card index style database

Are they still around for Windows? sure i could use the database in Libre office, but all I want is something simple to put the name of the coffee bean and roaster and what grind I use for it, searchable via name.

Seems a bit much, setting up a database in Libre office just for that.

thanks peeps.

What sort of front end do you need for it? If it is just for you and you don't need anything fancy then could you just use a spreadsheet - use a row for each entry and use the search function or filters to find the record you want?

In reply to a post by ian72:

What sort of front end do you need for it? If it is just for you and you don't need anything fancy then could you just use a spreadsheet - use a row for each entry and use the search function or filters to find the record you want?

That may be the best way to be honest. it does seem strange what was once a thing on computers like the CBM64, Speccy and even early P.Cs, don't seem to exist any more.
i will try your idea, thanks.

If you can find an installation of NT 3.51 then the old windows cardfile works on 64bit Win 10. It is a completely propitiatory data format that nothing else opens.

It has to be NT to get the 32bit version as the windows 3.11 version was 16bit code.

I think they mostly disappeared because people moved to Excel or Access type solutions.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

If you can find an installation of NT 3.51 then the old windows cardfile works on 64bit Win 10. It is a completely propitiatory data format that nothing else opens.

It has to be NT to get the 32bit version as the windows 3.11 version was 16bit code.

thanks, but I don't think I am going to go to that length.

Saying that I suppose i could get an old 386 machine
never had one, would be nice to have a muck around with one

In reply to a post by ian72:

I think they mostly disappeared because people moved to Excel or Access type solutions.

Acess is just over the top for what I need, i did look at Libre office base,
what I want is to just be able to search the grind size for my coffee beans, at the moment they are on the cards that comes with the beans.

So Roaster, blend, grind size and maybe weight of coffee. I know that it is not always spot on from one pack of beans to another, but it is close enough to start with.

i have not tried the spreadsheet thing yet, i thought about a note-taking app, like one note, but not one note.
i looked at two, Note ledge and Joplin, Joplin seems better as notes are searchable, but I can't find where it stores the files. Note Ledge is great in that there is so much to it, you can draw, add audio and that sort of thing, but maybe over the top, also i can't find anyway of search through the notes, you can search for a notebook, but not inside it.

this is the thing that annoys me, simple software that works have gone to be replaced by bloat and cloudy stuff, not all of us want to stick everything onto the cloud.

How about a bog standard paper address book, for the indexed pages it provides?

Edited by pluralist (Tue 10-Aug-21 11:58:40)

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Saying that I suppose i could get an old 386 machine
never had one, would be nice to have a muck around with one

Back in the day (1992) I had an Acer 386sx with a whopping 4MB or RAM. As I recall it was socket upgradable to a a 486sx. Steady now! 🤣

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Back in the day (1992) I had an Acer 386sx with a whopping 4MB or RAM. As I recall it was socket upgradable to a a 486sx. Steady now! 🤣

Wow. I used an 8086 but my first owned PC was a 386sx with 1MB of RAM, with a 20 megabyte hard drive and EGA graphics. Ran Windows 3.0 on my greyscale monitor okay.

There was that period in the nineties, where PCs felt like they were 'old' after 6 months, exacerbated completely by Intel was ramping out new x86 silicon in rhythmic beat to Moores Law.

Later years at university and early work I 'discovered' RISC computing DEC Alpha's, Silicon Graphics and SPARCs. Good old day

I still prefer VMS to the Unix world 😂

In reply to a post by pluralist:

How about a bog standard paper address book, for the indexed pages it provides?

Or a card index system, can get them from Amazon, they are about a tenner. i just thought it would be nice to have it digital.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Back in the day (1992) I had an Acer 386sx with a whopping 4MB or RAM. As I recall it was socket upgradable to a a 486sx. Steady now! 🤣

i started with a 166Mhz Cyris based pc, running windows 95, it was an Amiga 4000 before that and a Amiga 500 before that, 8 bit machines before that, going backwards, CBM64, Zx spectrum and ZX81.
i have used older P.Cs, I used an Amstrad PC and a PCW, which was not a P.C.

i think the fun have gone out of computers to be honest.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

i think the fun have gone out of computers to be honest.

A little yeah. I sued to build everything up myself, from simple desktops to raid arrayed servers. Haven't had the inclination to do that in probably 25 years. They are just an appliance to me now. Sad but true.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

I still prefer VMS to the Unix world 😂

Yeh VMS was an operating system for grown ups! It was polished. You ran your company with VMS. Unix was still a bit of a toerag OS that the hippies in computer science faculties evangelised. Solaris and BSD were the start of making Unix grown up. Linux was still a newborn baby back then.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

I used an Amstrad PC and a PCW, which was not a P.C.

Ermmm! The PCW was a fully-fledged CP/M microcomputer, which all such devices were for years before IBM realised they weren't just a hobbyist fad but threatened their mainframe business.

OK, Amstrad sold it bundled as a word-processor with a printer, but any CP/M software could run. The important one being Sage Accounts. I used sell the darn things and it ROFL.

The acronym PC (Personal Computer) didn't exist until IBM called their micro-computers that. There were plenty of other makes around, almost all using CP/M or MP/M (the multi-user version with dumb terminals like Unix).

Edited by pluralist (Tue 10-Aug-21 23:50:35)

My first PC in 1988 was an Amstrad 1640, EGA monitor with dual 5.25" floppy drives and no hard drive.

About a year later I got a second PC - the Amstrad 2286 which actually had a hard drive and a 3.5" floppy.

Changed PCs about once a year then for many years going through 386, 486, many breeds of pentium, etc, etc. My current PC is now about 6 years old (it was a very high spec gaming PC when I built it) and my daily use Windows device is a decent spec gaming laptop that is a couple of years old. In the early days if you didn't replace every year you couldn't keep up but now unless you have very specific requirements you can keep a device for quite a while.

Work wise I started on an IBM System 36 mainframe developing in RPG II/III. Changed jobs and spent time supporting Novell networks, Vax VMS, Digital Ultrix/Unix and onwards - this was all early 90's. Stopped doing direct support quite some time back but I still dabble to keep my hand in and may well do a bit more again soon with some changes in the way we do our support.

Edited by ian72 (Wed 11-Aug-21 09:30:01)

How about this one: https://down10.software/download-index-card-database...

In reply to a post by ian72:

My first PC in 1988 was an Amstrad 1640, EGA monitor with dual 5.25" floppy drives and no hard drive.

I used the 512 with CGA monitor and dual 5.25" floppies!

About a year later I got a second PC - the Amstrad 2286 which actually had a hard drive and a 3.5" floppy.

My parents home PC was the Amstrad portable (PPC512) with an external monitor, but with a hard drive upgrade. It had a built in modem which was very useful for Compuserve

In the early days if you didn't replace every year you couldn't keep up but now unless you have very specific requirements you can keep a device for quite a while.

Yes, Windows 11's requirements is causing an upgrade cycle as my 6 year old PC is a 4th Gen Intel CPU but no TPM option on motherboard means time to spend money.

My first computer was one I built myself from a kit of parts: https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=802

When I say "built" I don't mean assembling a few cards, but soldering every IC in place. Even the keyboard consisted of individual switches soldered to the PCB. I've still got it in the shed - I ought to put it on eBay sometime as they are now collector's items.

After that a Dragon 32, a couple of Amigas, and more PC compatibles than I can remember, the latest being a 12-core Ryzen, GTX3080, 32GB monster.

Work also provided some interesting machines to play with - DEC PDP8, IBM System 38 and AS/400s, a nice little Silicon Graphics Indigo and a selection of lovely IBM xSeries servers.

I disagree that computers are no longer fun. The availability of cheap boards like the Raspberry Pi, the huge range of free software, and the extensive documentation and information now available online make them more fun than ever.

Ermmm! The PCW was a fully-fledged CP/M microcomputer, which all such devices were for years before IBM realised they weren't just a hobbyist fad but threatened their mainframe business.

OK, Amstrad sold it bundled as a word-processor with a printer, but any CP/M software could run. The important one being Sage Accounts. I used sell the darn things and it ROFL.

The acronym PC (Personal Computer) didn't exist until IBM called their micro-computers that. There were plenty of other makes around, almost all using CP/M or MP/M (the multi-user version with dumb terminals like Unix).


I know the PCW was a P.C, but it was not, as people used to say, PC compatible. As far as I remember, it had a z80 CPU and those silly 3 inch disks. I got some of them here. I do remember the daisy wheel printer , noisy and slow, even compared to other daisy wheel printers at the time.
but for what the machine was for, it did it ok.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

How about this one: https://down10.software/download-index-card-database...

Thanks, but it will not extract, saying format is corrupted, Explorer or Winzip will not open it. I did do a search to see if I can find it anywhere else, but no luck at the moment.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

A little yeah. I sued to build everything up myself, from simple desktops to raid arrayed servers. Haven't had the inclination to do that in probably 25 years. They are just an appliance to me now. Sad but true.

I build my own desktops and used to build them for other people, only as a hobby type thing or to help people out. I am not sure what I am going to do on my next build, thinking of going to the dark side and getting a mac Mini.
but yes, I remember the IRQ problems and that sort of thing, even with Plug and play, plug and pray is it became known.
A mate has or had a turtle beach sound card in a 233 Mhz windows 95 machine, for some reason now, and again it would just conflict with other stuff. the machine is still set up in the studio, I really need to get in touch with his wife to see what is happening to it all, still music belonging to other people on the drives down there.

Yeah - I tried it and found the same.

There's another that you might like to look at: https://www.azzcardfile.com/

It's not free, but it has a free trial so no harm in looking. I've verified that it works on Windows 10.

"They are just an appliance to me now."

Same with cars. Years ago one could strip the engine and gearbox and rebuild in a couple of weekends. Wouldn't contemplate nowadays.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

Yeah - I tried it and found the same.

There's another that you might like to look at: https://www.azzcardfile.com/

It's not free, but it has a free trial so no harm in looking. I've verified that it works on Windows 10.

Thanks man, you are so kind.
I will have a look, not sure if I want to pay that amount for it, but we will see.

I am not doing much today, so I will have a look later, well I don't think I am, my friend who I meet for coffee is not well, so I will not be doing that.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

"They are just an appliance to me now."

Same with cars. Years ago one could strip the engine and gearbox and rebuild in a couple of weekends. Wouldn't contemplate nowadays.

Yes, just a tool. I remember when I had my ZX81 trying out basic programs from a magazine and getting excited when they worked, even did that with the speccy and CBM64, even tied a bit of assembly language with the CBM64. Oh yeah, and forth with my old Jupiter Ace.

Never got into programming much, I wish I did now, my brother is mucking around with Python for music or something like that, he is a few years older than me. Not sure if I could be bothered now,






I remember when I was a child, my Dad used to take the engine out of a car Sunday morning, strip it down, clean it up and do the rings, valves and what ever else needed doing and get it back in the car and running by early evening. Now people are scared to even top the radiator up these days.

It seems you can get a free licence for it by posting about it on a blog or forum. So, if it suits your needs, a post here describing your experience with it might qualify.

" Now people are scared to even top the radiator up these days."

That would be silly as a seized engine due to overheating would be costly.

The four major top-up areas usually have highlighted caps. Oil, coolant, windscreen washer fluid and power steering.

The dipstick top is usually coloured yellow for easy identification.

No excuse for not dealing with basic procedures to keep an expensive machine running smoothly.