Vault · archived work, not current thinking
Tools
Nobody ever shipped these. They’re the things built alongside the things that shipped: the shareware registration desk that turned checks into unlock codes, the audio mixer written because Windows couldn’t do what we needed, the directory copier for a calculator.
Most of it came back off floppy disks decades after anyone last ran it. The entries here are short on purpose — one artifact, what it was, and what it turns out to say now.
The Shareware Registration Desk
1994
Red Herring Software's entire customer database, 128K of it, and the one column that shows you exactly where the internet was in 1994.
WaveQueue
1994
The audio mixer Randy and I wrote in 1994 because Windows couldn't play two sounds at once. The source, the shipped DLL, and the manual we wrote hoping somebody would license it.
The Naval Game
1994
In 1994 a customer mailed us a letter asking for a naval battle game. I wrote back with our entire design methodology and asked him to send me an outline.
The Rest of the Notebook
1989
The five HP-28S programs from the 1989 notebook that never got an entry of their own: recursive directory copy, word wrap, exact fractions, polar conversion, and a switch for the beep.
Telephone Directory
1989
A contacts database for the HP-28S calculator, written around 1989. Six programs, four fields, and no way to save any of it — a memory clear meant typing the whole address book back in by hand.
Doodle
1989
A bitmap drawing tool for the HP-28S calculator, written around 1989. It is where the Space Chase ships came from, and it fits in about two hundred characters.
Checkbook
1989
A cheque register for the HP-28S calculator, written around 1989 — with a running balance, a printed statement, and a function whose only job is to force the balance when the bank disagrees with you.