What do you do with your old software?

[Harrison]

Taking the Amiga, and other older systems, we are all now interested in trying to preserve the memory of as much of its software as we can. Scanning in the manuals, boxart and disk labels, and maintaining collections of the software.

But what do you do now?

Do you just play games when they come out and then sell them on or throw them out? Or did you store them safely on a shelf or in a cupboard? Maybe thinking you might replay them again at some point.

I always did the later, trying to keep them all in as good as new condition.

However, what about other software? Older versions of word processors and office suites, such as Office 2000, or old versions of Nero or Virus Checkers? What do you do with those?

I have piles of discs for older versions of software lying around in boxes and jewel cases. Versions of Adobe and Macromedia software going back to version 4 of Photoshop. Office going back to the 1997 edition, Nero and other Cd writing software dating back as far as thr 90's and Virus scanners just as old. But will I ever use them again? Why am I keeping them?

But like we are preserving older system software. Will we want to preserve today's software in the same way in years to come? We are after all now using DosBox and virtual machines to play older DOS and Win98 games, and big collections of games for them are now online. But other than games will be preserver productivity software for the future? It is after all a timeline of the history of software. How it has evolved since the first versions of each one. So we should really preserve it. But for some reason I just don't have the same sense of needing to preserve old versions of Office or Nero in quite the same way as similar software from the Amiga days.

[woody.cool]

I'm a hoarder .... I keep EVERYTHING software related.

I've even still got my DOS 6.22, Windows 3.11 and Microsoft Office 4.3 floppy disks.
They all get stored in disk boxes (for floppies) and on CD racks (CD/DVD-ROMs)

As for big box games, they get store appropriately in the games cupboard.

Where possible, I do tend to make images of software (ISOs for CDs and the appropriate format for floppies, depending on system)

[J T]

Er.... Leave them laying around all over the place and then turn everything upside down when (if) I want to find them.

But mostly, I delete the installer and torrent a newer version....

[ceedy]

Tend to hang on to the better stuff.
so got a few of my PC things still ..

As for the Miggys... I did make a point of making a special wooden cabinet about 18 years ago , just to take floppies 12 drawers of 60 discs and it still here.
Plus I've probably got 50 plus boxed Miggy progs/games.
And I did make it my mission a few year back to collect and archive as many amiga Files as I could from my collections and off "other places" so I have a Hard drive full and 11-12 DVDs full of IMG files. I've done total 14,892 !!. but not done it for quite a few years now!!

ooer I'm Off!!

[Harrison]

Do you have any rare games archived, or Public Domain and demoscene disks? We are about to start a project to archive as much Amiga software as we can. We already all own a lot of Amiga software, but want to compile it into a central location and make it accessible from classicamiga. So if you are interested in getting involved please let me know. We will be launching it as a new project in a couple of months.

[Stephen Coates]

We are about to start a project to archive as much Amiga software as we can. We already all own a lot of Amiga software, but want to compile it into a central location and make it accessible from classicamiga. So if you are interested in getting involved please let me know. We will be launching it as a new project in a couple of months.

Sounds interesting.

I don't have tons of old software, but I do still have directories full of junk from years ago, which are still exactly where they were when I downloaded them, i.e. on a Maxtor HD and now duplicated to a partition on my 500GB Seagate.

I do have some CDs for Office 2000 Professional. These are CD-Rs but are about as old as Office 2000 itself. I still use these frequently to install Office onto machines/VMs. And currently, on top of my CD holder, is a copy of the driver CD for my old Epson Stylus Photo 750 printer. I suppose I ought to get that fired up sometime. It is the only printer that plays cool tunes with its motors . I did use it about 5 years ago and I think then its heads were a bit clogged up.

[Harrison]

We are initially only going to be concentrating on Amiga software, but I don't see why we can't branch out into Atari ST, PC and other systems as we go along. Not sure on the format yet. Maybe it will be FTP only to begin with to easily manage the project and files, but it could turn into a site in its own right eventually, or even linked into the forum's downloads section.

[Ghost]

Most of the games I have bought I still have today, though I have been trying to sell a lot of them in the past as I simply no longer have the space for them and aren't that interested anymore in having them.
Sadly there is no interest in old games, even though most of them are in excellent and complete condition.

[Puni/Void]

Very interesting! I'm happy to help with rare demoscene stuff and obscure utilities. Got a lot of stuff on floppies, but it might be that some of the are defective after years of storage.

[Harrison]

That si why it is really important to get old floppy disks archived ASAP so we don't lose them all to corrupt disks. Now I have some hardware to do this (more info coming soon) it will make it much easier.