Historical Software Collection

[glen ep ropella]

https://archive.org/details/historicalsoftware

"This collection contains selected historically important software packages from the Internet Archive's software archives. Through the use of in-browser emulators, it is possible to try out these items and experiment with using them, without the additional burdens of installing emulator software or tracking down the programs. Many of these software products were the first of their kind, or utilized features and approaches that have been copied or recreated on many programs since. (historic software, vintage software, antique software)"

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com
Give good people the power to do good and that power eventually will be in the hands of bad people to do bad. -- Harry Browne


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[Gary Schiltz-4]

Wow, that’s cool. It’s a shame that so much software will never see the light of day. Many billions of dollars were spent developing software in the 80s for the DOD as well as Soviet agencies. I’ve heard it argued that the USSR lost the cold war mainly because the USA made them spend so much on defense, and quite a sizable chunk of that was for software.

Gary

On Oct 29, 2013, at 11:31 AM, glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
> https://archive.org/details/historicalsoftware
>
> "This collection contains selected historically important software packages from the Internet Archive's software archives. Through the use of in-browser emulators, it is possible to try out these items and experiment with using them, without the additional burdens of installing emulator software or tracking down the programs. Many of these software products were the first of their kind, or utilized features and approaches that have been copied or recreated on many programs since. (historic software, vintage software, antique software)"
>
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com
> Give good people the power to do good and that power eventually will be in the hands of bad people to do bad. -- Harry Browne

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[glen ep ropella]

For many of the same reasons, I also found this site interesting:

   http://www.compileonline.com/index.php

"Compile and Execute your favorite programming languages online, click any of the following to proceed!"

I honestly had never heard of Malbolge, Factor, and Fantom.


Gary Schiltz wrote at 10/29/2013 09:43 AM:

> Wow, that�s cool. It�s a shame that so much software will never see the light of day. Many billions of dollars were spent developing software in the 80s for the DOD as well as Soviet agencies. I�ve heard it argued that the USSR lost the cold war mainly because the USA made them spend so much on defense, and quite a sizable chunk of that was for software.
>
> Gary
>
> On Oct 29, 2013, at 11:31 AM, glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>>
>> https://archive.org/details/historicalsoftware
>>
>> "This collection contains selected historically important software packages from the Internet Archive's software archives. Through the use of in-browser emulators, it is possible to try out these items and experiment with using them, without the additional burdens of installing emulator software or tracking down the programs. Many of these software products were the first of their kind, or utilized features and approaches that have been copied or recreated on many programs since. (historic software, vintage software, antique software)"

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com
If you disclose the solution to the mystery you are simply depriving the other seekers of an important source of energy. -- Conchis, "The Magus" by John Fowles


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[Steve Smith]

> Wow, that’s cool. It’s a shame that so much software will never see the light of day. Many billions of dollars were spent developing software in the 80s for the DOD as well as Soviet agencies. I’ve heard it argued that the USSR lost the cold war mainly because the USA made them spend so much on defense, and quite a sizable chunk of that was for software.
>
> Gary
Interesting collection, as well as the web-portal emulator for the
languages ...

One obvious interest is "simple" nostalgia...  many, though not all, of
us are old enough to have "been there"  for the systems, the tools (or
games mostly in this link's case), and the hope for a better tomorrow
that seemed to come along for the ride in early computer/software work.

These two links make me think once more of the duality between "art" and
"artifact"...  between the culture and experience of making and using
these artifacts (from computer games to spread sheets to ICBM targeting
and guidance systems) and the artifacts (body of code, running
code/system) themselves.   One point of things like the Internet Archive
and the Language Emulator Portal would seem to be to not only preserve
these artifacts but to make them accessible to a wide range of people
(on the off chance that they will somehow be re-used in some way)?

Art/Artifact seems related to the duals of Form/Function and
Structure/Dynamics ...  and in the context of a rapidly evolving
(changing/morphing?) environment (most of the artifacts in Glen's
examples are order 30 years old, or about the lifetime or career span of
most people alive today).

This reminds me of the famous Cambrian Radiation of half a billion years
ago in the animal/fossil record...  in some odd sense, we have a
co-incidence in the computer of a new and very rich venue for the
creation, mutation, and expression of complex structures and of a
fossilization medium.   This may in some odd way parallel the belief
that the Cambrian Explosion may have been partly driven by the increased
calcium concentrations in seawater which simultaneously made it easier
for organisms to build skeletal structures (opening a new dimension for
exploration of adjacent possibles?) and for those structures to be
recorded as fossils.

Being down in the pores in the needles on the twigs on the branches of
the trees in the forest, I think it will be hard for us to begin to see
what kind of explosion, we ourselves are within.   I'm not on board with
the Singularians (especially of the Kurzweil variety) exactly, but I do
think that something "spectacular" is afoot and am both awed and cowed
by the possibilities (cowed by realizing how incredibly inefficient and
brutal evolution/natural-selection is).

- Steve


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[Parks, Raymond]

Ah, I checked out the software archive and Immediately saw things I haven't seen in years.

I have Visicalc (which still works on my Windows 7 Home Premium system - which says a lot, good and bad, about Microsoft backwards combatability).

WordStar always reminded me of Mass 11 and Wang word processing, all of which I found cumbersome and irritating.  My first home computer, a Columbia (as in Maryland) 96% IBM PC clone, had the PerfectOffice collection (long before Microsoft Office).  PerfectWriter, PerfectCalc, and a couple of other Perfects (DB and mail, I seem to remember).  One evening in 1984 I called from my home in Omaha to the support number and was told by a nice lady to call back later as they were eating dinner.  When I did call back she asked me to please wait a second.  In the background, I heard her yell a male name with the instructions to come up from the basement.  A few minutes later, a young voice proceeded to help me with my technical question.  The nerd in the basement meme had not been created at that point, but when it came along later I knew exactly what it was about.  BTW, PerfectWriter was like Emacs in TeX mode and PerfectCalc solved the sparse matrix problem by storing the spreadsheet as the ASCII keystrokes necessary to recreate it.

I first played Adventure on a Data General computer.  I took a class at their development center in Westboro, Mass, where the motorcycle gang developed the RDOS and AOS/VS Command LIne Interpreter (CLI) that would answer the command "xyzzy" with "Nothing happens".  You have to have played Colossal Cave Adventure to understand the reference.  I think that was the first Easter egg I discovered in software.

Ray Parks

Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager

V: 505-844-4024  M: 505-238-9359  P: 505-951-6084

NIPR: [hidden email]

SIPR: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

JWICS: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

On Oct 29, 2013, at 11:27 AM, glen e. p. ropella wrote:

For many of the same reasons, I also found this site interesting:

  http://www.compileonline.com/index.php

"Compile and Execute your favorite programming languages online, click any of the following to proceed!"

I honestly had never heard of Malbolge, Factor, and Fantom.


Gary Schiltz wrote at 10/29/2013 09:43 AM:

Wow, that�s cool. It�s a shame that so much software will never see the light of day. Many billions of dollars were spent developing software in the 80s for the DOD as well as Soviet agencies. I�ve heard it argued that the USSR lost the cold war mainly because the USA made them spend so much on defense, and quite a sizable chunk of that was for software.

Gary

On Oct 29, 2013, at 11:31 AM, glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> wrote:

https://archive.org/details/historicalsoftware

"This collection contains selected historically important software packages from the Internet Archive's software archives. Through the use of in-browser emulators, it is possible to try out these items and experiment with using them, without the additional burdens of installing emulator software or tracking down the programs. Many of these software products were the first of their kind, or utilized features and approaches that have been copied or recreated on many programs since. (historic software, vintage software, antique software)"

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com
If you disclose the solution to the mystery you are simply depriving the other seekers of an important source of energy. -- Conchis, "The Magus" by John Fowles


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[Owen Densmore]

So how's the in-browser experience?

Also, anyone know how the emulators are written?  For example, current s/w is converted to the browser by compiling to LLVM then via Emscripten, are converted to asm.js/javascript.

   -- Owen

On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 3:23 PM, Parks, Raymond <[hidden email]> wrote:

Ah, I checked out the software archive and Immediately saw things I haven't seen in years.

I have Visicalc (which still works on my Windows 7 Home Premium system - which says a lot, good and bad, about Microsoft backwards combatability).

WordStar always reminded me of Mass 11 and Wang word processing, all of which I found cumbersome and irritating.  My first home computer, a Columbia (as in Maryland) 96% IBM PC clone, had the PerfectOffice collection (long before Microsoft Office).  PerfectWriter, PerfectCalc, and a couple of other Perfects (DB and mail, I seem to remember).  One evening in 1984 I called from my home in Omaha to the support number and was told by a nice lady to call back later as they were eating dinner.  When I did call back she asked me to please wait a second.  In the background, I heard her yell a male name with the instructions to come up from the basement.  A few minutes later, a young voice proceeded to help me with my technical question.  The nerd in the basement meme had not been created at that point, but when it came along later I knew exactly what it was about.  BTW, PerfectWriter was like Emacs in TeX mode and PerfectCalc solved the sparse matrix problem by storing the spreadsheet as the ASCII keystrokes necessary to recreate it.

I first played Adventure on a Data General computer.  I took a class at their development center in Westboro, Mass, where the motorcycle gang developed the RDOS and AOS/VS Command LIne Interpreter (CLI) that would answer the command "xyzzy" with "Nothing happens".  You have to have played Colossal Cave Adventure to understand the reference.  I think that was the first Easter egg I discovered in software.

Ray Parks

Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager

V: <a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-844-4024  M: <a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-238-9359  P: <a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">505-951-6084

NIPR: [hidden email]

SIPR: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

JWICS: [hidden email] (send NIPR reminder)

On Oct 29, 2013, at 11:27 AM, glen e. p. ropella wrote:

For many of the same reasons, I also found this site interesting:

  http://www.compileonline.com/index.php

"Compile and Execute your favorite programming languages online, click any of the following to proceed!"

I honestly had never heard of Malbolge, Factor, and Fantom.


Gary Schiltz wrote at 10/29/2013 09:43 AM:

Wow, that�s cool. It�s a shame that so much software will never see the light of day. Many billions of dollars were spent developing software in the 80s for the DOD as well as Soviet agencies. I�ve heard it argued that the USSR lost the cold war mainly because the USA made them spend so much on defense, and quite a sizable chunk of that was for software.

Gary

On Oct 29, 2013, at 11:31 AM, glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> wrote:

https://archive.org/details/historicalsoftware

"This collection contains selected historically important software packages from the Internet Archive's software archives. Through the use of in-browser emulators, it is possible to try out these items and experiment with using them, without the additional burdens of installing emulator software or tracking down the programs. Many of these software products were the first of their kind, or utilized features and approaches that have been copied or recreated on many programs since. (historic software, vintage software, antique software)"

--
glen e. p. ropella, <a href="tel:[phone]" value="[phone]" target="_blank">971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com
If you disclose the solution to the mystery you are simply depriving the other seekers of an important source of energy. -- Conchis, "The Magus" by John Fowles


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

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[Barry MacKichan]

If you want a Mac Classic System 7, here is one that runs in your browser, using JavaScript.

http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/

—Barry

On Oct 29, 2013, at 10:31 AM, glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
> https://archive.org/details/historicalsoftware
>
> "This collection contains selected historically important software packages from the Internet Archive's software archives. Through the use of in-browser emulators, it is possible to try out these items and experiment with using them, without the additional burdens of installing emulator software or tracking down the programs. Many of these software products were the first of their kind, or utilized features and approaches that have been copied or recreated on many programs since. (historic software, vintage software, antique software)"
>
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com
> Give good people the power to do good and that power eventually will be in the hands of bad people to do bad. -- Harry Browne
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[glen ep ropella]

Apparently, they had a fire.

https://blog.archive.org/2013/11/06/scanning-center-fire-please-help-rebuild/

> Scanning Center Fire — Please Help Rebuild
> Posted on November 6, 2013 by brewster
> Scanning Center Fire
>
> Scanning Center with Fire Damage to Left of Main Building
>
> This morning at about 3:30 a.m. a fire started at the Internet Archive’s San Francisco scanning center.  The good news is that no one was hurt and no data was lost.  Our main building was not affected except for damage to one electrical run.  This power issue caused us to lose power to some servers for a while.




On 10/29/2013 09:31 AM, glen e. p. ropella wrote:
>
> https://archive.org/details/historicalsoftware
>
> "This collection contains selected historically important software packages from the Internet Archive's software archives. Through the use of in-browser emulators, it is possible to try out these items and experiment with using them, without the additional burdens of installing emulator software or tracking down the programs. Many of these software products were the first of their kind, or utilized features and approaches that have been copied or recreated on many programs since. (historic software, vintage software, antique software)"
>

--
glen ep ropella -- 971-255-2847

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