Shareware Professionals

[Juancho]

As I've been slowly setting up this vintage Compaq LTE 5000 laptop
with Jvaqbjf 3.1 (not Jvaqbjf sbe Jbextebhcf, mind you) and Internet
access, and furnishing the machine with the period-correct software
which is needed to make it tick, I've found a name I had last heard
more than 25 years ago: "The Association of Shareware Professionals"
(a.k.a. ASP).

Oh, the memories! Anyone around here used to be affiliated with them?

[Juancho]

On Tue, 16 Jan 2024 16:09:51 -0000 (UTC), Gary Barnes
>I never got any money directly from users for DiscContent, but I did get
>paid by Amstrad Action for the publishing rights.

I arrived to the diskette-distributed PC-based shareware-scene in its
last hours, but I do remember buying a 720 KB 3.5" diskette with the
Bio-Menace game for DOS (it came inside a colorful, giant cardboard
blister), and having a blast with that minimalistic game.

Other than that, I never bought any shareware, as I was too young to
use the computer (an IBM PS/1 with a 486SX and 4 MB RAM) for anything
but exploring what was available software-wise.

[Garrett Wollman]

In article <slrnuqdai...@logan.adminspotting.org>,
Gary Barnes <g...@adminspotting.org> wrote:

>No, but I do remember when shareware was a thing.

I suspect I may be one of the very few people in the world who paid
the registration fee for John Bradley's `xv` <s>pr0n</s> image viewing
tool. Don't recall what it was, but I got a printed manual and a code
to define on the compiler command line to remove the "UNREGISTERED"
watermark in the UI. I remember using Procomm in the PC-DOS days but
I don't recall whether I persuaded my family to register it or not.

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wol...@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

[Juancho]

On Wed, 17 Jan 2024 00:03:12 -0000 (UTC), Gary Barnes
> DiscContent was written to use 3" floppies, but was distributed on cassette.

On cassete! Now, that *is* vintage.

[Rob Adams]

I had something sitting in atari.archive back in the day, was published
as postcardware, and I did actually receive one postcard some years later.

It was a system reboot app, you had to place it in the auto folder on
the floppy to make the system reboot and run from the HDD instead
becasue the HDD hadnt become active the first time past.

--
This .sig deliberately left blank

[Stephen Harris]

Gary Barnes <g...@adminspotting.org> wrote:
> I never got any money directly from users for DiscContent, but I did get
> paid by Amstrad Action for the publishing rights.

Not shareware, but postcardware, and published by "PC Plus" on one of
their cover disks. Kinda symlinks for DOS executables to keep your PATH
small.

I lost the code for a long time then found out that I'd also submitted
it to SIMTEL20 and so found a copy there :-)

https://www.sweharris.org/post/2012-06-01-exelink/

I have no idea if anyone except me ever used it. But I really wrote it
for myself and got a cheque from PC Plus, so it's all good!

--

rgds
Stephen

[Juancho]

On Wed, 17 Jan 2024 15:27:25 +0100, Michel <ab...@rubberchicken.nl> wrote:
> In the end we found that one solution for that problem was to suspend
> the tape drive from under a shelf using those big postie rubber bands.
> Things loaded just fine after that.

Loading a game from cassete tape was not fun. I remember my friend
manually rewinding one using a BIC penball, while the other tape was RUN"

[The Horny Goat]

On Sat, 13 Jan 2024 21:28:53 +0100, Juancho <ete...@notreally.com>
wrote:

Only Jvaqbjf 3.11 was ever called Jvaqbjf sbe Jbextebhcf and was the
first version to include a very rudimentary networking ability.

I was never affiliated with them ohg qvq trg zl Zvpebfbsg
Pregvsvpngvba sbe Jvaqbjf 95 which basically re-did the networking
abilities of 3.11 fairly functionally and improved on it with 98.....

[The Horny Goat]

On Wed, 17 Jan 2024 15:23:37 +0100, Michel <ab...@rubberchicken.nl>
wrote:

>I remember taping stuff off the radio for the Acorn Electron.
>
>And I also vaguely remember a friend with an Atari who had
>software distributed on a record.

My Apple II+ came with several casette tapes but since I paid $700 for
their 143k floppy drive (yup - floppy not hard) they gathered dust. I
assume I got rid of these cassettes when my II packed it in.

[Juancho]

On 2024-01-19, The Horny Goat <lcr...@home.ca> wrote:
> Only Jvaqbjf 3.11 was ever called Jvaqbjf sbe Jbextebhcf and was the
> first version to include a very rudimentary networking ability.

There are traces on the Internet of this:
https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-3/wfw-31

But I didn't ever see it in the wild. In fact, I never saw anything but
plain 3.1, as I was just a home user without any LAN and the Internet
was not in my radar.

> I was never affiliated with them ohg qvq trg zl Zvpebfbsg
> Pregvsvpngvba sbe Jvaqbjf 95 which basically re-did the networking
> abilities of 3.11 fairly functionally and improved on it with 98.....

In plain 3.1 there is no networking support at all, the NIC drivers
are loaded in DOS/autoexec.bat before loading the "win" command. And
that is precisely what I am doing: DOS packet driver, Windows, Trumpet
Winsock, Apps.

--
EOT

[Claudio Calvelli]

On 2024-01-17, Garrett Wollman <wol...@bimajority.org> wrote:
> I suspect I may be one of the very few people in the world who paid
> the registration fee for John Bradley's `xv` <s>pr0n</s> image viewing
> tool. Don't recall what it was, but I got a printed manual and a code
> to define on the compiler command line to remove the "UNREGISTERED"
> watermark in the UI.

I still use an "unregistered" copy of XV even though I once did send the
money, but I since lost the code to remove teh "unregistered" watermark.

Since full sources are available it wouldn't be too difficult to "cheat"
and remove the watermark anyway. But of course one doesn't.

C

[Juancho]

On Sun, 21 Jan 2024 13:44:50 -0000 (UTC), Gary Barnes
<g...@adminspotting.org> wrote:
> Fortunately, slrn has it built-in, and my finger-macroes hit ESC-r before I
> even realised what I was doing.

slrn indeed has it buil-in. But this beautiful, *beautiful* Forte Agent
1.93 program for 16-bit Jvaqbjf also has it - bound to the Ctrl+3 hotkey.

In fact, now that I think of it, there is nothing I *really* care about
which I cannot do in this vintage Compaq LTE 5000 running Jvaqbjf 3.1.
Email, Gopher, FTP, Usenet, IRC, SSH, WordPerfect 5.1? - Got that covered!

I may try to install Jvaqbjf AG 3.51 on this machine, because it's
somewhat annoying that WinPlay3 stops playing for 40 seconds straight when
I use PuTTY to connect to my main Yvahk battlestation. Clearly Jvaqbjf 3.1
scheduler is not the best of the pack, it has to pay its duties to the
underlying ZF-QBF core it runs on.

[Rob Adams]

On 21/01/2024 23:14, Gary Barnes wrote:
> Fortunately, slrn has it built-in, and my finger-macroes hit ESC-r before I
> even realised what I was doing.

Unfortunately Guhaqreoveq seems to have absolutely no concept on how to
handle this.