Okay, so what's the oldest software that you still run on a regular basis...

Owned a PDP 11-74 in the late 80's. The wife eventually "convinced" me that that it, the two 12 inch cart drives and four terminals didn't work well with the decor! 🙂

When we sold the house, the folks that bought it asked me what that odd looking electrical outlet was for!
 
On a humorous note: at work we used Quaker Oatmeal containers tied together with some optical fiber instead of string. "Quaker PHoatONS" communications. But it did not require firmware to operate.

I did control 4 LASERS using the printer port of an IBM AT, running assembly and RM FORTRAN v2.43. That was in 1988 or so. I still use the same FORTRAN compiler and Assembler for doing realtime control of custom hardware. Computers got faster, what needs to be controlled sped-up, software to control it pretty much does not need to change.
 
Strangely enough, some of the oldest software I still have the installation media and keys for, Photoshop 4 (I got it back to 2.5, but 4 is the first with layers), is installed on my latest computer, an Asus EEE. Later Photoshop versions (including Elements and Lightroom) stumble over the EEE's reduced screen height, cutting off OK button on dialogs and the like - presumably they standardized for something upward of 800px some time past the mid nineties.
 
Brian Sweeney said:
On a humorous note: at work we used Quaker Oatmeal containers tied together with some optical fiber instead of string. "Quaker PHoatONS" communications. But it did not require firmware to operate.

I did control 4 LASERS using the printer port of an IBM AT, running assembly and RM FORTRAN v2.43. That was in 1988 or so. I still use the same FORTRAN compiler and Assembler for doing realtime control of custom hardware. Computers got faster, what needs to be controlled sped-up, software to control it pretty much does not need to change.
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Well yes, learning low level programming languages is always a better option than the high level stuff cos the assembly level really doesn't change since the basics of computers haven't really changed. They just got faster resulting in appalling inefficient software applications that consume resources. Time was when you had to be able to code for highly efficient execution. Not anymore it seems. Just throw some cobbled together software packages at the problem and pray it works even though you haven't a clue what is really happening in the software. I blame it all on SQL the most non intuitive scripting language ever devised IMO. After that anything was good enough.
 
Pickett Wilson said:
I still think Lotus 123 was the best spreadsheet ever. I actually still use it for simple personal spreadsheet stuff (on a really old IBM PC XT - original except for the 10 meg HD which died about 10 years ago) even though I have the latest version of Excel. The version I'm using is from 1984 or 1985.
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I still have my original copy of Lotus 1-2-3 v.1a and used a slightly later version until Windows would not run DOS programs any more. The non-GUI interface is still the fastest for data entry.

I kept my original IBM-XT while I threw away Commodore 64, Compaq luggable, Apple 2e, AT, 386, 486 machines. I don't think the XT has become worth anything yet.

Still searching for a 10MB hard drive to make my XT the way it come from the factory. It has an upgraded 30Mb RLL drive now. Just need to remove the AST six pack to take it back to 256K memory from the current 640K

Have a shrink wrap copy of DOS 2.1 for that XT. I think I upgraded it to DOS 4.0 before I quit using it.

I sold the 8087 math co-processor decades ago when I realized I could get $100- for it. Wonder is someday I will regret that?

I only remember the price of the Compaq luggable (portable? no) I paid dealer cost of $2,495 and it had not 128K of memory but a full 256K and not one but two 5 1/4" floppy drives, and was already upgraded to DOS 1.2.

And I remember us hiring an engineer who was employee #17 at Intel. He had doubts about Intel's ability to succeed and though mini-computer companies such as ours (MODCOMP) would be the wave of the future.
 
Oh, and I still occasionally use a HP 200LX (DOS based palmtop), a Nubus Mac (for the oldest of my LF scan backs), and a couple of SGIs (however with all of them running the last IRIX revision). And once in a while I do use Atari and Amiga software (on PC based emulators) to convert music scores from ancient productions of mine.
 
Quick Note on Photoshop 6.0: do not let it open more than 2GBytes of images at one time. It seems top use a 32-bit signed value for managing the Temp file...

I found the 7.0 Upgrade being tossed. Run PS 6.0 on one of my computers, PS 5.5 on another. "Dumpster-Diving-Ware".
 
NASA may have us all beat. The space shuttle's launch processing system is built on a series of 1975 MODCOMP IV computers running the MAX IV o/s. Each has been upgraded to 32K of core (not solid state) memory. NASA chose MODCOMP because of the unique system ability (in 1975) to communicate with other computers through multiplexers / demultiplexers (later known as modems).
 
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NASA put 8085's on Mars. Remember that one- basically an Intel 8080 with multiple priority level interrupts. I had a TI CC-40 that used the 8085. I also have the Microsoft FORTRAN-80 compiler for it. I can run it using a CP/m emulator running in a DOS Window. I used FORTRAN-80 for my first image processing software that could display the images as you watched.
 
Vim (or vi, depending on what system I'm on) has been my text editor for the past decade. I've probably used ImageMagick for just as long; the backbone of my current photo management workflow is a tiny shell script (20 lines). ...Also approaching the decade mark is my use of the irssi IRC client. I still run it in a screen on a server somewhere. Yes, I'm a geek! 🙂

(And various flavors of Linux since 1999. I did get a Mac Mini two years ago and really tried to like OS X for a long time, but ultimately failed.)
 
Not much here. Maybe Office 2008.

I don't think old programs that have been updated over the years count (i.e. a lot of unix scripts)
 
Brian Sweeney said:
NASA put 8085's on Mars. Remember that one- basically an Intel 8080 with multiple priority level interrupts.
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Yep, the 1977 JPL Voyager program. I was involved with the sale of the launch computers on that one as well. But my involvement was financial not technical.

But then I am old enough and local enough to have been there for the initial Mercury launches. It was tough competing with guys like Gus Grissom for girls at the local Steak & Shake drive-in. Not only because they were astronauts but because they all had new Corvette's courtesy of GM.
 
kipkeston said:
I don't think old programs that have been updated over the years count (i.e. a lot of unix scripts)
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Then again, the way you use and interact with common non-GUI programs usually change very little over the years, if at all. You could silently replace the vim binary on my system with one from 2000 and I would probably never have noticed (I'm not using any of the new features introduced in the past decade) 🙂
 
I never thought that I would get nostalgic over Wordstar and Lotus 123 - perhaps a Symphony or two too. 10 Mb hardrives - my first was 20 Mb with an 8087 and co processor. It flew at the speed of sound and you could produce a Mandelbrot set overnight. I stiil use CS 2 but am thinking of an upgrade, but then again............
 
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