I know that ‘unboxing’ donation videos are quite popular, but I thought I’d do the blog equivalent. I don’t want to ‘out’ the sender, although I did email them back a big THANKS, although I didn’t get a reply. Maybe it’s an email thing but I wanted to tell them THANKS again!

To start is a bunch of loose CD’s including old SDK’s, and the infamous Windows 2000 RC1 set including Dec Alpha builds of workstation & server. Also in there is Beta 3 of Windows 98! Cool!

In the box was also Back Office 45, Visual C++ 6.0, a sealed copy of Windows 2000 Server, Visual Studio 2005 Standard and Expression Studio 2.

I’ve always loved this, it’s NT 4.0 and all the good bits of 1997, like Exchange 5.5 & IIS 4.0! Also in there is a copy of Outlook 2000, so this is a much later build/packaging of Back Office 4.5 . I’ve always wondered how many if any Back Office purchasers ever used SNA Server. I’ve seen it something exclusively used in real enterprises that have site licenses anyways.

Visual C 6.0 is the last x86 compiler that was ‘pure’ before the .NET invasion. Although you can with a bit of work get 2003 and onward to build for strict Win32, but who wants to work? This is getting increasingly hard to find, and getting far more expensive. But it’s great to have this in retail in the box again! (I used to have this and Visual Studio 97/6.0).

It almost feels wrong to break the seal on this, although I’ll probably do an active directory deployment eventually now that I have machines running in the USA, Hong Kong, and Japan.

I’m super thankful for all of this, and if anyone else wants to send me their ‘old / obsolete junk’ drop me a line!

And the best part is being able to build projects in parallel!

I haven’t ordered new processors, so the 2.1Ghz parts are… lacking. However being able to use all available cores makes building DOSBox pretty fast.

Restricting the build to a single process takes 1:13 while the full parallel build on this machine takes a mere 10 seconds!

So absolutely check out VC6Ultimate!

I uh, also saw this on archive.org, which may help people looking for this stuff from the future as old tools get harder and harder to find. Especially bigger editions like the Enterprise Architect version.

I saw this the other day, VC6 Ultimate. It’s an interesting ‘update’ on the old Visual C++ 6.0 product with an improved UI, along with updated compiler toolchain taken from later versions of Visual C++. Naturally something like this is 1000000% unofficial.

Features include:

• Portable and compatible with Win7 / Win10
  bye bye regedit, hello .hjson setting file !
  also meaning it should not mess with your current install
• More compatible compiler
  multicore version of VC7.1 compiler (It’s fast)
  you can compile with other compilers (64bit), but not debug yet
• Real-time highlighting and diagnostics
  based on libclang 6.0 and compatible with VisualAssistX
• Real multicursor editing
  search, sort, number, evaluate, etc. while in multicursor mode
• Improved UX and UI
  32bit icons, dark skin, lot of visual hints
  multi-monitor friendly
  revamped dialogs (project settings, threads, breakpoints, …)
  searchable command palette
• It’s free (as in free beer)
  ever had to pay for a birthday present ?
• Every change has a toggle
  only take what you like, but we can not check each combination
• It’s an internal spare time project
  don’t expect everything to work in every setup, but feel free to reach out

Included in the bundle is the following compilers:

• clang version 3.8.0 (branches/release_38)
  Target: i686-pc-windows-msvc
• Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 13.10.6030 for 80×86
  Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1984-2002. All rights reserved.
• Microsoft (R) C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 14.00.40310.41 for AMD64
  Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

It’s an interesting project, although I tried to re-build some Visual C++ 2003 projects and it bombed out. Maybe it’s just more geared towards VC 6 as indicated.

You can download it here

https://gitlab.com/VC6Ultimate/VC6Ultimate

Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition

So I’m back out, and on my limited machine (I did order something new, but on a group buying thing so it won’t be here for another SIX weeks… but then I’ll be on the road again so if I’m lucky 11 weeks……..) I’m using Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition, which by default includes just enough to compile simple stdio CLI based stuff.  To do anything more complicated you need what is known as the ‘Platform SDK’.  And to match up for the time period I’m using the Windows® Server 2003 SP1 Platform SDK Full Download. And of course various Direct X SDK’s too.

For my benefit (maybe yours too), here is

• Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition.iso
• Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition SP1.exe
• Windows® Server 2003 SP1 Platform SDK Full Download.tar

Instructions to integrate the Platform SDK are here, although I did set this to match the expected paths that were in my setup after installing service pack 1.  However I still had to manually do step 4:

Update the default.js file (found in %VSINSTALLDIR%\VC\VCWizards\AppWiz\Generic\Application\scripts\1033) and change the two lines that read:

LinkTool.AdditionalDependencies = “kernel32.lib $(NoInherit)”;

to:

// LinkTool.AdditionalDependencies = “kernel32.lib $(NoInherit)”;

And I was all set to go.

To make life easier (for me) this is headers & libs for the platform SDK + Direct X 6 & 7, and only 18 megabytes, instead of hundreds to download platform_directx6_7.7z  This has the directories and whatnot where they were expected, although you’ll have to manually add in the Direct X include & library directories, if you want to do anything with Direct X.

From the Tools menu in Visual Studio, select Options. The Options dialog box appears.

From the Options dialog box, expand the Projects and Solutions node and select VC++ Directories. In that section, add the following paths to the appropriate subsection:

Anyways it turns out I was able to find the web installer, but the link for generating a license code no longer exists.  However, the ISO’s never needed the code.  Except they aren’t available for download.

Or so I thought.

Turns out they are still there, but MS pulled the pages.

• Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition
• Visual C# 2005 Express Edition
• Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition
• Visual J# 2005 Express Edition
• Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition

I figure it’ll help someone out there.