One man's treasure... unboxing AutoCAD 2.6

This is a slightly anomalous post in the "one man's trash" series, in that we've actually found something I can't bear to part with. This was nearly the case for The Autodesk File 3rd Edition, but I did bring myself to ship that one off to Oregon. Today's item, once again uncovered by Francesco Tonioni, is a boxed version of AutoCAD 2.6. It's probably too heavy and fragile to ship around the world, but if I'm honest that's only part of the reason. It's just too precious!

AutoCAD 2.6 German

It's the German edition, which for sure was localized from the English version by our Basel office, back in the day (I made the mistake of saying Neuchatel in the below video, but I realised when re-watching it that we only moved to Neuchatel in the early 90s).

 

 

It's a fantastic piece of Autodesk history that probably belongs in a museum. For now it'll be safe in the Walmsley Museum of Computing History (alongside a French Apple Newton donated by my father-in-law), at least. 🙂

Does the above video trigger any memories for people who used the various AutoCAD 2.x versions? (I only started with R10, from my side.) If so, please post a comment!

One response to “One man's treasure... unboxing AutoCAD 2.6”

  1. Santiago Rivera Avatar
    Santiago Rivera

    Oh, yes!!!! This is an absolute invaluable treasure. On 1988 we were about to take the election between Cadkey, Versacad and Autocad for our CAD department at the academic institution where we were working for, Escuela de Sistemas Informáticos. Finally AutoCAD was the choice selected, I think we began using 2.5 release, and then we get the ATC (authorized training center) in Madrid, Spain. We spoke directly with Basel, Switzerland’s office. Jean Claude Nidegger was the guy with we usually talk. Oh my God, tears coming on my eyes!!!

    1. Thanks for sharing, Santiago!

      Kean

  2. This one deserve to be installed in a DOS VM and made available for download. That's be so cool !

    1. Yes! Although the hardware lock makes things complicated... 🙂

      Kean

  3. Wow, nice treasure. The first versiĂłn with the ACADXMEM variable for DOS....

    But the first memory that appears in my mind is the image of an old common friend, that as far as I can remember he always had this AutoCAD box on his desk shelf in the Neuchâtel office .

    Kean, btw, the hwl needs to be connected to a serial port....

    1. Yes - I couldn't remember whether it was serial or parallel... thanks, Albert!

      Kean

  4. Alexander Rivilis Avatar
    Alexander Rivilis

    I also started with R10 🙂

  5. That same "for internal use only" sticker is still on the installation media (USB sticks) to this day. Personally I wouldn't want to use any installation media internally, but you know, each to their own.

    1. It definitely doesn't refer to the hardware lock, at least. That thing's enormous.

  6. stevejohnsonCAD Avatar
    stevejohnsonCAD

    Based on the gender of the connectors, isn't that an RS-232 serial dongle rather than a parallel printer one? The first ones I saw (2.5) were serial, and they went parallel later. Parallel or serial, I never saw one that big with the extra wires, they were always solid and roughly as long as they were wide.

    1. Yes, it's a serial dongle. I wasn't sure when I shot the video, so I said "printer", because I remember (perhaps mistakenly) using printers via both serial and parallel connectors. I was hedging, basically. Albert Rius has since confirmed it was serial (see a previous comment).

      I hadn't seen one like this, either - at first I thought it was some kind of digitizer attachment.

      Kean

      1. stevejohnsonCAD Avatar

        Yes, there were serial printers in that era, although parallel was much more common. Serial was generally used for plotters and for printers where the cable reach had to exceed 3-5m.

  7. I liked it because it didn't need the math coprocessor. But when I finally got one, r9 was superior.

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