Software Nostalgia....
 

Moving offices recently and in the bowels of our storeroom, came across relics of the 386/486/586 age.....Lotus SmartSuite software! I used WordPro, 123, and Organizer religiously and exclusively for several years before switching to the dark side.

I think i'm going to reinstall it on my 2.33Ghz laptop and see what happens! :D

Anyone else still using outdated software for nostalgic reasons?

Every now and then I'll find one of my old packages, and install it. Many of them are software products I had awesome memories of. But once they are installed I'm reminded that we live in 2007, and that they are so outdated that I couldn't work with them for more than a few minutes...

Sometimes I think about it, but all my old software is on diskettes. My current computer doesn't have a diskette drive, nor did its predecessor. Don't know why I keep the things around. Nostalgia here too, I suppose.

That said, sometimes I long for the simpler user interfaces. Those packages didn't do everything today's do, but they generally did what I needed without all the features I don't need (can anyone say "bloatware?") getting in the way.

I still have copies of Lotus Notes v1, v2, & v3 on my book shelf (server and client). I haven't re-installed them for years but can't bring myself to throw them out either.

Ok...got it installed...and reminisced for about two minutes before uninstalling the programs. One thing on the box did catch my eye though...there is a sticker stating 'The world's first WYSIWYG Software for Home Computers!' - is that just marketing mumbo jumbo or is there some truth to that? As far as i can remember WordPro was the first WYSIWYG program that i used, prior to that it was Word Perfect!

Oh. I thought you were going to come out with something REALLY nostalgic, like XTREE or something. Where did I leave those disks....

I still use "vi" and its just as good today :)

sometimes I use Emacs too.. but prefer vi.

Multimate isn't noticeably faster on a 4GHz machine as opposed to the old 4MHz machine, if you discount faster loading from a hard disk compared to 5¼" floppies.

Ahh, the good old days . . . KayPro, The Epson QX-10 with ValDocs, extended vs. expanded memory, actually installing RAM chips onto motherboards and expansion cards, DIP switches, Hercules graphics adapters, GEM/Topview/DesQview, the nearly infinite storage space provided by a 10MB hard drive . . .

(sorry, a little hardware nostalgia in there too)

I weep for the past :(

And for someone who's been working with PCs since before IBM popularized them as a business tool, I find a delicious irony in the fact that 'vi' comes standard on the Mac now :D

I thought exactly the same thing, XTree and NSweep. I have XTree 0.8 or 0.9 on a 5-1/4 floppy in the original box (somewhere), documentation is mimeographed.

I found a copy of my Mulitplan install disks not too long ago.

And I still remember hacking away as a kid on my first IBM PC using edlin (which still works at an XP command prompt, btw). When I got to Emacs it was nirvana. Kermit, ALOE, IBM/RT, Mach, Leisure Suit Larry....

I still have installed, and regularly use, a financial planning package from Vanguard, VRP3, dated Feb. 6, 1995.

And when that wasn't enough space, there was always Stacker.

I wish I could do a dual boot between WinXP and Windows for Workgroups 3.11. I'll be WFWG would fly :D

I still use Wordstar 5
 

WS5 is still on my system and still used as my assembly language source code editor. For a real wayback experience, I have the collors set to green text on a black background.

Crosstalk 16 is still my com program of choice.:D

Procom & Procom Plus are sweet memories here.

The WordStar magic diamond was perhaps the most touch-typist friendly user interface I've ever encountered. Instead of the current Windows way of having to remember hot keys and function keys intellectually, your fingers could remember them in muscle memory. It was very natural and logical :)

I resist the temptation to install Wordstar so I can ^K^S to save....

Wow y'all are going way back! I was thinking about "recent history" like Microsoft Bob :D I mentioned that to one of my 20something coworkers, she looked at me like I was one of *those* CP/M command-line dinosaurs longing for the days of old. :o But then I hit her with the Wayback Machine and extolled my tales of hacking my trusty TI-99/4A WITH the peripheral expansion box, 32K memory expansion card, TI Extended BASIC cartridge, TI color monitor AND an Epson dot matrix printer...man, I was The Sh!t on my block! :D

I still have new, unopened packages of SunOS compilers, Netscape Suitespot servers, Lotus Domino Server, and a few others. None of those will run on my Heathkit H-8, though.

You do go wayback... I only go back to a trash 80 with 268k ram and a massive 10 mg hard drive (which took a year of work to fill). I bought the last expansion card that Radio Shack had in their Texas warehouse, hot-rodding it up to a wailing 512k ram. Got a digitizer tablet to work, but didn't have any good graphics software to use with it.

It was SO exciting when a CP/M emulator became available for the Commodore64 ^

Oh yeah. And connecting to Compuserve. And Easy Sabre (RIP)

Lotus Magellan. That was the greatest file viewer/manager ever.

Eaasy Sabre. Two AA's, for American Airlines. :)

another vote for Lotus
 

I'm still using Lotus SmartSuite v. 9x. WordPro has always been a far superior program to Word, which I hate but have to use for some clients.

United Connection

I remember SuperCalc II, and how I had to add an extra 64K of memory because my spreadsheets were getting too big.

This was when I had a dual floppy drive before hard drives.

I also had a TSR pop-up note manager that had my address book and I would log my phone calls in. I can't remember the name.

I've got two factory sealed copies of Microsoft Publisher 2.0... beat that. :cool:

Don't mind this post.

Xtree, Xtree Pro, Word Perfect with swappable floppies, 286's running "turbo" at 10 mhz, Compuserve email and forums(!) at 300 baud, Quicken for DOS, whew! Steep learning curves for someone like me who is not a techie, just a user trying to run a small business.

Remember we all thought that our machines would mean less work for eveyone instead of everyone doing the work of 5 people? :rolleyes:

I still have a box of 5 1/4" floppys, with all my valuable data backed up!

Front panel boot on a PDP-8.

An custom written JCL stack on punch cards.

Paper tape bootstrap on a production controller.

I am old like the mummies.....

If it comes to that, SOAP (Symbolic Optimizing Assembly Program, not today's Web services access prototol of the same acronym) and the Bell 1 interpreter on a vacuum-tube IBM 650.

Top that one, kiddies.

I still use Lotus Approach; I have some databases which I've been populating for 15 years or so.

Don't we all?

When I was young all we had were ones and zeros, and most of the time we didn't even have enough money for the ones so we just had to use zeros.

All I can say is that if it can't be done in 12 bits, it just doesn't need to be done. :)

Steve

I thought I was the only Lotus fan left. I have some active Approach databases older than that.

I wish I had never given away my Borland Turbo Pascal 1.0 floppy and manual. ^

Those were the days.

IIRC, WordPro got its start as a program called AmiPro, which I think was the first (Windows) WYSIWYG word processor. Lotus bought it as the word processor for their Smartsuite product. I found its style sheets remarkably easy to use and alter, at least for a casual user, something I still can't get with MS Word.

I still use WordPerfect. Been there since v4.0 with the infamous white on blue (Was never a wordstar fan). I'll start using Word when I'm deep in the cold, cold ground.

Correct. Prior to Ami Pro, I used Lotus Symphony which combined a word processor and spreadsheet. You could toggle back and forth. I had to buy an aftermarket product to get WYSIWYG.

Yeah, but how many still have working drives to read these floppies? I no longer have a 5 1/4" drive but I do have one 3 1/2" drive that is in a USB enclosure. Thankfully that's come in handy once or twice. :)


I have two unopened boxes of OS/2 and OS/2 Warp. They are really heavy...

That was probably "Sidekick". Loved it.

Tell us another one pap-paw! :D