Every once in a while I need some disk imaging software. After all these years, WinImage is still my tool of choice.
This time, I needed it to create a Creating vSphere 5 ESXi embedded USB Stick.
Usually I only need it for a day or two, and most of the times I have reinstalled my system between uses. Not this time, so I needed to enter the license, which I knew I had, but had to search for it.
Luckily, I have installed the Lookout search tool for Outlook (which – even though you cannot officially get it any more – is so much better than the integrated search).
It found back the below message, from 1997.
1997! And the license is indeed perpetual: it still works on the most current WinImage build (which now supports x64 as well as x86, a lot more disk image formats and disk types, etc).
The WinImage site references some very old tools back from the days when you had BBS, Fidonet, ARPANET, Simtel, and Compuserve (the latter both hosted on PDP-10 machines, 1970s based technologies still ruled many of the computing world).
But I digress.
Back then, the only disk image supported were floppy disks, and most tools were DOS based. Like the FDFormat tool from Christoph H. Hochstätter which allowed you to add 300 kilobyte of extra space on 3.5 inch 1.44 megabyte floppy disk.
You can still see that in the WinImage binaries: Bootsector from C.H. Hochstatter
The email:
From: Gilles Vollant [mailto:——@winimage.com]
Sent: 07 December 1997 13:02
To: ‘——@xs4all.nl’
Subject: WinImage registration notificationThank you a lot for registering WinImage 4.00 Professional
Your code of registration is:
J——s
—————Note there is now french, english, italian, portugese, spanish and german version of WinImage.
I send you a floppy with WinImage 4.00 and my freeware Extract. I hope you’ll be happy with WinImage !Don ‘t hesitate to upload it on BBS and give to your friend !
Only two question : Where did you find WinImage and do you Windows 3.1, Win
95 or WinNT version, or both ? (you can answer in french or english)For getting more information, you can connect on my web site at :
http://www.winimage.com/winimage.htm
and at http://www.winimage.com for information and downloading other tools (including related to WinImage)Regards,
Gilles Vollant
–jeroen
via: