I agree that it's imperative for us to help keep older systems alive and documented, for historic reasons, as well as to aid someone like this gentlemen who simply wants to continue working as usual. However, in these cases, I put on my IT hat and feel a responsibility to inform them of a data migration plan. Circumstances could prevent usage of the older systems, and data recovery may become challenging or near impossible. Users don't always think ahead to a point where they are not around and someone left behind may need access to what could be valuable information. I've seen it too often. On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 11:35 AM Tony Bogan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

Herb, you have described a good portion of my life with computers. Putting aside my interaction with the Phreak/Crack scene in the early to mid 80s, much of my life has been spent as a User, not a programmer. I was 14 or so using Money Street on the Apple II to reconcile the Checking accounts for our boats for the accountant. I used it till probably 1990 or so, dot matrix printer and all. I could still use it today!

I had an SE/30 running as a file server until the early 2000s, the list of machines I’ve used for a decade or more after their discontinuation is long.

They were a toy when I was 10 and got my first one (Apple II) in 1978. They were both a tool and a toy from the time I was 12 or 13 right up to the present. I certainly do more things in today’s world with my modern machines than I did in the past (webdesign, app Dev, etc) but at my daily job running my business I still run some software from 10 years ago and more because it just works, doing the same job it did more than a decade ago. Meanwhile I have modern machines and software working as well.

Tony