Learning Company software has been pretty well archived at this point. To me, the easiest approach would be to hold onto the original box/packaging for sentimental purposes, and just find a copy of it on a site like the Internet Archive.
If your goal is to use it on a period-correct system, I’d go with 34/40pin adapters that lets you read flash cards, USB, etc.
A lot of my friends have kept their old 486 computers, and everything is period-correct except for the hard drive and floppy drive which have been replaced with a CF-to-IDE for the HDD and Gotek running FlashFloppy firmware for the 3.5".
A lot of my friends have kept their old 486 computers, and everything is period-correct except for the hard drive and floppy drive which have been replaced with a CF-to-IDE for the HDD and Gotek running FlashFloppy firmware for the 3.5".
That's quite stretching the definition of "period correct". I mean: how could one have a 486 even less period correct than that? With adapters for more modern RAM and more modern CPUs and a 5090 somehow stuck in it?
> everything is period-correct EXCEPT for the hard drive and floppy drive
Hence why I couched my assertion with "except". IMHO its the best way to enjoy the original hardware experience without all the inevitable failures of using decades old magnetic storage media.
Side note, I had high hopes for industrial boards (Vortex86) as a means of letting more people experience the original hardware without having to lug around a boat anchor but when I tried one, the experience was fraught with all kinds of annoying issues (SVGA, etc)...
FlashFloppy is indeed excellent (same author as GreaseWeazle).
While archived, his version could be different than the archived ones. Or could contain modifications done by him. Or could be the only surviving pristine copy never written to by the user (raw flux dump can typically identify this).
If in doubt, always `gw read whatever.scp` (using this extension automatically yields a raw flux image)
Comments
Learning Company software has been pretty well archived at this point. To me, the easiest approach would be to hold onto the original box/packaging for sentimental purposes, and just find a copy of it on a site like the Internet Archive.
If your goal is to use it on a period-correct system, I’d go with 34/40pin adapters that lets you read flash cards, USB, etc.
A lot of my friends have kept their old 486 computers, and everything is period-correct except for the hard drive and floppy drive which have been replaced with a CF-to-IDE for the HDD and Gotek running FlashFloppy firmware for the 3.5".
Upvoted you but...
That's quite stretching the definition of "period correct". I mean: how could one have a 486 even less period correct than that? With adapters for more modern RAM and more modern CPUs and a 5090 somehow stuck in it?
> everything is period-correct EXCEPT for the hard drive and floppy drive
Hence why I couched my assertion with "except". IMHO its the best way to enjoy the original hardware experience without all the inevitable failures of using decades old magnetic storage media.
Side note, I had high hopes for industrial boards (Vortex86) as a means of letting more people experience the original hardware without having to lug around a boat anchor but when I tried one, the experience was fraught with all kinds of annoying issues (SVGA, etc)...
FlashFloppy is indeed excellent (same author as GreaseWeazle).
While archived, his version could be different than the archived ones. Or could contain modifications done by him. Or could be the only surviving pristine copy never written to by the user (raw flux dump can typically identify this).
If in doubt, always `gw read whatever.scp` (using this extension automatically yields a raw flux image)