Around 1989 I wrote a PC program that replaced an Epson HX20 storing injection molding machine programs on small cassettes. 2000 I got a call the molding machines had been sold and the old IBM PS/2 ditched. The new owner asked me if I still had the program. I re-mounted my old QIC streamer sleeping in a box, installed Borland Turbo Pascal in a DOS box in OS/2 and could recompile it from source. Got the same price as I originally sold it for again ;-). Still in use. The Epson HX20 is gone though...
Around 1989 I wrote a PC program that replaced an Epson HX20 storing injection molding machine programs on small cassettes. 2000 I got a call the molding machines had been sold and the old IBM PS/2 ditched. The new owner asked me if I still had the program. I re-mounted my old QIC streamer sleeping in a box, installed Borland Turbo Pascal in a DOS box in OS/2 and could recompile it from source. Got the same price as I originally sold it for again ;-). Still in use. The Epson HX20 is gone though...
I am currently pulling BASIC and Z80 assembly programs from cassette tape that me and my dad wrote in the late 70s early 80s - games and robot armdroid drivers for the NASCOM 2, a kit computer from 1977.
Most run in the emulutor but luckily I have the original NASCOM2 and 2 armdroids so (hopefully) I can get my dad's physical SOMAS cube solver from his master thesis running again.
Older than that is a punch tape teletype 'program' that I wrote thank you letters for me, pausing for input of the names of grandparents.
I wrote a system in the 1980s in Turbo Pascal under MS-DOS to talk to a bunch of hardware, and keep a display updated. It did large water meter calibrations, for city size meters, 6" and up.
That software survived Y2k with no incident, the only reason I heard about it was in 2007 when one of the cards was replaced, it failed to restart.
It turns out they had the two cables swapped. As far as I know it's still going strong.
I followed most of the rules detailed in the article, it was simple, did the one thing (including a multitasking library I wrote), and just kept doing it.
Cool. In the ‘90s I wrote a 6502 assembly program to convert my Atari Touch Tablet drawings into Windows BMP files. I then had to fire up my Atari modem, and an IBM-compatible running a BBS program and transmit them through the phone lines of my parents’ house.
A couple of them wound up in a technical-architecture manual for clients of a Big-6 firm.
Tons and tons of them over the years. I wish I'd kept better track of them because I've caught myself reinventing the wheel now and again.
- When I was a kid using a DOS PC I'd write them in Microsoft QuickBASIC or Turbo Pascal and compile them to EXEs. (I used to drag a few particularly useful ones around with me until a few years ago when the prevalence of 64-bit Windows made running them on a stock Windows machine impossible.) I had stuff there like a random password generator, dumping files to VGA mode 13h (to visually look for patterns in data), drop the DTR on a serial port (to hang up a modem from the command line), search/replace on INI files, and lots of others I've forgotten.
- I wrote a proto-Markdown text processor back in high school when I was taking notes on a vTech Laser PC4[0]. It took files from the vTech and rendered output files with Epson printer formatting codes, centered text, made headings, etc.
- I regularly use a script I wrote to import my phone backups' SMS logs and dump them into my IMAP mailbox. I love being able to search all my email and SMS communication in the same interface.
- I have a podcatcher I wrote bolted onto my (heavily forked) tt-rss[1] installation to download podcasts to a local webserver for archiving and playing.
- My father persists in using a DOS accounting package for his business. A small program I wrote ingests check printing output from the DOS app (meant for dot matrix tractor-fed checks) and reformats it for sheet-fed checks in a laser printer.
- Front-end scripts for lots of command line utilities so that I don't have to remember obscure options for common tasks.
I have some Windows binaries from the mid 90s that I still use today. Mainly small utilities for various calculations/conversions, filesystem organisation, and the like.
When I was just starting my career around the late 1980s, I wrote a program on the Psion for a chain store in the UK that had 21 stores. Basically a person would walk the aisles and enter the stock codes and quantities. When they were done they would plug the device into a serial device. I wrote this other program in MS Basic (DOS) that dialed up all these Psions and downloaded the orders into an IBM S/38 Order and Inventory management system. I thought I was the dog's. I loved those devices.
We had 8086 IBM machines in our typing class. I remember writing a program to send random bits to the big dot matrix printer. I'd keep a buffer and when the printer did something strange I'd save the buffer and replay it till I isolated the sequence. When a substitute would show up the printer would put on a show ;)
Back when engineering software ran on Unix, exclusively, you had no choice but to use one of these. I remember the Mentor sales guy having one to demo the latest IC design software.
I had the DOS version. It was our 80s version of 3d printing, on dot matrix. I had built everything in the app by the end of it and my parents bought a lot of refills of their sticky paper from Egghead.
Mine were all printouts from the library from microfiche. I remember a stock trading simulator, a lemonade stand game and 3D sine wave program that was mostly in machine code.
Back in '97 (I was 13 then) I wrote a small BASIC program to generate a part list and assembly "manual" for industrial garage doors. It was actually developed in a TDD way (comparing their regular output files to my generated files). Actually handed over the source files which they actually maintained throughout the years.
It has been running in various incarnations on salvaged old machines and for the past 3 years in DOSBox untill january this year.
Still proud of that one.
Although I made "only" 1000 guilders (that's about $750 in 2016 dollars) on that, it seemed like a huge amount of money back then. :')
In the early 80's I was doing my computing 'A' levels at a technical college. I used to type my programs on one of those old-fashioned teletypes, which I think were a cast-off from a regional polytechnic. I think the computers did have keyboards, but there were only 3 of them, and competition was tight. So I used a teletype. Making a "backup" consisted of printing the program out to paper tape.
I kept the rolls of paper tape and occasionally used them as streamers, much to the curiosity of neighbours.
I have to admit I find this type of article about old computer/software quite interesting as recently I discovered a backup of mine that contained source code I wrote in 1993. I was writing assembly language back then. Using a really great library called Spontaneous Assembly. First version 2.0 and then 3.0. SpontaneousAssembly 3.0 added support for easily writing TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) code.
Back in the early 1990s I was in college and working in the computer lab. So I wrote various little DOS utilities to help us better manage the computers and the interaction with Novell Netware.
Due to this reminiscing I have even purchased a few tech books from that time. MS-DOS Encyclopedia, Peter Norton's Programmers Guide to the IBM PC, and some others.
I only wish I still had a copy of SpontaneousAssembly 3.0 as it would be fun to recompile some of my old code!
I still have a hard copy of it :D
My father printed it out back then. Good times.
Edit correction. Can't find the printout. Maybe it's still at home? I still got my basic and turbo pascal binder and some weird shit I can't quite remember.
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