What to do with 16-bit software?
Jun. 20th, 2008 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poltr1One of my decluttering tasks is to reduce the amount of floppy disks I have. I still use them occasionally, but I certainly don't need a boatload of 'em. Before I try to sell them or give them away, I want to wipe them and make sure there are no viruses on them. That may take some time.
I also have copies of old software on floppy disk, including DOS 5, DOS 6, Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1. Will I ever use them again? Highly doubtful. But the packrat in me wants to burn copies of the floppies onto a CD for possible later use. (Except for the stuff that isn't Y2K compliant, like Sidekick 2.0. This stuff is so old that the local computer recycler probably won't take them. Would I ever come across an old 486 or older machine? By this time, it would be over 10 years old. I can still keep the boot disks, or if they get misplaced, grab a new one at bootdisk.com.
This is the dillemma I face. I don't want to throw out the floppies and take up landfill space, especially if the disks contain something that somebody might want.
Any takers?
I also have copies of old software on floppy disk, including DOS 5, DOS 6, Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1. Will I ever use them again? Highly doubtful. But the packrat in me wants to burn copies of the floppies onto a CD for possible later use. (Except for the stuff that isn't Y2K compliant, like Sidekick 2.0. This stuff is so old that the local computer recycler probably won't take them. Would I ever come across an old 486 or older machine? By this time, it would be over 10 years old. I can still keep the boot disks, or if they get misplaced, grab a new one at bootdisk.com.
This is the dillemma I face. I don't want to throw out the floppies and take up landfill space, especially if the disks contain something that somebody might want.
Any takers?
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Old Disks
Date: 2008-06-21 05:26 pm (UTC)You know I backed up damned near everything I had to CD a long time ago, went to a friend's place (he had a CD writer and I didn't) to do it. What was a couple of thousand disks became 2 cds. DOS, Win3 and Win9x stuff. Hum, I haven't had a computer running Win9x for who knows how long now.
I never, ever, use them. They just sat there gathering dust. And now that we've migrated from Windows to a combination of Ubuntu and Mac OSX, we're even less likely to use them.
The only things I miss are a couple of classic games. The apps? Who cares.
Re: Old Disks
Date: 2008-06-22 01:56 pm (UTC)Re: Old Disks
Date: 2008-06-22 06:04 pm (UTC)Dos Box is one way. There's probably a dozen other including VMWare, which I am setting up on my wife's laptop running Ubuntu, and which I'm going to install XP so she can run a couple of apps that aren't available on Linux yet.