So I just sold software to Apple...

[marcoguy]

Just wanted to share this experience I had recently.

As some of you may have noticed, I listed my Apple software collection on Ebay a little over a week ago. A couple days into the listings, I got a message asking about a bulk buy of a dozen discs. Not uncommon, we worked out a deal and soon enough the stuff was his.

I didn't give it much thought until I saw the shipping address:

Apple Inc.
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino CA 95014
United States

My first thought was that there's an Apple employee who also happens to be a collector, but I asked the guy about it and sure enough:

We have a lab at Apple containing lots of archived materials. We were missing some of the disks that you placed on ebay.

So yeah, Apple bought some of their own software back from me. Feel free to post if you've had a similar experience, as I would love to hear about it. I knew Microsoft has a pretty robust archive of their history, but I wasn't aware Apple does too until this happened.

Just goes to show how necessary this community is. If is wasn't for collectors like us, so much software would just be lost, out of the grasp of even the companies that produced it.

[DiskingRound]

I agree that this preservation is essential to even the existance of some old software. There was a member here who had a disk of MetroWerks CodeWarrior for Sharp Zaurus which scratched and he has since tryed to scan the whole world for long forgotten disks of it - no success. No torrents, no FTPs, nothing. It dissapeared. And if it wasn't for this collection, several other titles could go the way of it.

[marcoguy]

Yeah.. I've had a recent experience with a Longhorn 4007 (no, that's not a typo) disc that just goes to show how easily media can go bad. All it takes is one scratch before a CD is dumped and its contents are gone forever.

[beta.a.brian]

Wait,4007?Take the disc to somewhere like a library and use one of their machines which get rid of scratches on discs,or buy one of those.

[DiskingRound]

Wait,4007?Take the disc to somewhere like a library and use one of their machines which get rid of scratches on discs,or buy one of those.

Possibly a scratch occured in not just the plastic 'shell' on the bottom but in the reflective layer so the data is gone forever and the ability to recover it is beyond the capabilities of humanity ATM. But we won't know until details are given.

[beta.a.brian]

Welp in that case RIP build.

[marcoguy]

Yeah, it was the foil, not the plastic. The good news is I was able to get a folder dump of everything but install.wim, but the bad news (besides install.wim) is that as the disc was being read in my drive, the foil actually began to separate from the plastic. Dunno if an air pocket was formed by the scratch over time, if there was some sort of long-term water damage, or what else might have happened in the 13 years before I got this disc, but either way it resulted in a gruesome sight. Bits of foil flaked off into my drive, and a gaping window of clear plastic was visible on the disc. It was almost painful to look at. As I said, it just goes to show how important it is to preserve this stuff before it's gone.

And for anyone who's wondering, I'll upload the 4007 folder dump to some file sharing site soon. I'm preparing for a release of a bunch of stuff I've gathered recently, and that will be part of it, albeit not on the FTP with the rest due to the incomplete-ness.

[DiskingRound]

Yeah, it was the foil, not the plastic. The good news is I was able to get a folder dump of everything but install.wim, but the bad news (besides install.wim) is that as the disc was being read in my drive, the foil actually began to separate from the plastic. Dunno if an air pocket was formed by the scratch over time, if there was some sort of long-term water damage, or what else might have happened in the 13 years before I got this disc, but either way it resulted in a gruesome sight. Bits of foil flaked off into my drive, and a gaping window of clear plastic was visible on the disc. It was almost painful to look at. As I said, it just goes to show how important it is to preserve this stuff before it's gone.

And for anyone who's wondering, I'll upload the 4007 folder dump to some file sharing site soon. I'm preparing for a release of a bunch of stuff I've gathered recently, and that will be part of it, albeit not on the FTP with the rest due to the incomplete-ness.

Do you have a picture of the disc or damage for verification? And how long ago was that? Plus, do you have any bits of install.wim? If enough of it is intact, we can attempt to fix it.

But yeah, it's sad to see media destroyed in any way. One I was reading a junk CD to see its contents and the cheap laser in my drive popped out and starting cutting perfectly circular rings in my CD. It didn't contain anything valuable but it shows the risks ascosiated with your 4007 loss.

[beta.a.brian]

If not,at least we can use the 4008 install.wim to make a frankenbuild. At least it's better than nothing.

[Windows OS]

Yeah, it was the foil, not the plastic. The good news is I was able to get a folder dump of everything but install.wim, but the bad news (besides install.wim) is that as the disc was being read in my drive, the foil actually began to separate from the plastic. Dunno if an air pocket was formed by the scratch over time, if there was some sort of long-term water damage, or what else might have happened in the 13 years before I got this disc, but either way it resulted in a gruesome sight. Bits of foil flaked off into my drive, and a gaping window of clear plastic was visible on the disc. It was almost painful to look at. As I said, it just goes to show how important it is to preserve this stuff before it's gone.

And for anyone who's wondering, I'll upload the 4007 folder dump to some file sharing site soon. I'm preparing for a release of a bunch of stuff I've gathered recently, and that will be part of it, albeit not on the FTP with the rest due to the incomplete-ness.

Wow. That's sad. Hopefully, we might come across another copy of 4007.

[valvedubstep]

Not software, but hardware. Does anybody here remember the "brick" phone? I had one. The major telecom here (Qwest) has/had a collection of devices and hadn't a brick yet. This was 10 years ago. I was asked how much i would take to buy the phone. I ended up giving it to them and got a tour of the collection in return. They have/had a whole floor (26th IIRC) dedicated as a collection! I thought it was interesting. I've got family history all over the city of Denver. My grandfather was one of the woodworkers that worked on the brown palace. The carvings are his work!

[mrpijey]

If not,at least we can use the 4008 install.wim to make a frankenbuild. At least it's better than nothing.

What's the point of making a frankenbuild of this when 95% of the OS is contained within that lost install.wim? That would be completely pointless really and a waste of time since nothing of the install.wim was saved.

It's just better to let it rest and hope that we find the build again, this was not the only disc in existence and it will surface again.

As for Apple, it's cool they got it back. It's too bad we'll never see what they got in their archives and will be most likely lost to history, which is why it's so good we can get some of it before Apple do (again) .

[DiskingRound]

If not,at least we can use the 4008 install.wim to make a frankenbuild. At least it's better than nothing.

What's the point of making a frankenbuild of this when 95% of the OS is contained within that lost install.wim? That would be completely pointless really and a waste of time since nothing of the install.wim was saved.

It's just better to let it rest and hope that we find the build again, this was not the only disc in existence and it will surface again.

As for Apple, it's cool they got it back. It's too bad we'll never see what they got in their archives and will be most likely lost to history, which is why it's so good we can get some of it before Apple do (again) .

Plus, since it's the build next to 4008 I bet it'll be very similar to it as well as to 4001. It's not a big loss but would have been nice to have for completion. It also demonstrates the importance of archiving media before it's too late. It can scratched, cracked, lost, there is big risk so you must image any original media ASAP.

And yeah, it may have been a foil scratch to begin with and an air bubble formed. As the disc turned with lot of force it started flaking off.

[RentedMule]

I agree that this preservation is essential to even the existance of some old software. There was a member here who had a disk of MetroWerks CodeWarrior for Sharp Zaurus which scratched and he has since tryed to scan the whole world for long forgotten disks of it - no success. No torrents, no FTPs, nothing. It dissapeared. And if it wasn't for this collection, several other titles could go the way of it.

That guy is me. The disk ended up cracked, split from the inner circle to the outside, with a triangular chip missing on the outer part. I'm still on the lookout all of the time.

[Jens]

So yeah, Apple bought some of their own software back from me.

I hope they made a decent offer. You saved their day after all. Anyway - very nice story!

[WindowsNeptune]

Wow friend your experience has been reported by Chinese IT news website "IThome".
eBay网友拍卖古董CD收藏品，苹果竟下单：终于找到你 http://www.ithome.com/html/it/252321.htm

[meagain]

The page takes about 10mins to load so here's a google translation

IT Home News August 25 news, on eBay abroad, can often be some unexpected fun. Currently, named Marcoguy sellers encountered him unexpected thing, he is the cause of a series of shelves of antique CD collections from Apple on eBay, for auction. These collections are now almost extinct, it is difficult to Amoy, it attracted many people's attention.
eBay users Auction Antiques CD collections, Apple actually orders: finally found you
Soon, there buyer orders, intends to buy back these collections. And let Marcoguy unexpected is that when he put the goods packed and ready for shipment and found each other to address turned out to be "California Cupertino Infinite Loop 1" Yes, this is Apple's headquarters.
Apple did not expect even a single person under photographed his collection, and this collection is clearly relevant. According Marcoguy later learned that Apple's headquarters in the laboratory need some information archive, and his shelves on eBay these CD what Apple is missing, it is estimated that Apple has to find for a long time.
Then the CD what is it? It is reported that they came from the 1990s, including the System beta versions of the operating system and the 1994 WWDC discs and the like.

The article seems really popular.

[James]

I knew this sounded familiar. I saw this on Reddit today.

[marcoguy]

Wow, I certainly wasn't expecting that.

I'm glad to see this is getting some publicity, might bring some good exposure to the site.

[mrpijey]

How would it get any exposure to the site when it's not mentioned anywhere? =) It's nice news tho, always fun when things like this happen.

[James]

Wow, I certainly wasn't expecting that.

I'm glad to see this is getting some publicity, might bring some good exposure to the site.

This is the top post when you sort /r/vintagecomputing by "hot". Links directly to this thread when you click on the link in the first sentence.

[marcoguy]

Not to mention, there are a few comments in that Chinese article that contain links to this thread.

It is kind of a shame the article itself doesn't mention us, but I'm glad the MacRumors post has a link. Either way, if the story sparks an interest in the community for just one person, I'm happy.

[Ludacris]

Aaaaand you are on neowin - http://www.neowin.net/news/apple-fills- ... ng-on-ebay

[mrpijey]

And MacRumors...

http://www.macrumors.com/2016/08/24/app ... -purchase/

Fun news spread fast hehe.

[Windows OS]

Aaaaand you are on neowin - http://www.neowin.net/news/apple-fills- ... ng-on-ebay

And Neowin actually mentions BetaArchive instead of just having the link. Nice to see a mention of this website and the actual importance of this community, because if even the COMPANIES THEMSELVES can't archive their OWN stuff, then we might be the only people keeping stuff like this alive.

Offtopic Comment

@mrpijay Dat new avatar tho