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The Internet Archive's Trove of Historical Software Dwarfs All Others, Archivist Claims
The Internet Archive included terabytes of historical software, making it the largest collection of historical software in the world, according to an archivist.
Credit: rcclibrary.wikispaces.com
The Internet Archive now offers the largest collection of historical software in the world, according to computer archivist Jason Scott. Although Scott does not reveal the exact size of the historical software collection, he notes that it consists of terabytes of data.
"My provided goal was do for software what archive.org has been doing for [books, music, visual items, and websites]," Scott says. "In short summary, I have done that." Scott has been working on the project for the past two years.
The Internet Archive includes a variety of old programs, games, and utilities, and is split into several sections. Items in the archive are the Shareware CD archive, PC games, mirrors of old FTP sites, programs extracted from old disk drives, and the Old School Emulation Center for firmware and programs of classic computers and game consoles. Demo programs make up a good portion of the archive. They can be downloaded but running them on today's computers could be a problem, and an emulator might have to be run to get the downloads to work.
From PC World
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