@loughkb
As a computer service tech in that era, I absolutely hated Stacker and Doublespace. So many times I had customers lose data when the archive file went corrupt. Once in a great while, we could recover it, but that was rare. One sector going bad on the hard disk could wipe all your data at once instead of just one file.
@looneyburgmusic
Growing up a computer-freak in the 70's and 80's I remember this story first hand, and still think it's as crazy today as it was back then. In the early years of the "modern" computer era everyone was stealing everything from everyone else. And that is the single main reason we all managed to go so far with programming so quickly. New software was being developed and released at such an incredible rate that the idea anyone could "own" something such as "disk compression", (or how to engineer a program that would compress a disk), was, just like the concept of a GUI, ridiculous. No one programmer or group of programmers thought up or developed all these different features and software packages - everyone was running full-out building off of, (and on top of), everything that had come before. Some time in the 80's a programmer friend showed our computer club a disk compression program he had written for BASIC of all things. It was simple, and buggy, and amazing all at the same time... Too bad the judges and all the lawyers had no idea about how the things they were fighting over in the courts really worked.
@MCPicoli
Oh, no, you just revived an old trauma and its scars buried deep in my brain. I was the victim of the silent, hidden corruption that happened sometimes when the drives were full or near full. Never used disk compression software again. But yes, I do remember it making the computer slightly faster because of lowered disk access.
@amicloud_yt
"Double your disk size!' uhh pretty sure i've gotten a lot of emails about that
@lexihaley2887
I remember activating dblspace on my parents PC back in the early nineties. I, an almost teenager, was sweating into the late hours, wondering if I'd make a big mistake-but-it worked---but I ultimately chickened out and removed and undid the compression. Parents woke in the morning, none the wiser :)
@antonnym214
Did they steal? No, but they weren't angels, either. Then they paid up ONLY after getting caught. Great video! I remember those days and being confused by the various names for compression schemes.
@TheSilent333
I used to use Stacker! It was an impressive piece of software! Now that I work as a developer, I can fully appreciate just how awesome it was. Love these kinds of vids! Cheers
@deeiks12
I remember getting a pirated copy of stacker in the early 90s and somehow making my hard drive unusable, had to low level format it to get it working again. Good old days. Thanks for bringing it up.
@JavaTP
"Did Microsoft Steal X?" the answer to this is pretty much always "Yes", no matter what it is.
@drwolfpoint
I remember trying the double space option combined with Windows 3, it did not work well. Scandisk is oddly nostalgic to see again. Interesting and Great video.
@g0mtnlee
I'd not thought back to my circa 1993 Stacker drive terminal failure for ages.... A dark moment. But nice whilst it worked. Ooh, that reminds me, must do some backups.
@KrombopulosMichaelTheThird
You’re doing the lord’s work, Peter, my god. These are the absolute best videos. I’ll watch this about 3 times, I’m sure. Thanks for all of the content, and all of that sweet sweet nostalgia.
@DustinRodriguez1_0
Great video! I was always curious about disk compression, but even today I don't use it because I know it takes a toll, however small, on performance. Plus, especially now, the large share of my disk space is taken up by already-compressed data that would not benefit at all, and might even be increased in size, by any attempts at further compression. I paid a lot of attention to tech news at the time all this was happening, but with this mostly being pre-Internet stuff, my ability to do so was pretty limited as a teen. I do remember a very excellent summary of how Huffman compression worked being in Computer Shopper one time, though. I tore it out and kept it in my wallet for years. Data compression has always been a very interesting topic to me, and I still read about it from time to time and intend to implement fractal compression now that its patents are all expired when I get around to it for video to play with, so this video was right up my alley!
@mzebari
"Buy him out, boys" - Bill Gates sending his Thugs to rough up Homer.
@Riz_
The effort and research that goes into your videos Nostalgia nerd always astounds me. I love what you are doing, please keep it up. As a former IT student I honestly feel these videos should be compulsory viewing for current IT studants.
@mcorrade
I remember that nightmarish double space/Stacker software and I can't tell you how many drives were toast because of it. People lost tons of data because of it and I always recommended to my clients to NEVER use that software. But, I would inevitably get the call from some old goat who thought he found the fountain of youth and before I could say NOOOOOOOO it was too late lololololo
@csx296
Thanks for these videos I love them. I was very much into computers back in these early days but too young to care/follow all these details. Now I find it fascinating to learn what was going on behind the scenes! Keep up the good work :D
@DeathBringer769
Well, considering both Steve Jobs AND Bill Gates both "borrowed" the concept for having a window-based graphical user interface from visiting Xerox back in the day and seeing what Xerox had already built and were using internally... yea, I wouldn't doubt it if he "borrowed" disk compression from somewhere else too, lol.
@brunomass
As a child I remember my father having bought Stacker. The software package came with a hardware coprocessor card that had to be installed in order to not hinder the performance of the pc. It worked really well and I remember we doubled our XT's 30 Mb hard drive to around 60 Mb total. I even remember there were some pufferfish stickers that came in the box so that you could show everyone you had Stacker... Great vid!
@trafrellik