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Friday Flashback – Run 1980s Software

AutoCAD 2.18 circa 1985/1986I have my own private time machine on my laptop. I still run AutoCAD 2.18 from 1985/86 using a Virtual Machine running a 10Mb DOS partition. It is pretty amazing to try and use 1980 software today especially AutoCAD 2.18 without the UNDO command, Autosnaps, real time pan and zoom and so much more. You really realize how far CAD and design software has come.

In AutoCAD 2.18 it was the first release with AutoLISP and only had 90 commands. I run AutoCAD 2.18 on a virtual machine of DOS 5 and a 10Mb disk size maximum otherwise AutoCAD 2.18 will not run. Apparently in 1985 the idea of a hard disk larger than 10Mb was crazy talk.

Here are a couple more screen shots and a quick YouTube video:

AutoCAD 2.18 Start MenuAutoCAD 2.18 and Space Shuttle Sample Drawing

My video on YouTube of AutoCAD 2.18 http://youtu.be/070Y8V3Mck4

If you want to try running Windows 1.0 or 1980 software for Apple check out these crazy web hosted virtual machines of software. Perhaps I should see about placing AutoCAD 2.18 in a web based virtual machine for people to try.

Relive the "80s and Run Windows 1.01 in Your Browser

Play with Mac OS 7 (System 7) Apps in Your Web Browser

List of 28 software you can run at archive.org:
https://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3Ahistoricalsoftware&sort=-publicdate

Cheers,
Shaan

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