Old Mac software - any use?

TidBITS Talk
1

I have a lot of old Mac software, some of it is still sealed. Is there any value or use for this or does it go to the landfill?
Here are 3:
Hypercard (opened) M0556 with manuals ©1987
MicroSoft Mail (sealed) ©1991
MacTops 3.1 SITKA (sealed) ©1991
I have boxes of this stuff…

2

Games might be useful if you can play them in an emulator.

The hardest part will be getting the files off of old HFS-formatted discs, since Apple no longer includes HFS drivers with macOS. But assuming you can do that, there may be some value.

There are also museums and archivers that might want them. If you want to do a bit of work, some web searching and e-mails might find someone who wants them.

And, of course, there’s always eBay. Bundle it all together with a low enough price and someone may want them.

4

There is a surprisingly big market for new and used HyperCard stuff on eBAY:

I can’t help but remember how powerful and easy to use HyperCard was since I first sat down with it on my old SE at an old job. A college intern taught me how to use it.

5

As I made my living creating HyperCard-based solutions back in the day, I was quite pleasantly surprised to hear this. Unfortunately, I think if you narrow the search to “Macintosh HyperCard”, the results aren’t quite as impressive. Even then, the prices people are asking for some of this stuff are incredible to me. I wonder if they actually sell any?

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6

The developer in me wants to know more about this hypercar daemon you guys are discussing. :grinning:

But seriously, I remember HyperCard very fondly. My final year software project for my Computer Science degree was to build something better than HC for giving presentations - we made something that was better than PowerPoint v1.0 but too unreliable to surpass HyperCard. So many great metaphors for translating the real world into the digital one, and so easy to build an intuitive interface!

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