

36. Excellent, this should have its own thread! nt

[HughBeaumont]

39. I'd sure like to know what the BlameClenis sub does.

[jayfish]

35. Just For Fun, I Dug Up My Win3.1 Disks.

I went through them one by one until I found a decent executable to try. I copied from floppy to my local drive and expanded it. Double-clicked and viola, Solitaire from 1992. Now that doesn't meet your 20-year criteria but it's close enough.

Jay

[Jed Dilligan]

40. For some reason, this thread made me nostalgic

For Zork, and I found out you can download it for free http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html

for both Mac and Windows.

[EFerrari]

43. Hey! I tried to do that and my machine said, "What?!"

Maybe I should download the Mac version on the Powerbook. :evilgrin:

[Jed Dilligan]

45. It runs in Classic mode

I'm a mac guy myself.

[EFerrari]

46. I'll try it. Zork was so quiet on the ears and eys. Sigh. n/t

[benburch]

52. I first played it on a Decsystem 20 at the University of Chicago.

That was in 1977.

[EFerrari]

54. 'Way ahead of me. I played it in 1985 on my PCJr -- which

they stopped making because it was marketed for home use and businesses were using it.

@ssholes.

[benburch]

44. I still play Angband.

http://thangorodrim.net/

[Ganja Ninja]

47. I use an old spread sheet program that was written in DOS.

I was using Windows 98 up until last year and it worked fine. Last year I switched to Windows XP and I couldn't get it to print on command. I was able to convert it to Excel by first displaying all the formulas in the DOS program then converting it to a Lotus 123 file and importing it to Excel. Even our IT techs couldn't figure that one out.

[hyphenate]

55. I haven't used a lot of them

for a very long time, but I'm sure I could get Multimate Advantage or IBM Displaywrite to work if I wanted to switch down to a lower color profile and resolution and work it from a window or from DOS.

[RoyGBiv]

56. A better question ...

Does anyone even *have* any "Windows" software from 1986?

Almost no one used 1.0, and not many more used 2.0 or 2.1. The first versions of MS Word and Excel weren't released until 2.0 in 1987, and even the companies that were stupid enough to buy Win2.0 licenses tended to use their old DOS based apps due to stability and familiarity issues.

The first version of Windoze to gain wide acceptance was Windows 3.1, released in 1990, and yes, I have a few Windows 3.1 apps that would run under XP if I tried. I don't bother, however.

On the other hand, if I wanted to, I could use the original version of VI on my Linux box, released in 1976 for BSD.

[kiahzero]

58. I really don't care

The only ancient software I'm interested in running are old-school videogames, and most of the ones I'd be interested in playing are older than 1986 anyway, and not running on Windows. I think the oldest piece of software I've got on either of my machines is from about 2000 or so.

[lectrobyte]

59. Lots. I have some tools/toys I've written in turbo pascal / turbo c++

that still run in a command window just fine. Have to use 8.3 file names, though, for file-related stuff.

[MazeRat7]

60. Its so entertaining to watch the windoz vs myhack debate.....

somehow they seem to think that all software started with these platforms in the 80's... Kids?... what are you gonna do ?

MZr7

[benburch]

61. Well, I certainly don't think that.

I would point out to you, though, that MacOS X is a FreeBSD platform now...