Nothing unordinary, but you can never have enough Windows 98.. Here's a Turkish OEM Windows 98 in original shrinkwrap.

Got a copy of QuickBASIC 4.5 recently.

This is actually my second copy of it, but the first one I got some months back was only the disks. Since all the other older development tools I've bought have been complete-in-box (not something I was striving for, but just kind of happened that way), I decided I wanted a complete copy of QB 4.5 too. QuickBASIC is definitely the most nostalgic to me. I first self-taught myself how to program with it, starting in 1995, and continued using it through to about 2002/2003 or so. I definitely owe my current career as a software developer to all the time I spent playing around with QB. I also spent a lot of time around the online QBasic community too in those days (dunno if anyone else on Vogons was a part of that community, anyway I used the nickname "Fling-master" on those forums).

Anyway, glad to have it. 😀

This is software-related in a way, so I figured it should belong in this thread. I spotted a couple gems on yesterday's thrift store visit.

I found a 5.25" copy of PC Disk Quarterly Basic BASIC: An Introduction and a box of Maxell 5.25" 1.2MB (HD) floppies for roughly $7 altogether. The Maxell 5.25" floppy container contains 14 5.25" HD floppies from the pack as well as 5 3.5" 1.44MB (HD) floppies of varying brands, I'll get around to checking and formatting the 3.5" disks, but the 5.25" ones will have to wait until I manage to score a 5.25" 1.2MB floppy drive for my Pentium build. I don't even have a 5.25" drive yet, but it doesn't hurt to prepare early for the day where I actually get one.

Bought a brand new sealed copy of The Incredible Machine 3 from eBay, as well as a used copy of the PC Game Diggers on Amazon. The first showed up on ebay after months of waiting for a boxed copy, so I jumped on it. The box was shrinkwrapped, but had some wrinkling underneath, so I decided to open it, probably making serious collectors cringe in the process.

Both are excellent games I've wanted in my collection for a long time.

Haven't been able to figure out how to get the CD Audio tracks working in Diggers yet. Interestingly it is version 1.94, newer than the 1.5 version on web archive.

Couple neat things from my office stash. Liqmat's Tempra Pro postings reminded me that I had these.

The Integraph binder was empty, I wish I had the original contents but it's still cool. It's full of synthesizer manuals now. Mathematica, on the other hand, well, see the next couple posts... 😉

Let's bust open that copy of Mathematica:

^^ Everything that was in the box. It looks like there were two versions crammed in there, the original 1.2 for 68k Mac on floppies (seemingly complete), and 3.0 for a bunch of platforms on CD-ROM, and its manual.

I love this. We’ve got Win 95/NT, Mac 68K, Mac PowerPC, SunOS, Solaris (probably Sparc), HP-UX, SGI (MIPS, presumably), Linux, and IBM RISC (RS/6000?) all crammed on the same disc. Remember when multi-platform actually meant multi-platform?

And you could order a T-shirt! I like that stellated icosahedron, but the Bessel function is pure class. Eight bucks each plus five for shipping is a smoking deal too. I wonder what they’d do if I sent this in?

Here’s the media for version 1.2. Unfortunately I don’t have anything that can read these 800k DD floppies. The disks look pristine though.

Lots of documentation as befitting a professional product. These are all for 1.2.

Not much to say about these but I do love the artwork, especially on the “Summary for Macintosh Experts” and the Setting Up guide. Yes, I actually would have ordered those T-shirts.

Honestly, this sticky note I found in the Setting Up booklet is the only sign this software’s ever been used.

They want 4MB and an FPU? Do I look like I own a money printing machine?? I wonder what the software itself cost new.

That’s it for now... I have some more stuff like this if you guys are interested. I might try to install this on something, at least the 3.0 version on CD since it’d be rude not to. I use number crunching software like this every day (mostly Octave) so it would be interesting to poke around with. Maybe I can even do some work with it and annoy my coworkers. 😀

My copy of TIM 3 got a friend! xjas very kindly gave me his boxed copy of The (Even More) Incredible Machine while he was visiting Vancouver from the Island for a Chipmusic gig (which also happened to be a lot of fun!). Thanks again, it will be displayed proudly 😉

Trying to beat the AU government's upcoming tax on everything, bought a couple of OSes from the US, was lucky to get them at a reasonable price too.

How much did W2K cost? I'm hoping to get one as well..

appiah4 wrote:

How much did W2K cost? I'm hoping to get one as well..

This one was $60, but I paid a bit extra as it's a special edition. Good price seems to be around $40 for a boxed full version, or $25 for a boxed upgrade version.

visual J! whoa. 🤣

@Qjimbo - looks good dude, hope you have fun with it! 😀 I like how the orange/blue schemes are (sort of) reversed between the two boxes.

Today I stumbled on two more sealed boxes of 720k DS/DD 3.5" disks in a second hand shop. WTF. I never see these things anywhere anymore and then suddenly I luck into three NOS boxes in the span of a few weeks. Well, I certainly wasn't going to leave them there.

I'll keep these guys sealed forever, they can go on my collection display shelf and look pretty, and maybe appreciate in value & make me big bucks in 50 years. A great investment! 😀

..

.

...Jesus christ no, of course I opened them. DIE SHRINKWRAP DIE.

I was a bit surprised to get two different colors, there's no indication of that on the outside of the box. Even the part numbers & UPCs are the same. These things spent 25 years in their plastic suits and nobody ever knew one pack was black and one was white. This is the kind of shocking discovery you only get to make if you open your shit.

Apparently these have a "Super Electron Beam binder." Wonder if that actually meant or did anything? I know TDK magnetic tape stock is supposedly pretty good.

I stuck one of the black ones in my LS120 drive and it seems to work fine. They all look pretty pristine, so knock on wood.

xjas wrote:

@Qjimbo - looks good dude, hope you have fun with it! :) I like how the orange/blue schemes are (sort of) reversed between the t […]
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@Qjimbo - looks good dude, hope you have fun with it! 😀 I like how the orange/blue schemes are (sort of) reversed between the two boxes.

Today I stumbled on two more sealed boxes of 720k DS/DD 3.5" disks in a second hand shop. WTF. I never see these things anywhere anymore and then suddenly I luck into three NOS boxes in the span of a few weeks. Well, I certainly wasn't going to leave them there.

1.jpg

I'll keep these guys sealed forever, they can go on my collection display shelf and look pretty, and maybe appreciate in value & make me big bucks in 50 years. A great investment! 😀

..

.

...Jesus christ no, of course I opened them. DIE SHRINKWRAP DIE.

2.jpg

3.jpg

I was a bit surprised to get two different colors, there's no indication of that on the outside of the box. Even the part numbers & UPCs are the same. These things spent 25 years in their plastic suits and nobody ever knew one pack was black and one was white. This is the kind of shocking discovery you only get to make if you open your shit.

4.jpg

5.jpg

Apparently these have a "Super Electron Beam binder." Wonder if that actually meant or did anything? I know TDK magnetic tape stock is supposedly pretty good.

I stuck one of the black ones in my LS120 drive and it seems to work fine. They all look pretty pristine, so knock on wood.

In 50 years everyone will be using a GOTEK or equivalent floppy emulator and most original media will have flaked to death (or got moldy). I suspect real hardware will be something people collect and put on display while using emulators on new machine for actual gaming or work so no need for any disks outside of images.

I keep a bunch of shrinkwrapped boxed floppies on the shelf mostly because I have new bulk media disks for use. Even back in the day I would mail order bulk disks in the 100's because it was cheaper (same with CDR when it came out). People are used to spindles of CD/DVD/BR disks now but they were sold in jewel cases individually or 5 packs for a long time because of cost.

xjas wrote:

Couple neat things from my office stash. Liqmat's Tempra Pro postings reminded me that I had these.

01.jpg

The Integraph binder was empty, I wish I had the original contents but it's still cool. It's full of synthesizer manuals now. Mathematica, on the other hand, well, see the next couple posts... 😉

I have boxed copies of Mathematica and Mathcad for 68K macs (think PC as well for Mathcad). Finding old scientific/cad software can be hard these days since people only really cared about games or simple office apps for the home and businesses tossed all their old apps over the years. The manuals for that old software were pretty good.

I was going to post about this last week, but I forgot, so I'm posting this now.

I managed to find a Windows 95 OSR2.1 installation CD on eBay. This didn't come with a product key, but since I have a few Windows 95/NT 4.0 OEM COAs which should work with this, it's no big deal.

I just keep lucking out at the thrift shops lately. When was the last time you saw a boxed, retail BASIC interpreter & compiler?

Pretty sure these are complete too, and in great shape, as can be seen. Those big weighty manuals are a nice touch. I don't even have an ST but I couldn't leave these there. 😜

The shop had stickered ten bucks on each box, but I successfully argued that they were two pieces of the same goddamn product, and what the crap were they doing?? so they gave them both to me for ten. Win.

Finally own a copy of Windows 2000 (albeit the Server version; but still..)

Time to install it on a Dual Socket 370 Coppermine?

appiah4 wrote:

Finally own a copy of Windows 2000 (albeit the Server version; but still..) […]
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Finally own a copy of Windows 2000 (albeit the Server version; but still..)

Time to install it on a Dual Socket 370 Coppermine?

Nice. I only have the pro version iirc. And a beta3 version I think?
Afaik, basically all versions of win2k support at least 2 CPUs.