Question for you all, I've been playing around with computers for a quite a while now and have built a few as well but over the weekend I was made aware of something that I genuinely did know existed and when I saw it, I just knew that if possible I had to have it and I'm delighted to be able to say that today, I managed to secure it, it is 8 volumes, containing many hundreds or possibly over a thousand pages with 2 volumes of supporting software, what is it? It's called The Windows Advisor and covers all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows98 right through to Windows7. The discs look as if they have
I just don't know where to place a value on it, it is as far as I know pretty rare, as I said, I've seen one before and now I own it and struggling to really put a real world value to it ![Confused :-//](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/confused0024.gif.pagespeed.ce.5xOqKkq0Co.gif)
Those windows versions are all now unsuitable for production use; they only barely managed before, when their buggy internals were patched in frantic attempts to keep up with the holes appearing in them. Now, that they're abandoned by their "maker" (I refuse to unquote that, a true maker does not release such crap) they are of historical interest at the most, and running them outside a sandbox should be punished as recklessness. To me, that does put a pretty large damper on the value of software that won't work with anything newer.
The tragedy is that a lot of companies built really nice hardware (R&S springs to mind, but there are others) designed to run only those Windows releases, or to be controlled by a computer running only those releases. Further, being hardware engineers mostly, they inevitably managed to build software that is heavily tied into some feature that quickly became obsolete. Because it seemed cool at the time.
I run into it all the time at work. We have gear that is useful and faultless at 30+ years of age. A microphone, if treated well, never expires. It may very well not even depreciate. A 10 year old computer installation is a liability. I've got a sync generator that only can be controlled by a computer having a web browser capable of running MS Silverlight. I've had to ask permission to keep old VM's around just to be able to keep it going. It is a mostly OK sync generator, but this can't go on. Luckily enough, it is being replaced this autumn.