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unexpectedbill

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Everything posted by unexpectedbill

  1. Well...OK? I wasn't trying to be grumpy with anyone, nor have I even the slightest interest in starting any sort of a sparring match. So, with that said, I'll just be moving on.
  2. To try and answer the latest round of questions in order: 1. Yes, I'm interested in rediscovering the program mainly for my own entertainment. It would certainly have useful purposes. 2. The original floppy diskette went bad (unrecoverable read error/bad sectors). Same as this one. I'm guessing they used "grade B"/duplicator grade media. I'm 100% sure it got tossed a LONG time ago. 3. Without wanting to sound grumpy or anything: anything the online world has to offer by way of a web search is something I've seen. The fake torrent link, WorldCat, etc...if Google or another reputable search engine comes up with it, I've seen it. :-) I'm here because I've exhausted pretty much every other option. 4. You can be sure I've scoured eBay and other places for this software. This is not a new search. I've been constantly looking for basically all of the last 20 years. I've seen the program come up for sale once on a rather suspicious looking web site. They couldn't deliver the goods. 5. The disk doesn't use copy protection or special formatting. It's a bog standard FAT12 formatted high density 3.5" diskette. I read it on an actual floppy drive attached to an actual floppy drive controller...none of this USB drive nonsense. (If you really care, the drive is whatever Dell installed from the factory in a Dimension 8300 I bought new. The computer runs Windows XP. I took an image of the disk before I did anything else using WinImage. The drive works perfectly.) As to the whole matter of such diskettes failing...if you've truly never lost one due to media failures, you are a far luckier person than I, or anyone I know. :-) I'm not new to the game of trying to bring stubborn diskettes back to life, and I've tried every trick that I know (of course, taking an image of the disk as it existed, with the write protect switch set, before ever doing anything). I believe it's beyond saving, don't really wish to send it out, and really am hoping that someone, somewhere, either still has this program installed on their computer's hard drive or the complete software package hiding away somewhere. (All of that said, I don't have any special disk controller boards or other specialized hardware to try. Not that it would matter now, because something rather unfortunate has happened to the diskette since.) Nor do I have any shortage of good working older computer equipment (PC/XT, 286, 386, 486, only early Pentiums aren't well represented in my collection). I don't particularly enjoy computer programming, but maybe it's time I just buckled down and wrote a program that does the same thing this one used to do. It can't have been all that difficult -- I believe the original to have been written in Visual Basic 3.0. The question I'm ultimately really asking is "Who has a copy of this program?" Or thinks they do. Or remembers someone who did. Or has it still moldering away on their hard drive. Not "how can I revive a long ago defective diskette".
  3. Those have come up in my previous searches. :-) All of them are much more advanced than what I'm looking for. (The Books That Work program confined itself to household wiring situations and a few wiring devices like single way, three way, (possibly) four way light switches and outlets.) I'm not looking for an electronic circuit simulator, just something that simulates very basic household electricity stuff like the BTW program did. Or, ideally, the BTW program itself. (Surely someone's got a copy moldering on their hard drive, in an old diskette box or up in the attic somewhere!)
  4. I'll get some pictures of the box and installation diskette. There's just the one diskette. I bought a copy of the program sometime in the mid-1990s on closeout. I think I found it at a bookstore. It wasn't a part of an electronics curriculum or anything like that. The software itself was pretty limited in what it could do and what kind of devices you could wire up, but it was great fun just to play around with. (And, admittedly, do stupid things, like wiring a direct short to the "power plant".) Unfortunately, the WorldCat web site is something I've seen many a time in my searches for this software. I've tried asking around at many a library over the years, and none of them had or could find it (through an inter-library loan program). I did some research on that CD-ROM (it's advertised in the help file for the Wiring program) and it doesn't seem to have the Wiring simulator on it. I did see that someone on the Malwarebytes user forum has or had a copy of it installed on their computer. I have my doubts that I could actually get in touch with that person. I've also tracked down a few people who worked for the company. They've either never replied or were unable to help. Edit: here's a picture of the installation diskette! I'll have to find the box.
  5. Hello all. For many years, I've been hoping to rediscover a computer program published by Books That Work (seemingly later swallowed up by Sierra Interactive) and known as "Wiring: Circuit Planner and Simulator". I've gone on quite a few fruitless searches for it. (If you search the web, many of the relevant results are my looking for it. I've even tried contacting some of the people who once worked for the company.) I got as close as I've ever been the other day, when my neighbor was stacking up old computer hardware for recycling, and a diskette containing this program turned up. Only the installation diskette has succumbed to the pressures of time and is corrupted. I did everything I could to try and save it, but it was just too far gone. As you might imagine, it's incredibly frustrating to be so close and yet so far. So, I'm hoping that maybe someone here has a copy of this program. I'm quite able to show proof of ownership for the software (the manuals are long gone, but I still have the box it came in). Worst case, I'd even be open to another program with a straightforward and simple user interface like what this program had, if someone knows of one.
  6. I'm "that guy" and now I'm here, for whatever that's worth. A friend of mine brought what was going on over at the Pale Moon forums to my attention. I'd registered for their forum back in late 2014 for some reason or another and never ended up having anything to say ... until that point. I threw my hat into the ring, and my (first-ever) posting was approved by their moderation staff. I checked into the thread later to see what was being said and was absolutely shocked to find that my posting was gone and I'd been permanently banned from their forum! Their forum software offered to let me e-mail their administration and so I did, explaining that to the best of my knowledge I had neither violated their rules or said anything inappropriate. They have reinstated my account and reversed the ban, stating that it was a mistake on their part. Unfortunately, the post I wrote did not come back and I didn't think to take a copy of it. I never expected that it would result in my being given the boot! The end of the story goes like this: by the time I wrote that post, I'd already begun the switch back to Firefox. And while I've got no grudge against the folks developing Pale Moon, I think it's best that I simply move on to different browser software. I don't feel right using their software any longer. If either of you, or anyone else, would like to contact me, feel free to send me a private message here.
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