Legacy Software Archive

A curated collection of 43 programming projects, demonstrations, reusable components, and experiments from the 1990s and early 2000s.

The archive is organized by implementation language. Each category has its own guide with toolchain, output-type, and compatibility details:

Directory	Projects	Contents
C++/	34	C++, MFC, COM/ActiveX, Win32, OpenGL, and Borland C++Builder
C/	5	C, Win32 C, Windows CE, and C with x86 assembly
Others/	4	Visual Basic, mixed C/C++/IDL CORBA, and historical archives

These projects are preserved primarily for study and historical reference. Most target discontinued operating systems, SDKs, compilers, or middleware and are not expected to build unchanged with a current toolchain.

Quick start

There is no single root build. Each project is self-contained and usually has its own README.md, legacy IDE project file, or Makefile.

Goal	Start here
Build a project on modern macOS or Linux	C++/philsophe/
Study Win32 processes and synchronization	C++/Process/ and C++/Proc&Thread/
Explore COM, DCOM, and ActiveX	C++/COMObject/, C++/COMClient/, and C++/DCOM/
Browse OpenGL demonstrations	C++/OpenGLSurefire/ and C++/texturemapping/
Study a legacy game codebase	C/Wolf3DSrc/
Compare historical CORBA implementations	Others/CORBA/

C++ projects

Windows, MFC, COM, and ActiveX

Project	Description
ActiveListBoxTest	MFC test host for the Visual Basic ActiveListBox control
CLSIDTest	COM class/category identifier lookup experiment
COMClient	MFC client for the COMObject in-process server
COMObject	MFC/COM in-process automation server
DCOM	Distributed drawing service, client, and control samples
DLLTest	Borland C++ DLL import/export experiments
Dialog Wnd	Small diagnostic dialog/window helper
dllDialog	MFC dialog exported from a Windows DLL
VisioPlugIn	Visio VSL add-on that diagrams network resources
XFloorWnd	ActiveX tabbed “floor” navigation control
XPropertiesWnd	ActiveX property and shell-tree controls

Processes, threads, and Win32 APIs

Project	Description
CreatePipe	Parent/child process communication through a named pipe
OldProcWrap	Legacy process-wrapper experiment
Proc&Thread	Process, thread, wait, and signaling examples
Process	Mutex, semaphore, event, critical-section, and overlapped-I/O samples
shmemcr	Shared-memory creator half of a paired example
shmemop	Shared-memory opener half of a paired example
ThreadTest	Windows thread creation and synchronization test
Timer	Win32 multimedia timer demonstration
mapfile	Memory-mapped file examples

Graphics and user interfaces

Project	Description
C++Builder	Borland C++Builder components, database, bitmap, service, and OpenGL samples
OpenGLSurefire	OpenGL/GLUT texture and rendering demonstration
qknots	Quaternion-knot visualization
RGBtoGLByte	RGB image conversion for OpenGL byte data
texturemapping	Texture mapping, lighting, transparency, Gouraud shading, and antialiasing demos

Algorithms, containers, and language experiments

Project	Description
Bin Tree	Header-only template binary tree
ExceptionTest	C++ exception-handling experiment
fstreamTest	Standard stream and file-I/O test
LISTS	Linked-list implementation and test
math	Small numerical routine experiment
Matrix	Matrix class and test harness
philsophe	Modern C++17 dining-philosophers concurrency demos
QSort	Quicksort implementation and test

Platform-specific samples

Project	Description
dvcrpage	Borland C++Builder device-context page sample

C projects

Project	Description
main-puzzle	IOCCC-style obfuscated recursive C program
OCXREG	Command-line utility for registering OCX controls
winCE Winsock	Windows CE socket test
winsock	Classic Win32 Winsock client/server sample
Wolf3DSrc	Wolfenstein 3D–era C and x86 assembly sources for Borland C++ 3.x

Other and mixed-language projects

Project	Language or format	Description
ActiveListBox	Visual Basic 6	ActiveX list-box control
CORBA	C, C++, IDL, and build scripts	Point-of-sale example ported across multiple historical CORBA ORBs
RemoteShell OCX	Visual Basic 6 / packaged OCX	Remote-shell ActiveX control and test application
archives	ZIP archives	Original historical packages retained for reference

Toolchains and compatibility

Toolchain or dependency	Typical projects
Visual C++ 5/6 (.dsp, .dsw)	Most MFC, Win32, COM, and OpenGL projects
Visual Basic 6 (.vbp, .frm, .ctl)	ActiveListBox and RemoteShell OCX
Borland C++Builder (.bpr, .bpg, .dfm)	C++Builder, DLLTest, and dvcrpage
Borland C++ 3.x and an x86 assembler	Wolf3DSrc
Legacy CORBA ORB and IDL compiler	CORBA subprojects
Modern Clang or GCC with C++17 threads	philsophe

Legacy Visual Studio files often contain relative paths and assumptions about SDK installation directories. Moving a complete project folder into its language category preserves paths internal to that folder, but machine-specific toolchain paths may still require adjustment.

Building the modern C++ example

The dining-philosophers project is the only project exercised by continuous integration:

cd "C++/philsophe"
make clean all
./philosophe

The other projects should be built from inside their individual directories with the compiler or IDE documented in their local README.

Repository conventions

• README.md provides modern navigation and build notes.
• ReadMe.txt, README.TXT, and similar files preserve original documentation.
• Original filenames and project-internal layouts are retained where practical.
• Generated compiler and linker artifacts are excluded by the root .gitignore.
• Historical binaries already committed to the archive remain available for research, even when files with the same extensions are now ignored.

Continuous integration

The GitHub Actions smoke test builds and runs C++/philsophe on Ubuntu. Windows-only and middleware-dependent projects are not compiled in CI.

License and third-party notices

Repository-level terms are in LICENSE (LGPL 2.1). Some imported examples and SDK materials include their own notices, including the CORBA POS example, third-party C++ components, and historical Visio SDK headers. Review the documentation and source headers within a project before redistributing it.

Archive status

This repository favors preservation over modernization. A successful build may require a virtual machine, an older Windows SDK, original middleware, or small source changes for modern compiler compatibility. Contributions that improve documentation, portability, or reproducibility should preserve the intent and history of the original examples.