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Roger Wright wrote: When MS discovered that they have no talent for writing technical manuals, instead of hiring people who can write, they just quit providing documentation.
Well, the first thing that happened was that the users stopped reading the documentation.
Old memory: I was working in an office landscape then, and heard the guy in the cubicle across the walkway receive a phone call - he was a support guy for the Fortran compiler (it is that long ago!). Obviously I could hear only one side of the conversation- It went like this:
Yes, what is your problem?
I understand ... Do you have a Fortran manual at hand?
Could you open it on page 147?
Good. Will you read out to me the first paragraph on that page?
Oh sure, that's what we are here for, to help you with your problems. Have a good day!
The fun thing is that this support man never picked up his own Fortran manual to find the right page; he took it all from memory.
So all companies stopped writing manuals, more or less. (Some environments never had any - I refuse to call *nix man pages 'technical manuals'). Those companies providing 'something' on paper should be ashamed for calling it 'documentation'. More than 30 years ago, I saved in my scrapbook a comic drawing of a totally broken down man, weeping at the psychiatrists desk. The psychiatrist tries to comfort him: "Having been diagnosed as a dyslectic doesn't mean that you have to give up a writing profession - you can still make a great career in computer documentation!"
Practically speaking, no companies provide good documentation, and hasn't done so for several decades. If you ask for manuals, textbooks, tutorials, they say that they leave that kind of stuff to independent writers and publishing houses. But even those writers usually deliver mediocre quality. One part of it is the readers' expectations: I buy several books that have a very high rating and lots of recommendations on Amazon and other sites, and when I get the book, it proves to be a mess, poorly organized, terribly useless examples, extremely wordy with lots of unnecessary repetitions yet missing essential information, usually with a useless index (sometimes not updated from the previous edition, so the references are all wrong!)
I never had the impression that MS documentation is (/was) any worse than the others. They are all that bad!
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Technical authorship is a highly skilled job, one that developers are hopeless at (and unwilling to do anyway, if they can avoid it). The trouble is that it is the code that purchasers buy, so the first cost to be stripped away by software houses was the quality documentation created by the skilled technical authors, replaced by rubbish "online" documentation provided by reluctant developers. There's a whole generation of users now who have never experienced anything else and know no different. No doubt some claim this is progress!
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haughtonomous wrote: first cost to be stripped away by software houses was the quality documentation created by the skilled technical authors,
So back in the good ol' days it was better right?
When exactly was that? What year?
I remember using a library in the 90s (probably latter half.) Best documentation I had ever seen. That one library. Obviously I had seen other libraries, quite a few, which had miserable documentation. So certainly those did not have those great authors.
In the 80s I learned C++ and OO programming from 3 books. One wasn't even for C++. The C++ compilers, at least two or perhaps three, that I used had virtually no documentation. One of the C++ compilers deliberately did not even match what Stroustrup (one of the books) documented and creator of C++. That 'feature' was not in any of the documentation.
In the 70s the only programming book at all of any sort available to me for Fortran and Pascal were manuals that were chained to an operations desk. Those were not learning tools at all. Just a listing of methods and parameters for each. (In another post today I figured that one of those manuals, in current dollars would have cost about $1000 to buy.)
Today I can probably buy 50 real books, on paper, that cover C++ in various forms.
I can buy at least 10 books, again on paper, that cover Object Oriented Cobol.
To me it certainly seems like there is no lack of documentation now versus way back when.
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Technical authorship is a highly skilled job, one that developers are hopeless at (and unwilling to do anyway, if they can avoid it). The trouble is that it is the code that purchasers buy, so the first cost to be stripped away by software houses was the quality documentation created by the skilled technical authors, replaced by rubbish "online" documentation provided by reluctant developers. There's a whole generation of users now who have never experienced anything else and know no different. No doubt some claim this is progress!
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CD I have for Visual Studio is 1.52c which is for MS-DOS and Windows (no stated version on the CD itself). It has a copyright date on it where the last year is 1995.
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Couldn't have put it better myself. I used to hate the MS hierarchical online documentation tier upon tier of web pages that offered nothing useful other than more links to ever more such pages until one was completely lost. I used to yearn back to the days when I worked on Apollo Domain workstations that came with a stack of thick books that were stuffed with useful and in-depth detail that you could actually read and learn from!
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Me too, the VC++ IDE ver 6.0 holds a warm place in my little black heart
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Roger -- the honest answer you may be seeking is that you're hoarding junk.
Sticking to an area I know, consider compilers, IDEs, associated software, and topical books. Relatively few people are using out-of-support software, and if they are, they already have what they need. If they don't, how are you going to find them?
If you want to try, catalog part of the materials, and post on Facebook Marketplace -- there's a buy-it-for-free (can't recall what the name is). List lots of materials and give it away. If after a month, there's no takers, it's junk. Recycle books, CDs/DVDs go in the landfill (sadly). If you still have floppy disks? They fizzle after 10 years-ish, so they are probably not readable, assuming you can find someone with a working floppy drive.
There are other online avenues to give things away, but FB has an active market, so it came to mind.
Regarding your buried container -- why don't you unblock the entrance and let folks steal what they want? It saves you a lot of hassle, and it's doing what you want -- giving it to someone who wants it.
About 15 years ago I went on a cleaning binge of computer junk. I had shelves of books, containers of CDs/DVDs, and boxes of old parts. In my binge I wiped out a quarter of the hoard, things I knew was never gonna be useful again. Probably only a quarter was actually useful, half was questionable, but it was a start.
I do this every 2 or 3 years. It's taken numerous iterations, but the clutter is greatly reduced.
Although I see I have C# 2008, ASP.NET v2, and WordPress v2 books on my shelf, so it's time to make another stab at it ...
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BryanFazekas wrote: why don't you unblock the entrance and let folks steal what they want?
Probably won't be stealing (at least not when they figure out what is there) but will trash it and/or attempt to live there.
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One possibility is to establish build your own computer (software) museum 
The only remaining issue is that nowadays, noone really cares for history, computer guys even less than the man in the street. Maybe you can get a journalist to write a story for your local (web) newspaper. Maybe a few people will read past the story of the headline, but very few (if any at all) will come to see your museum. If anyone comes, they will walk one short round with a blank face, and leave the place without a single question. Maybe they ask if there is a place where they can buy a cup of coffee or a coke.
It really doesn't make a difference if you establish that museum or not: In either cases, people have no real interest in it. So why bother. It is the same with your old photo albums, your library, your recipe collection, your Super-8 and VHS movies from when your kids (/grandkids) where little: The only person caring for it is yourself. When your heirs come to clean up after you, they'll throw all of it in the garbage. Even childhood movies of themselves: How many years (/decades) have passed since you last watched old family movies with them?
When you realize that you will never yourself ever take something old stuff into use, then you can be assured that noone else will care for it, either.
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I have a saying.
Nostalgia is a prison if you choose to live there.
Thanksgiving (USA) week 2008 a fire started in a home two doors down from us. The fire damaged seven homes including the back half of mine. Turns out those fiberglass shower remodels are very flammable. My office shared a common wall with the bathroom and most of my computer documentation, books, magazines, and physical software was destroyed.
I had been a bit of a hoarder regarding computer stuff. After the fire I ended up throwing away a lot of PC XT/AT clone boards and things that I salvaged from customer upgrades over the years. Basically, I started fresh moving forward.
But there are some things that I really do wish I could find a dozen years after the fact. It’s almost all documentation and some software.
I had user guides and service guides for older equipment that I have seen people ask in vintage computer forums. I had never digitized them and now can’t. This isn’t older versions of current items, but unique items when CP/M, Flex and OS/9 were popular, in the late 70’s and very early 80’s. There was a lot of history there.
I had a collection of manuals from the late 80’s and 90’s for PC multi-function cards and motherboards. I see retro computer channels that could have used that information.
The other stuff I really haven’t missed or really would have been able to do anything with today.
One recuring thought I do have is that I had a Motorola/Hitachi 6809 based PC from Canon. Same Canon that makes cameras, copiers, calculators, etc. I would have liked to see if I could have gotten OS9 or Flex running on it. All I really need is the memory map of the computer to answer the question, but I haven’t found any documentation.
I keep looking.
Rich Shealer
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I bought my son an old IBM Selectric typewriter for $3 that was supposedly in working condition, but back home, the main shaft was frozen. I used to fix them, but forgot a lot of details, especially about timing, and could not find an IBM manual, even from IBM, that described how to service it, so after describing to my son how it was supposed to work, I threw the IBM Selectric away. The end.
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Most companies keep a very limited history of their products. Information, like history, is ephemeral.
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Bruce Patin wrote: I threw the IBM Selectric away
Why didn't you let him tear it apart? At least under the suggestion that he try to fix it himself?
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I think I did suggest that, but he wasn't interested.
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Not unless you have an "old" computer to go with it. I still have my Atari. And Genesis. And ...
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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I often wish I had kept old copies of Turbo Pascal and Turbo C, but it's not like I'd use them today.
I do have my copies of Turbo BASIC and PFS:First Choice -- the manuals on a shelf behind me and the content of the 5.25" floppies copied to hard drive.
Turbo BASIC was still functional under Win 7 (though the graphics package didn't work), but not under Win 10  .
There was an abandonware site I think I uploaded them to a few years back.
Some other old disks (3.5") I have contain "fonts" and such -- Star Trek fonts in particular.
I think I must still have my Microsoft Musical Instruments CD around here somewhere.
I must have discarded the various "After Dark" versions I had as well.
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As soon as you discard it, you will need something in there. Someone's law also says that it will not be available anywhere else.
I resurrected an old mothballed Dell server, running ESXi, to test Chris's AI and Blue Iris surveillance software. Put a W10 VM and a Linux VM for same. Been running for several months. Yesterday, iDRAC complained about a drive failure. All drives (10) are mirrored with a hardware RAID (5 mirrors). Only one is in use. Guess which one failed? 
So, I VPN'd in to that LAN and tried to log into the iDRAC. Browsers wouldn't connect due to outdated SSL stuff. Went to my hidden cabinet-of-shame archive, copied and fired up an old W7 VM, logged in with IE, got the size of the hard drive that had failed, and ordered a replacement. All from 50 miles away. Hoping the survivor lasts until next week.
I had come close to trashing the old drive containing the archive of VM's and assorted software.
I just increased the size of the drives in my trueNAS system to avoid throwing anything away.
Go ahead, trash stuff.
Murphy is out there .............................................................waiting.
>64
Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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I had to search for a windows XP SP3 to make a VM for a relative because he was very good with an image editor from MS Office 2000 and he didn't feel like learning something a bit more contemporany.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Handy stuff. I still have a database application (Visual FoxPro) that I run in an XP VM.
I installed Office 2K on a W10 system, telling it to ignore the error that came up during install. Outlook wouldn't run but everything else that I tried did.
>64
Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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Kepp in mind that many of those old CDs will not be readable at all. They don't age well. My copy of VS 2012 left me that way.
Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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Roger Wright wrote: with books for learning a number of long obsolete tools, like MFC and TurboPascal
Winning arguments? Such as 'I remember way back when when xxx had yyy and it worked a lot better then!'. And then 'Err...no...I just looked at my reference from 1996 and it did not have yyy...'
Roger Wright wrote: lots of it is software like old versions of Visual Studio and older IDEs
Nostalgia?
Antiques? My friend has every (boxes, manuals, etc) from every game system he has bought back to the 80s (or 70s). Sometimes that can end up being real money such as an original Apple computer (look up the price)
Unusual utility? I worked at a company where a larger customer wanted us to upgrade an application that ran on thousands of install computers. Something like Windows 3.1 or 95. We (or they) had the original source code but at that time there was absolutely no access to the original tools used to build and work on the code. But I had saved all those CDs from Windows MSDN program. So I found the old IDE and we were able to provide a successful update for the customer.
Other than that there are sites that sell miscellaneous stuff. You don't have to make money but if someone is will to pay at least the shipping then they presumably have some interest (perhaps one of the ones I mentioned above.)
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Biggest reason to keep old VS releases is that these still have tooling for otherwise supported, but not cool anymore MS technologies. Like SQL Compact, for example.
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A number of times I've had to dig out one or other "obsolete" piece of software, IDE, tools, whatever, to either upgrade something to work on a more recent platform or fix a bug for a customer (paying for the service). So I wouldn't ditch anything just because it's "old". And never ditch books; knowledge is never useless, just needs the right context to come along!
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When I moved to another state 8 years ago I did some additional clearing. I get a Facebook memories post around March 1st showing pictures of some old Novell Netware CNE and Microsoft MCSE study books (thick ones) from the 90's from publishers that no longer exist.
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