Uncreative Labs

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

What do you guys do for old software? Do you scroung around ebay or other places for legit media or do you just pirate it?

Unlike games where you can sometimes find new compilations, the old apps, utils, os are no longer sold nor supported.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Unless it costs next to nothing, the answer is simple.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

People spend a bit of money on hardware, why not software too? I know people who spent tons of money on hardware yet all their software is pirated, you can find some old decent software cheap or free if you look around so I don't understand why.

I find it just as cool to have the original software in a box with manuals (do you remember software manuals Wink

) as it is to have vintage hardware.

Granted I have some "other software" in the collection, but anything I use I try to get a legit copy of as funds and oportunity allow.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

No, I tend to agree about having a nice box and manual. I would much rather have the original copy. But, there are many other factors that make pirating attractive. If it drops infront of me at a good price, I'd probably go for it. But usually it's just easier to download than find an actual copy.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

it depends what im looking for. If its an OS i tend to get a legit copy. sometimes im missing a disk in the set so i might download the missing disk or if a computer already has an OS that i dont have but need a copy of then i might. as for other stuff, i tend to use alot of shareware, abandonware and freeware. abandonware is when the publisher doesn't sell or supports the software anymore and doesn't care if its copyied

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

i was "stuck" with old software because of old hardware for a long time.
when i worked at big companies I saved old disks. sometimes as you said, there was just one floppy that would not read and it took an effort to replace one disk.
I asked Microsoft for support files for a copy of MS-publisher I bought,
they sent me the entire office suite, think it was Office 95.

Someone GAVE me the 46 disk set of Office 97 " becaue their system could not read the disks" typical with 1.68 floppies. I had a TSR that permitted me to read them. I discovered that I could copy the floppies to a hard drive or later a cd AND INSTALL FROM D:\OFFICE97\DISK1\SETUP.EXE .
It would find all the other files, so much for troublesome floppies!

I had 3 sets of windows 3.1 but it required that I copy all the disks to ONE directory. on a cd or hard drive. when the new OS and apps came out, office workers just tossed the old floppies.
I don't know how many floppies I formatted ( many were bad)
a Hair dryer softens the label so you can peel it off.

I kept all the old apps I used and owned I made archival copies on first floppy then cd-r.
we still have a dos wfwg system sitting in the corner, It is a microchannel Ps/2 486dx2-66. Once a year a Lawyer wants us to type in infor for his datababe, so far this year he has not called us. wiosh I could get a soundcard so I could use "600 dos games" cd.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 20

Unknown_K wrote:

What do you guys do for old software? Do you scroung around ebay or other places for legit media or do you just pirate it?

Both. It depends on the situation. Sometimes I have pirated software for which I *really* want to see if there are any command-line switches or keys, etc. that I'm missing, so I find the original on ebay or elsewhere so I can get my hands on the manual.

Quote:

Unlike games where you can sometimes find new compilations, the old apps, utils, os are no longer sold nor supported.

It's still piracy and doesn't make it legal. However, I'm perfectly ok with that, as pirating 20+ year-old software isn't causing any company any financial harm. So of course I pirate when I'm just curious, and I buy the full package off of ebay if/when I can find it.

Lest you think me crude, I have over 600+ boxes of software (mostly vintage games) on eight bookshelves in my basement, and probably 1000+ more original diskettes and manuals in a closet. So it's not like I'm a raging script kiddie leech or anything. But yes, I have no scruples at all when it comes to copying software. If I was never going to pay for it in the first place (ie. I just want to see what the dang thing looks like), no financial harm is done.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Having newsgroup access (Giganews) should make the answer obvious. But like Trixter, I've got tons of stuff from years ago (which still needs to be backed up on CD-R/DVD-R) and likely have several thousands of dollars invested (original costs, not what it's worth now). So it's hard to feel terribly guilty about something where the creator has long-since disappeared. A lot of stuff (O/S's, Apps, etc.) was either given to me when a customer wanted to upgrade and didn't want to fool with the old versions of stuff (not realizing that newer is not always better), or got it here at the "real job" in scrap-sales/giveaways. I've got a couple versions of Harvard Graphics still in their shrink-wrap Smile

...

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Yea, newsgroups are great for the common apps, have yet to find Halo Desktop Imager anywhere.

Joined: 28 Feb 2006 Posts: 127 Location: LI, NY

I must say, if it's not in my "collection" already and I need it, it's bound to be pirated.

Tracking down the original physical software is just too much of a headache, especially seeing that I'd most likely only use it once in a blue moon. Very Happy

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

despite what some have said and caused trouble,
I see no legal problem with "replacing a bad disk"
many of the microsoft floppies were thin and I assume sold by the lowest bidder.
that plus the " wonderful dmf 1.68m floppies"
and the way only one CAB file was on a disk
word 6 came both ways many files or a big fat cab file.
a small error kills the whole disk.
and Microsoft cares little for " outdated apps"

If someone is trying to install / use an old app and has an Original disk failure, I see no problem in giving a copy to them.
I remember working to make one set of Word 6 .0 for dos.
finally I copied the floppies to a cd=r.
HEY now I am told a cd-r will "fade away" in a year or so.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Quote:

HEY now I am told a cd-r will "fade away" in a year or so

Sure, if you burn on crappy media, store it in a jungle & in direct sunlight. If not taken care of (or if burned improperly) they won't last as long as a floppy. But if care is taken, they should do 10 years or better...

http://www.foray.com/CDandDVDCareandHandlingGuide.pdf

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 7:20 pm

The oldest CD-R's I have are from 1997 (In summer of '97 I bought my first CD burner, a Philips 2600 for $400! 2x write, 6x read). What CD-R's I have from that year are still OK (but they were burned on the gold colored media, 10 for $25 from Best Buy at the time!)

On the other side of the coin, maybe 4-5 years ago, I copied a commercial audio CD to some cheep and nasty CD-R blanks (silver colored plain top, no name generic ones from Microcenter). It sat in my CD jukebox player until about a year ago, played only a few times.

Then about a year ago, I went to play it and it had committed hari-kari. It would play but it sounded EXACTLY like a very, very scratchy old LP, full of clicks and pops.

The other CD's I recorded from the same spindle of blanks are OK, and I've never had any other CD-R die like that.

Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 138 Location: Lynnwood,WA

When I started off, I did not download anything, I got official copies from family/friends or networked through them to find official copies because downloading any software off of AOL 3.0 on a 486/33 running Windows 3.1 on 8MB of ram with a 120MB HDD and a nearly over-heating 56K modem and no CD-ROM to speak of, would have been hell, if I could have even fit the files onto the "Spacious" 120MB hard disk drive (and no, I'm not talking 1993, I'm talking 2001 here, when everyone else had PIII machines running Windows 2000).

As time went on, and my sources for old software started wearing thin, then I turned to downloads, though most of the stuff left was obscure free versions of shareware, with a handful of other commercial apps that were by companies either long gone, or that did not sell too well.

By now, I have everything I want, most of it spread out amongst several CD-Rs and across several PCs so I can always have a copy handy in any format needed for a particular machine. Most of my old software is now bought at the thrift if it looks to be in good shape and is interesting, and it's also backed up in several places for safekeeping should the original diskettes die.

Joined: 01 Oct 2004 Posts: 169 Location: behind you!

I seem to have bad luck with recordable media. nearly every cd-r I have ever burned is dead. Also I have noticed most of my dvd-r are also starting to fade. I store my dvd collection (and my shrinking cd) in a storage case for cd's (700 at last count). with cd-r the problem I had mostly was rott. I'd hold a disk up to the light and see points of light all over. With the dvd's the problem is unknown. I use an array of disk types covering every major brand.