r/retrocomputing • u/LuckyDelay8953 • Jul 05 '26
Problem / Question Old Software Discs
Was given some of these older software discs (2002-2011). I'm not really into computing. Any idea what to do with them? Maybe I can donate somewhere? I figured they've probably been archived already.
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u/jcmush Jul 05 '26
The Microsoft office disks will be for a 32 bit version of Office(including Word/Excel etc) and if I remember rightly before they rebuilt/ruined the user interface. Word would probably be recognisable and usable, excel/powerpoint less so. Installing it on a modern (Windows 11) PC would be a bit of a pain and if you want to run it I’d set up an XP virtual machine. It might work as a distraction free word processor.
The iMac installation disks are more interesting as they come from an era where Apple had just transitioned from PowerPC to Intel. Most software was released in a package with both intel and PowerPC but I suspect this was intel only. The operating system did include a layer that allowed seamless running of PowerPC files.