All,
I was thinking today about old software (okay, I was playing
Master of Orion 1 :-) ) and realized that there may be a service
opportunity we have. I don't know if such exists already, please
point me there if it does.
What I'm thinking of is a central site to point out old
software or software for old systems that have been placed in public
domain or otherwise made available for nominal charges by their
original manufacturers. I'd like to see something like a database
containing:
Name of package
Brief description (maybe two paragraphs)
Rating (something like a one-to-five-mice rating, or maybe with valves?)
Platform/OS it runs on (database should be sorted on this field)
Where to get it
Company that made it.
Current owner of that company, (includes web-link)
Current main product line of that company
Person/group responsible for making it available
Current business of that person (includes web-link)
A couple of examples I know a little about:
Lighthouse Design Ltd Office Suite
Office Suite, consists of mail, spreadsheet, text, presentation packages
vvvv (four tubes out of 5)
NeXTStep 3.x
http://www.peanuts.org/peanuts/NEXTSTEP/commercial
Lighthouse Design
Sun
workstations/servers
???
???
OPENVMS 7.3
Operating system, utilities, development tools
vvvv
VAX, Alpha hardware
http://www.montagar.com/hobbyist/mount.html
DEC
HP
printers :-)
????
????
But even here, I don't really know the right people to credit.
This seems like a good way to return a bit of good karma to
the folks that support old hardware and software, as well as a
valuable resource for those of us trying to do vintage computing on a
budget.
I guess I have not thought far enough into how to limit the
database from becoming enormous. I'd say some necessary criteria are;
1) package runs on a "classic" (that is > 10 years old) platform
2) package was at one time sold in the normal software marketplace
(i.e. not shareware/freeware/etc since inception)
3) package can now be downloaded or ordered from somewhere for
free/cost-of-media/similarly low cost.
Comments or suggestions? Some questions I have:
a) should there be a separate category for software for classic
systems which is still being sold and supported (a la the older
Ambrosia shareware games for Mac, like Escape Velocity, or Create!
for NeXTSTep 3.3)?
b) should there be an "archive pointer" section that points to
existing archives of shareware, such as
http://www.peanuts.org/ for
NeXT stuff? (I think this would be *far* preferable to trying to
catalog every single shareware package on every archive....)
I don't have any webhosting skills or abilities, so I can't
set this up, but if I can help, let me know.
--
- Mark
210-522-6025, page 888-733-0967
Received on Fri Jun 04 2004 - 11:34:25 BST