Warm yourself by the virtual fireplace in this cosy 8-bit #Christmas scene. No MS-DOS or floppy 💾 drive required to stoke this very 1980s hearth. Thanks to software preservation, the flames are still crackling on the Internet Archive.

✉️ Open the full 1986 Sierra On-Line "A Computer Christmas" card ⤵️
https://archive.org/details/sierra-christmas-card-1986

#RetroComputing #VintageComputing #8bit #SoftwarePreservation #ComputerHistory

Warm yourself by the virtual fireplace in this cosy 8-bit #Christmas scene. No MS-DOS or floppy 💾 drive required to stoke this very 1980s hearth. Thanks to software preservation, the flames are still crackling on the Internet Archive.

✉️ Open the full 1986 Sierra On-Line "A Computer Christmas" card ⤵️
https://archive.org/details/sierra-christmas-card-1986

#RetroComputing #VintageComputing #8bit #SoftwarePreservation #ComputerHistory

❄️ ’Tis the season to celebrate with Sierra On-Line’s 1986 "A Computer Christmas." ❄️ Thanks to #softwarepreservation, this retro holiday classic is now a perennial gift for new generations of holiday revelers. 🎄

See all the animated sequences ⤵️
https://archive.org/details/sierra-christmas-card-1986

#DigitalArchive #TechHistory #retrocomputing #retrogaming

❄️ ’Tis the season to celebrate with Sierra On-Line’s 1986 "A Computer Christmas." ❄️ Thanks to #softwarepreservation, this retro holiday classic is now a perennial gift for new generations of holiday revelers. 🎄

See all the animated sequences ⤵️
https://archive.org/details/sierra-christmas-card-1986

#DigitalArchive #TechHistory #retrocomputing #retrogaming

bbs enthusiasts might remember the name Telegard - a bbs server written based on wwiv's source code and hugely popular with the ibm pc/ms-dos crowd

telegard had a long and tumultuous history by its authors, and its own source was eventually leaked and was modded into many more popular (pirate-friendly) ms-dos boards like Renegade, Oblivion and Iniquity.

while i was doing research a few months ago on the history of those systems, i found out that telegard.net - the original home of tg - was taken over by a domain squatter in 2010, populated with ads for the past 15 years.

two months ago, i noticed that the squatter had not renewed the domain, and it went into the long grace/redemption/auction/expiry cycle. i checked on it every single morning, and to my absolute delight, it was released this morning for purchase. 💸

the domain will be used purely for historical preservation of telegard and its many descendants

update: restored the old site from the WBM archived version to https://telegard.net

#bbs #warez#softwarePreservation

bbs enthusiasts might remember the name Telegard - a bbs server written based on wwiv's source code and hugely popular with the ibm pc/ms-dos crowd

telegard had a long and tumultuous history by its authors, and its own source was eventually leaked and was modded into many more popular (pirate-friendly) ms-dos boards like Renegade, Oblivion and Iniquity.

while i was doing research a few months ago on the history of those systems, i found out that telegard.net - the original home of tg - was taken over by a domain squatter in 2010, populated with ads for the past 15 years.

two months ago, i noticed that the squatter had not renewed the domain, and it went into the long grace/redemption/auction/expiry cycle. i checked on it every single morning, and to my absolute delight, it was released this morning for purchase. 💸

the domain will be used purely for historical preservation of telegard and its many descendants

update: restored the old site from the WBM archived version to https://telegard.net

#bbs #warez#softwarePreservation

TIL a toy company released a line of Independence Day toys in the late 90s; each toy included a different "mission disk" floppy with a little game on it for windows 3.1

toy collector @eisnerguy1 managed to collect all 11 of the toys and uploaded disk images to IA 🙏

https://archive.org/details/iD4_Independence_Day_Mission_Disks

#retroComputing#softwarePreservation #win31 #toys

TIL a toy company released a line of Independence Day toys in the late 90s; each toy included a different "mission disk" floppy with a little game on it for windows 3.1

toy collector @eisnerguy1 managed to collect all 11 of the toys and uploaded disk images to IA 🙏

https://archive.org/details/iD4_Independence_Day_Mission_Disks

#retroComputing#softwarePreservation #win31 #toys

i just ftp'd into a public ftp server running in Ecuador, and discovered an absolutely critical piece of US Robotics ISP modem pool software that has been missing for 20 years

thank you from the bottom of my heart, rolando felix of Educational Unit 10 De Agosto, for leaving your departmental computer ftp wide open ❤️ you just preserved some insanely useful and important dial-up ISP history. (don't worry rolando - i didn't peek too deeply into your ms-dos games and music folders)

the story:
in the mid-90s i was a teenager who had a summer job at a dial-up isp. we had 32 incoming lines which were handled by 32 external USR Courier modems, which were fed into a super chonky Livingston Portmaster terminal server. all of the support hardware took up an entire rack - just to let 32 people call in for internet service at 28.8kbaud. it ate a ton of power, and made a lot of heat.

then, in 95-96, US Robotics delivered two insane appliances: the Total Control Modem Pool. these were tiny devices that offered 16 dial-up modems at 33.6kbaud. if you paid a bit more, you could buy the NetServer version, which gave you a terminal server too. an entire isp in a box the size of a network switch.

the modems had buggy firmware. so USR offered firmware updates via their ftp site. you could even upgrade some of the modems to "x2" 56k service with a firmware patch. they supported it for years, and when 3com bought USR, they kept the ftp site running for years. and then, 3com shut down their ftp site. and no one thought to mirror it.

after 3 hours of searching, i was able to track down a single filename thanks to WBM: mpv90an.zip. not a single site on the web had it - not even IA or discmaster. on a hunch, i plugged it into the Napalm FTP Indexer (https://www.searchftps.net) and... unbelievably, there it was, sitting on an ancient box in someone's university office in Quito, Ecuador.

the most amazing part was how slow the server was. at 250 ms pings, it was like digging through a public ftp on a 14.4k modem in 1994.

tomorrow i'll be uploading these files to IA. for now, sleep.

#digiPres#softwarePreservation#ISP

as promised, the treasure trove of US Robotics dialup ISP software is now available on IA. Please note that while I've done my best to describe the software, none of it has been tested. If you're planning on doing something like firmware upgrades, be 100% sure it's the right equipment and firmware.

and if you're one of those lucky 9 people that has a USR Total Control device, i'd love to hear your results.

USR Total Control SNMP Manager MIBs:
https://archive.org/details/tc-mibs

US Robotics SNMP Total Control Manager 2.0.1 and 4.13 Upgrade DIsks
https://archive.org/details/usr-tc-nmc-snmp

COM/US Robotics Total Control NetServer 8/16 Manager and Utilities
https://archive.org/details/usr-tc-netserver8-manager

US Robotics Total Control Modem Pool 8/16 Firmware:
https://archive.org/details/usr-tc-mp16-firmware

Novell NetWare Services Manager 1.1
https://archive.org/details/novell-nsm-1.1

US Robotics Total Control SNMP Manager for NetWare NMS:
https://archive.org/details/usr-tc-snmp-extras

US Robotics Modem Software Downloader 1.7 & USR Sportster Modem Firmware upgrade
https://archive.org/details/usr-sportster-upgrader

US robotics hardware upgrade offer document for dial-up ISPs. This is just a marketing document, but it's a fun read:
https://archive.org/details/usr-x2-offer

#retroComputing #dialup#softwarePreservation#digiPres

i just ftp'd into a public ftp server running in Ecuador, and discovered an absolutely critical piece of US Robotics ISP modem pool software that has been missing for 20 years

thank you from the bottom of my heart, rolando felix of Educational Unit 10 De Agosto, for leaving your departmental computer ftp wide open ❤️ you just preserved some insanely useful and important dial-up ISP history. (don't worry rolando - i didn't peek too deeply into your ms-dos games and music folders)

the story:
in the mid-90s i was a teenager who had a summer job at a dial-up isp. we had 32 incoming lines which were handled by 32 external USR Courier modems, which were fed into a super chonky Livingston Portmaster terminal server. all of the support hardware took up an entire rack - just to let 32 people call in for internet service at 28.8kbaud. it ate a ton of power, and made a lot of heat.

then, in 95-96, US Robotics delivered two insane appliances: the Total Control Modem Pool. these were tiny devices that offered 16 dial-up modems at 33.6kbaud. if you paid a bit more, you could buy the NetServer version, which gave you a terminal server too. an entire isp in a box the size of a network switch.

the modems had buggy firmware. so USR offered firmware updates via their ftp site. you could even upgrade some of the modems to "x2" 56k service with a firmware patch. they supported it for years, and when 3com bought USR, they kept the ftp site running for years. and then, 3com shut down their ftp site. and no one thought to mirror it.

after 3 hours of searching, i was able to track down a single filename thanks to WBM: mpv90an.zip. not a single site on the web had it - not even IA or discmaster. on a hunch, i plugged it into the Napalm FTP Indexer (https://www.searchftps.net) and... unbelievably, there it was, sitting on an ancient box in someone's university office in Quito, Ecuador.

the most amazing part was how slow the server was. at 250 ms pings, it was like digging through a public ftp on a 14.4k modem in 1994.

tomorrow i'll be uploading these files to IA. for now, sleep.

#digiPres#softwarePreservation#ISP

if you were a kid in the 90s or early 2000s, you very likely goofed around with some of this educational software at school, or if your parents hated you sufficiently, at home.

a few months ago someone generously sent me an educational software catalog that their father - who was a teacher - had kept from the 90s. i finally got around to scanning it in, and now you too can goggle at the insane prices schools had to pay for multi-seat game licenses.

this is the catalog your teachers browsed in the summer, before unsuccessfully trying to convince the principal to lay down $495 for an Incredible Machine 3 lab pack.

(fwiw, does anyone really trust an edutainment company that can't spell brussels sprouts?)

pdf and original (400 dpi) scans here:

https://archive.org/details/software-plus-1996

#softwarePreservation#digiPres#retroComputing#retroGaming #edutainment

We are happy to share the preprint and slides of the paper "The Medley Interlisp Project: Reviving a Historical Software System" by Eleanor Young et al.:

https://interlisp.org/documentation/young-ccece2025.pdf

https://interlisp.org/documentation/young-ccece2025-slides.pdf

It tells the first 5 years of the Medley Interlisp Project and discusses what other historical software recovery groups can learn from our experience. The paper was presented at IEEE CCEECE 2025 in Vancouver and accepted for publication.

#retrocomputing #interlisp #lisp#SoftwarePreservation

We are happy to share the preprint and slides of the paper "The Medley Interlisp Project: Reviving a Historical Software System" by Eleanor Young et al.:

https://interlisp.org/documentation/young-ccece2025.pdf

https://interlisp.org/documentation/young-ccece2025-slides.pdf

It tells the first 5 years of the Medley Interlisp Project and discusses what other historical software recovery groups can learn from our experience. The paper was presented at IEEE CCEECE 2025 in Vancouver and accepted for publication.

#retrocomputing #interlisp #lisp#SoftwarePreservation