[doodlebugging]

I returned the MacSE30 that I bought at the Apple Store back in 1989 or 1990 when I went into grad school. Compared to the Epson that I bought at the same time it was a fantastic machine that would do almost everything that I needed to do out of the box whereas for the Epson I needed to buy other software. It helped that I already had Mac software though.

I returned it because I couldn't afford it. The cost with peripherals was almost 3X the price of the Epson so I took advantage of Apple's return policy and let it go.

I still have my original computer though, a 128k Mac that I upgraded to 512k within a couple months of getting it back in January 1985. I have the printer, an external floppy drive, and maybe something else. I used it to introduce my kids to computers, teaching them to type and use a mouse and to play the one or two games that I have for it. I have several software applications that are not Apple software including one with capabilities that I made good use of back in the day. It was mathematical software that I could feed the software points defining a line and it would compute the equation defining that line out to the nth order polynomial. It understood linear, logarithmic, and exponential scales so all you needed as input were the points in x,y space and the scale for each variable. It was very powerful and there was nothing like it in DOS land or in early Winland. I used it find the equations of lines in published nomographs and then used those equations to write and debug QuickBASIC software to calculate reservoir properties on an old Compaq 286 (later a 386 and 486, etc).

I don't remember the name of the software but it was very a good mathematical application. I still don't think there is similar software for Windows unless Wolfram Alpha can do the same thing. I haven't needed to try in a long time.

Thanks for this reminder.

[jdougan]

MathCAD? TK!Solver?

[doodlebugging]

I just went through the Internet Archive's issues of MacWorld from back in the day and think I found the software.

On page 9 (10 in the archive) of the April 1988 issue there is an advert for Eureka: The Solver by Borland International (Of course! They had such excellent software for years.)

There is a writeup about it on pages 191-192 (pages 192-193 in the archive).

One of the tools available is a polynomial finder. That is the tool that I used.

I will look around to see whether I still have the disk.

[doodlebugging]

I should still have my MathCAD disks somewhere. That wasn't the application though. I recognize TK!Solver too but I don't think it was that software.

I may need to scan old MacWorld magazine images to find it.

[homarp]

Maple?

[doodlebugging]

No it wasn't Maple. I'm familiar with Maple. I found it by following ads in MacWorld magazine back in the day. It should be identifiable by checking issues between December 1984 and May 1987.

[homarp]

https://archive.org/details/macworld-magazine has the scans

[doodlebugging]

Thank you for the link. I'm pretty sure I found it in the Internet Archive's issues of MacWorld from back in the day.

On page 9 (10 in the archive) of the April 1988 issue there is an advert for Eureka: The Solver by Borland International (Of course! They had such excellent software for years.)

There is a writeup about it on pages 191-192 (pages 192-193 in the archive).

One of the tools available is a polynomial finder. That is the tool that I used.

I will look around to see whether I still have the disk.

I also found my favorite, and first computer game since it was my first computer.

Silicon Beach Software put out a game called Airborne! in 1984. I got the Mac in January 1985 and bought that game with it. Fun stuff!

Thanks for the help.

[doodlebugging]

Thanks. I'll dig through and see what I can find or dig through my disk archive.

[homarp]

https://www.macintoshrepository.org/37630-eureka-the-solver has a .sit

The author's page: http://www.spinstop.com/roger/eureka.htm