I’m in the middle of a big project in which I’m combining old stuff from my website, stuff currently on my computer, and stuff I have backed up onto CD/DVDs and seeing what of it I still want and what I can get rid of. It’s a tough task, because not only have I not done this sort of thing in ages, I am also a serious e-packrat.

The CDs and DVDs, featuring saved stuff that dates back to the early 90s (some of this stuff was originally backed up on QIC-80 tapes!) was full of delightful surprises. Among the wonders unearthed were:

• install disks for MS-DOS 5
• serial number for Quattro Pro for Windows (PA941A11386681)
• PFS:Write
• a CONFIG.SYS file for running Ultima 7
• the rec.music.rem FAQ (1 Apr 1994 revision)
• a copy of FRU2K15beta.exe from 2004, whatever the hell that is
• install for audiognome which I think was a Napster-like program? (also have Napster)
• drivers for printers I haven’t owned in over a decade

You get the idea. But I found a lot of genuine treasures here, such as items from the absolute earliest days of this site to old programs I wrote (it may be time for Namer for Mathematica or Namer for Python) to tons of images from long ago.

There were a LOT of things from my time hanging out on the Something Awful forums (around 1999 and 2000), two of which I’ve already shared. I’ll do a whole post about that in the near future.

I’ve still got miles to go (I have over 1000 fonts to see if I need to keep, for example) but so far it’s been kind of fun sifting through all this old stuff. I’ll let you know of the 6 DVDs, 13 CDs, and gobs of stuff from my site and my computer, how big the final archive is.

In the meantime, here are some pictures I made for friends of mine: