Software archiving for fun, and not much else

Recently I helped clean out the office of someone who had passed away. They were a bit of a hoarder and there was a lot of software lying around. There was enough interesting stuff that I just grabbed almost all of it and brought it home to archive it.

I spent today copying most of the DVDs, CDs, and floppies that I obtained. I also decided to archive some CDs of my own that I have had for a while.

The list of things I have is kind of interesting.

• Adobe PageMaker 6.5 (Windows)
• Adobe Photoshop 3.0 (Windows)
• Adobe Photoshop 4.0 (Windows)
• Adobe Premiere 4.2 Deluxe (Windows)
• Asymetrix 3DFX Digital Video Producer
• Band In A Box
• Corel WordPerfect 8 for Linux - Personal Edition
• Corel WordPerfect Suite 7
• Cubase Studio 4
• Diablo and the Hellfire Expansion Pack
• Diablo II
• FontMaster CD Library II
• Intex instructional video
• Jedi Knight
• Macromedia Dreamweaver 4
• Mammals - A Multimedia Encyclopedia (1990)
• Megaware Volume 1 - Spring 1993 [shareware CD]
• Microsoft Flight Simulator (1996)
• Microsoft Office 2007 Student Edition
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Customer Support and Diagnostic Tools
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
• Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium with Service Pack 1
• Microsoft Windows 95 Interactive Demo & Sampler
• Microsoft Windows 95
• Microsoft Windows 95 with USB support
• Microsoft Windows 98
• Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition
• Microsoft Windows 98 Upgrade
• Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0
• Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
• Norton Systemworks 2000
• Outpost
• Power Source Designer Clipart III
• Reason 3.0
• The 1995 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia
• The American Heritage Talking Dictionary (1994)
• The Animals! (1992)
• The Software Toolworks Atlas Pack (1991)
• The Software Toolworks Illustrated Encyclopedia (1991)
• The Software Toolworks World Atlas (1992)
• TIME Almanac of the 20th Century (1995)
• Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus Plus
• Vantec v1.05
• Windows 98
• Xara Menu Maker
• Xara X1
• You Don't Know Jack XL

I also have a bunch of drivers for modems, printers, and various other things. Maybe the neatest things were unopened Internet connection kits from the 90s. I opened them and copied all the diskettes, including AOL and CompuServe connection disks. There was even a custom version of Mosaic in there.

A couple of the kits came with decent sized books that describe how to connect and browse the Internet. I'm going to read them at some point and see what amusing predictions are there.

I've taken a picture of all the disks and will be scanning the inserts for software that came with them. Some of the interactive learning CDs from nearly 30 years ago may be fun to check out.

Above you might have noticed the "Microsoft Windows 95 Interactive Demo & Sampler". That one is a bit of a catch. It needs Windows 3.1 to run, but you can browse the media on it easily enough. It has a promo video called "Windows, by Bill Plympton" on it that I've never seen before.

I don't even know what some of this stuff is and really, it doesn't matter. Preserving it is a fun side project.