Well done Marion you really are a star.  I am sure that all SFHG members will join me in thanking you for all your hard work  Kind regards Roger ----- Original Message ---- From: Marion Woolgar <listmail2008@btinternet.com> To: SFHG Post Messages <SFHG@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, 28 July, 2008 5:16:01 PM Subject: Re: [SFHG] Old Family History Programs Needed A couple of weeks ago, I posted a message asking for help with a new project that I had undertaken for the West Sussex Record Office.  This was to build a computer that was capable of running some very old genealogy programs. Over the past 20 or so years, WSRO have received genealogy data deposited by individual researchers, many of whom have passed away in the intervening years.  Of course, this data should have been deposited in GEDCOM format so that it can easily be transferred to a modern program, but much of it is in an old program's native format and now cannot be retrieved without the parent program.  Some people have found it strange that GEDCOM was not more widely used, but 20 years ago, not every programmer had signed up to the idea of making their software compatible with other programs that were in the market.  Also, many family historians didn't use purpose-built software because it wasn't very easy to obtain and also because it wasn't very powerful.  So, many family tres were built on spreadsheets or within word processors. The response to my appeal, made on just the SFHG and Sussex-Plus Mailing Lists, was most generous.  I have been offered items from List Members in the UK, Sweeden, Canada and Australia and jiffy bags have been arriving in my post at intervals within the past 10 days.  One day, I had 5 such envelopes contaning a variety of CD's, floppy disks and also a 56k modem. On behalf of WSRO, I would like to thank everyone who responded, it really has been a magnificent effort by all concerned.  The last of these items arrived this morning. Now that the "first wave" of programs have been received and loaded, I have today been able to accept further offers of genealogy packages that have been made in the past 10 days.  I wanted to see what arrived from the original offers before accepting any new items because two people sent me different CD's which were a compilation of programs and I wanted to see precisely what they were and if they still worked, before accepting new offers. The computer is now in proper working order and has been built entirely from components that have been donated, so is a good example of how unwanted electrical goods can be recycled to a new purpose.  The operating system is Windows 98SE which is the last version of windows where switching between that and MS DOS is relatively simple.  In addition to a variety of genealogy programs, some word processors and spreadsheets, such as MS Works and Lotus SmartSuite (amongst others) have been loaded.  Hopefully, the final few donations will arrive in the next couple of weeks and then I will be able to deliver the machine to WSRO with the compliments of us all. Best wishes Marion Woolgar Bognor Regis, West Sussex SFHG NO: 3323 ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SFHG-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message __________________________________________________________ Not happy with your email address?. Get the one you really want - millions of new email addresses available now at Yahoo! http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/ymail/new.html

Thank you, gentlemen, for your very generous remarks. The job did turn out to be a bit more complicated than I had originally envisaged (don't they always!) and the biggest problem was sourcing the right drivers for the Motherboard components and for the CD and CD-RW drives. Unfortunately, the Tower that was donated didn't come with an installation CD and the hard drive had been wiped clean by professionals. However, "Google" came to the rescue yet again and after a lot of searching I eventually sourced everything that I needed as free downloads. Then the system kept crashing for no apparent reason until it dawned on me that Windows 98SE probably didn't need 1Gb of RAM, so I took half of it out and now everything seems to be working OK. All-in-all, its been a good project to work on and I am glad that I took up the challenge. Best wishes Marion Woolgar Bognor Regis, West Sussex SFHG NO: 3323

Great Job- I know that many people will benefit from your hard work- Arlene ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marion Woolgar" <listmail2008@btinternet.com> To: "ROGER RUSHTON" <rogerofgoostrey@btinternet.com>; "Tony Holkham" <t.holkham@sky.com>; "SFHG Post Messages" <SFHG@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 2:00 PM Subject: Re: [SFHG] Old Family History Programs Needed > Thank you, gentlemen, for your very generous remarks. > > The job did turn out to be a bit more complicated than I had originally > envisaged (don't they always!) and the biggest problem was sourcing the > right drivers for the Motherboard components and for the CD and CD-RW > drives. Unfortunately, the Tower that was donated didn't come with an > installation CD and the hard drive had been wiped clean by professionals. > However, "Google" came to the rescue yet again and after a lot of > searching > I eventually sourced everything that I needed as free downloads. Then the > system kept crashing for no apparent reason until it dawned on me that > Windows 98SE probably didn't need 1Gb of RAM, so I took half of it out and > now everything seems to be working OK. All-in-all, its been a good > project > to work on and I am glad that I took up the challenge. > > Best wishes > > Marion Woolgar > Bognor Regis, West Sussex > SFHG NO: 3323 > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > SFHG-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes > in the subject and the body of the message > >