What Classic software is still in use?

My relative has a 4D based database that he uses in running his clinic. It was written for OS 8/9 between 1998 and 2001 or so. It is networked, so about 5 client Macs run 4D, and get data from a central Mac. The programmer would update it for OS X for a fee. But my relative is about 65, so who know how much longer he will need to store patient data for. It's cheaper and more convenient just to let things just run as they are.

The Mac hardware is no problem -- he just bought 10 unopened iMac DV machines from somewhere.

What is a problem is that the peripherals: Each Mac has an earlier-model Dymo Labelwriter attached to it. The newer Labelwriter models don't support OS 9. One of the Macs also has a scanner for letters which we hope does not break down. Also, reading PDF files is quite slow on each iMac.

>> I can't justify spending money and time to replace existing
>> software which meets my needs perfectly well, especially when the
>> "new" stuff doesn't seem to do anything new I want, and may not
>> actually do what I need.

Unless you are willing to make the effort to keep a legacy mac
running for years and years, I think you can justify getting a new
machine. In the long run you might even find that you are MORE
productive with faster macs and more modern applications. Just the
pain of life in the fast lane, as I like to think of it.

Regards,

Howard

On Nov 3, 2007, at 7:32 AM, Damien Ledwich wrote:

> DDExpand
>
> We have a lot of archived CDs that contain DiskDoubler compressed
> files.
> Any suggestions for workarounds in OSX gratefully accepted.

As with any ancient archives or file formats generally--re-archive in
or convert to a modern format before access to the old format is
lost. Repeat over time.

Of course, it may now be too late. On the other hand, storage
conditions may have rendered the CDs unreadable anyhow.

(Our friendly US federal government spent tons of money recovering
data from archived tapes after forgetting that.)

   --John

At 07:19 -0700 UTC, on 2007-11-03, Gregory Sigman wrote:

> SoundjamMP, for compressing AIFF files into mp3s.
>
> Can I not use iTunes for that? Sure I can. BUT- these AIFF files are
> live spoken word recordings typically 30 to 60 minutes long which I
> edit, compress, and upload to a website. I do not wish to add them to
> my iTunes library, there is no need to encode them with the very high
> quality settings I use for music in iTunes (I'm an audio snob, though
> not nearly at the level of "audiophile"-- I can't afford that), nor
> do I wish to shuffle the settings back and forth for every time I
> switch from music to speech and back.

It's likely pretty easy to AppleScript iTunes to
[1] store the current encoding settings
[2] set them to something else
[3] import the files you want to encode
[4] copy the resulting files to where you want them
[5] remove them from the iTunes Library
[6] set iTunes back to its original encoding settings


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

At 07:32 -0700 UTC, on 2007-11-03, fcchuan wrote:

> My relative has a 4D based database that he uses in running his clinic. It
>was written for OS 8/9 between 1998 and 2001 or so. It is networked, so
>about 5 client Macs run 4D, and get data from a central Mac. The programmer
>would update it for OS X for a fee. But my relative is about 65, so who know
>how much longer he will need to store patient data for.

When he retires, are his patients going to retire too? Or would they move to
another doctor/clinic and expect to be able to take their patient history
with them?

> It's cheaper and more convenient just to let things just run as they are.

Of course I don't know what data is stored in this system. But at first
glance, this sounds like plain irresponsible. In some countries it might even
be criminal. (Consider that this system might know that a patient is allergic
to certain medicine. What if that knowledge is lost and the patient suffers
permanent damage because the next doctor uses that medicine?)


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

Those with favorite pre OS X applications would be advised to keep at least one Mac on Tiger, because Leopard does not support Classic. We all knew Apple would make this break, but it is always a shock. I have one Classic application that is vital to managing my diabetic dietary control - it is MasterCook Delux. Mine was obtained back in the OS 7 days - it has been upgraded for Windows but not the Mac. Well, life must go on and I have reserved one Mac to run Tiger forever.

John Ferman jwfermanties2.net

 At 07:19 -0700 UTC, on 2007-11-03, Gregory Sigman wrote:

> SoundjamMP, for compressing AIFF files into mp3s.
>
> Can I not use iTunes for that? Sure I can. BUT- these AIFF files are
> live spoken word recordings typically 30 to 60 minutes long which I
> edit, compress, and upload to a website.

Take a look at Audacity and Audion. Both are free and may be able to do
what you want.

<http://audacity.sourceforge.net/>
<http://www.panic.com/audion/>

Audion is no longer being supported.

>> I use a program called VSE link tester. It has never been upgraded
>> to OSX,
>> and they have no plans to upgrade. My website has over 4,300
>> links, and I
>> have no idea what I will do when I can't use VSE anymore. If
>> anyone has
>> software that runs in OSX, I would love to hear about it. I have one

VSE is the reason I still use a g4. I know that the way is updates
search engines is kind of dated but it has worked well for me. I wish
that I could find something that had all of the features. Oh well,
know I know how all of those people still running win98 feel. Regards
Chris

On 3-Nov-2007, at 15:11, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
> At 07:19 -0700 UTC, on 2007-11-03, Gregory Sigman wrote:
>> SoundjamMP, for compressing AIFF files into mp3s.
>>
>> Can I not use iTunes for that? Sure I can. BUT- these AIFF files are
>> live spoken word recordings typically 30 to 60 minutes long which I
>> edit, compress, and upload to a website. I do not wish to add them to
>> my iTunes library, there is no need to encode them with the very high
>> quality settings I use for music in iTunes (I'm an audio snob, though
>> not nearly at the level of "audiophile"-- I can't afford that), nor
>> do I wish to shuffle the settings back and forth for every time I
>> switch from music to speech and back.
>
> It's likely pretty easy to AppleScript iTunes to
> [1] store the current encoding settings
> [2] set them to something else
> [3] import the files you want to encode
> [4] copy the resulting files to where you want them
> [5] remove them from the iTunes Library
> [6] set iTunes back to its original encoding settings

In fact, I think Automator can do all of those.

Fire up Automator, set it to record, do your task once, and stop
recording. See what you have. It'll take some cleaning up, I'm sure,
but I bet it will work.

n Nov 3, 2007, at 5:11 PM, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:

> At 07:32 -0700 UTC, on 2007-11-03, fcchuan wrote:
>
>> My relative has a 4D based database that he uses in running his
>> clinic. It
>> was written for OS 8/9 between 1998 and 2001 or so. It is
>> networked, so
>> about 5 client Macs run 4D, and get data from a central Mac. The
>> programmer
>> would update it for OS X for a fee. But my relative is about 65, so
>> who know
>> how much longer he will need to store patient data for.
>
> When he retires, are his patients going to retire too? Or would they
> move to
> another doctor/clinic and expect to be able to take their patient
> history
> with them?
>
>> It's cheaper and more convenient just to let things just run as
>> they are.
>
> Of course I don't know what data is stored in this system. But at
> first
> glance, this sounds like plain irresponsible. In some countries it
> might even
> be criminal. (Consider that this system might know that a patient is
> allergic
> to certain medicine. What if that knowledge is lost and the patient
> suffers
> permanent damage because the next doctor uses that medicine?)

I suspect that by law the doctor will have to keep his system running
for at least a year so the records are available to patients. I
remember my father-in-law keeping all of his patient records for years
(all on paper) after he retired as a dentist. This was a requirement
of state law. So the data will need to be available for X years
following retirement. Moving the database to Mac OS X, just as
insurance, sounds like a good idea, especially if the programmer will
do it for free (I suspect that the programmer wants your relative to
have the database on a newer version of 4D to make the programmer's
life easier).

--Paul Chernoff

damien488 said to the question, What Classic software is still in use?

>DDExpand
>We have a lot of archived CDs that contain DiskDoubler compressed files.
>Any suggestions for workarounds in OSX gratefully accepted.

I'd find some way to automate (Applescript perhaps) copying and
expanding those files for archiving on either new CD-R or DVD optical
media. I bet there's an Applescript guru here who could advise you.

I remember the excitement about DiskDoubler many years ago when magnetic
floppy media was expensive. (ah yes, remember when a box of 3.5 inch
floppies, quantity 10, cost $30 ?). DD seemed to be a real godsend until
the price of media plummeted and made it irrelevant.

At least you recognize you have a problem. I'm sure there are people out
there who don't and will be shocked when they need to get to their own
files five years down the line.

- Hank

One bit of software that only works with classic is a  BASIC programming language called TrueBASIC.  It is said (in the ads) to have been developed by the same Dartmouth president who developed the original BASIC language.  It uses no line numbers and is really very elegant, for a BASIC.  But it offers no support, has an accounting system so inefficient that I lost the expense account money (not very much, of course) that I used to pay for it, and only works for Macs on OS 9.  So the newer Macs render it impossible to use because they don't come with Classic.  This actually presented me with the problem of finding another language to do my simple computations in.  I wish Classic were still available.

> Even 18 years ago anyone thinking that custom software could survive for 10
> years needed better advice. Thinking it would last for 50, well....

As I stated, this is not custom software for my company... It may have been
during the development 18 years ago but it has been adopted by numerous
companies and universities worldwide since then. And in theory it is still
"under development". I speak with the Owner/programmer about bugs and
features that I'd like usually monthly or as they arise. I've offered
multiple time to get a Intel Mac to do alpha/beta testing. All I get is,
"when it's done you'll have it, until then it doesn't exist". I may get a
gruff response due to my asking about it for the last 3 or so years but I
don't think my asking is inappropriate.

I've had to buy used equipment for new hires, not something I consider
forward thinking.

> Like it or not, that the way the IT industry operates.

Most weaving companies do not operate on a 3 year hardware/software upgrade
cycle. It's more like 10 years... These people tend to be technophobes.
Those of you out there with vast amounts of "ancient hardware experience"
will expand on this but we tossed a "Data General" behemoth in favor of an
IBM AS400 back in 2001. And in my opinion it was 10 years too late. That
said, I know that that is partly the issue with getting a OS X native
version of my CAD software, though it doesn't make it less infuriating.

Adam

    Thanks for the suggestions I received about checking links on my
website. Some of the programs I have already tried, and I am checking
out the others. One of the problems that many of them have, is that
they don't tell you the name of the URL, or what page on my site the
bad link is located on. Dreamweaver can check the internal links, but
it is the external links that I am checking.

    VSE Link tester gives you a report that looks like this. I haven't
found anything yet that gives you this kind of report, but I am still
looking.

Broken link
http://www.si.edu/ala/aasl/aaslissues/aaslinfolit/learningthrough.cfm
Found at:http://www.deweybrowse.org/invent.htm, tag "A HREF" in line
43 with the text "Encyclopedia Smithsonian: Inventors and Innovations"
Reason:404 Not Found

Thank you,
Gail
--
Gail Shea Grainger
Librarian, Chesterfield School, Chesterfield, NH
Dewey Browse --K-12 Web site cataloged by Dewey Decimal Classification
http://www.deweybrowse.org ggraingerdeweybrowse.org
Past President NHEMA

ClipboardMaster 2.0 (sometimes called ClipMaster 2.0). Copyright 1994 by In Phase Computing, Glendale , CA.

Purpose: to manage multiple clipboards (up to nine).

With ClipboardMaster, you decide which clipboard contains which item -- the contents do not change or move to other clipboards of their own volition. It doesn't take long to learn, for example, that Clipboard No. 5 always contains the heading "(from TidBITS #902)". [And next week, the first time you paste it into a file, you will edit it to read "(from TidBITS #903)" before you save it to Clipboard No. 5.]

Many multiple-clipboard programs are available for Mac OS X, but I have not found one that assigns a given phrase to a specified clipboard with an unchanging moniker. You have to guess where a particular item is stored, and it will move around as you store additional items. Some programs provide thumbnail images to address this problem, but this requires that you examine a bunch of images in order to find the one you need. And if you fill up the stack of available clipboards, the item you need will get overwritten.

One word, one application: FrameMaker.

I have used this application daily (hourly) as my bread-and-butter since 1993 (and no, I'm not an Apple Tech Pubs employee either). My PBG4 is getting a bit long in the tooth, but I don't particularly relish the idea of an Intel mac, running FM under Windoze - it just strikes me as being oxymoronic. I'm not particularly interested in purchasing a license for FM on Windows, as I keep waiting for the day when Adobe announces that that particular version/platform is also being discontinued.

I'd really like to hear folks' comments about rational FM migration paths (Tex, LaTex, MSWord and OpenOffice are not rational choices). I do very long document publishing of technical and operator's manuals, so sophisticated auto-numbering of paragraphs, document-internal and document-external cross-references, tables that aren't neurotic (like MSWord), and page-numbering are some critical features for me. Potential applications that I'm considering are DocBook and InDesign CS3, with the dtptools plugin (http://www.dtptools.com/cross-references/Cross-References_Info_Sheet.pdf)...

Any thoughts and comments would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks, Jim

I already know the solution is to buy a new scanner, but I still run a UMAX 2100U (USB) scanner under Classic, and there are no OSX drivers available.

Of course, I can delay upgrading my desktop machine (a 450 MHz Sawtooth, which I upgraded to dual 1.8 GHz) to Leopard, but sooner or later I will probably want to upgrade.

(I'll probably end up selling the scanner for peanuts to a Windows-using friend.)

Richard

Strategic Conquest!

And no, I'm not giving it up. :-)

I think in a year or so I will probably buy cheap one of the last and fastest Macs to run OS9 natively - would that be something like the August 2002 Dual 1.25Ghz G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors)?

My OS9 Software:

Rebirth SoundDiver Juno Librarian (Roland Juno 106 editor) MESA II (Akai Sampler editor)

Roland Virtual Sound Canvas Listen SoundJam (I like it)

Property Investment Analysis A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes Hypercard

And Games I miss: Pro Pinball - Big Race USA Deus Ex Descent III Ferazel's Wand Realmz Harry The Handsome Executive Nanosaur 1 Warlords II Barrack Oxyd Diamonds

Actually I have a Powermac 7600/200 somewhere - might make a good OS7/8 machine for the earlier games. What was the fastest machine that booted system 6?

We use a special Database-Publishing Software called "AO Campaign" which only exists as a classic application. There is no way to migrate it to OSX and it still works pretty well. This is the reason we will have to stay with Tiger on our Enterprise for now. I can't see why Apple had to drop classig in 10.5 - i guess it would have been pretty trivial to just carry the classic emulation over to 10.5.