40th Floor Software: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:56, 3 December 2014

A small company run by Cornel Huth that is based in San Antonio, Texas, USA. Started life as a developer of OS/2 multimedia related software including enhanced drivers and mixers for soundcards. Also started supplying a database engine called Bullet for developers that used an industry standard .dbf file formats as database containers. Over time the company ported the Bullet engine to a number of other operating systems and added front end support to a number of popular development packages.

No one knows what exactly happened, but one day in 1998 or 99 the 40th Floor website and catalogue was gone and had been replaced with a rant directed towards OS/2, IBM and its users, that was later taken down and replaced by a blank page for about a year. When the website re-appeared the company had not only removed any mention of OS/2 from the site and removed all OS/2 software and documentation from there as well even though support and listings for all other operating systems remained, but they had actually taken the time to go through other documentation and lists for its software and remove any sideways mention of OS/2 from them on top of everything else. In addition all e-mail requests for support for products already purchased either got ignored or responded to in what can only be referred to as a snarky or even bizarre manner and even those that needed replacement executables/packages due to disk failures, corruption or similar were refused any support. At the same time at the least one reseller BMT-Micro was still selling the 40th floor products and those that had purchased the software through them managed to get replacement packages and some rudimentary support from them.

The website disappeared again after about a year although an update of the Bullet database engine for Win32 to version 3.1 was announced in another forum but the announcement linked to a non-existing web page and an unresponsive mail address. 40th Floor then suddenly pops up again in 2006 listing a couple of WinCE products in addition to a Win32 encrypted database engine called GT40 but offered no other information on the product, although it appeared to be a development of the older Bullet engine. But more strangely the company suddenly offered all their OS/2 software for sale, some seven years or more after they had taken them off their site but at considerably higher prices that they had been when last listed, Bullet licenses were offered at 250 USD for instance but they had been USD 149 previously and so on so forth. But at the same time there were no support documents available and in fact the website stated that the software was only provided as is, and no support of any kid was available.

It goes without saying that no-one noticed in the OS/2 world, not only was it the best part of a decade since people had stopped visiting the site looking for updates on their OS/2 versions of their software but furthermore the link to the "Tire Fire software sale" on the company's home page was in an extra small typeface size and probably not even noticed by those that did visit it.

But it was the relative strangeness of the offer that made it all the more intriguing, "fire sales" usually imply discounts and not price increases for starters, the software was all by then so outdated that reading about it for sale gave you a sense of having entered an alternative history time warp. The MIDI players had long been replaced with better freeware options, and at 50 USD for each would have been considered somewhat overpriced when they were new, absurd as unsupported vintage software downloads, the drivers all supported old ISA hardware that had been out of sale for six to ten years and ISA motherboards had disappeared off the market some 4 years earlier except as expensive specialist products such as industrial boards. Even the company's best product in the form of the Bullet database engine had not only been caught up in most respects with by free and open source products such as SQLite but mostly surpassed as well, the only advantage that Bullet had left lay in the relative speed and size due to its hard crafted assembly code, but even there the advantages were not as great as they once were and advances in CPU speed and memory prices made the differences rather minuscule.

Even even if by chance you just happened to have all the vintage computer gear needed to utilise the audio products from 40th Floor the full package of mixers and players for one XG sound-card would have set you back 250 USD and for that money you got an admittedly good mixer and very basic and rudimentary audio recorder and audio and MIDI players. By that time hardware had commoditised to such a degree that we could locally get a full Windows Box complete with OS, drives and all other needed hardware, including sound-card for just under USD 200, including local taxes. That windows box having much better media playback than the 40th floor products BTW.

Known OS/2 products

Bullet - Database engine for developers
Validate - Database integrity checker
Bullet/REXX

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 No one knows what exactly happened, but one day in 1998 or 99 the 40th Floor website and catalogue was gone and had been replaced with a rant directed towards OS/2, IBM and its users, that was later taken down and replaced by a blank page for about a year. When the website re-appeared the company had not only removed any mention of OS/2 from the site and removed all OS/2 software and documentation from there as well even though support and listings for all other operating systems remained, but they had actually taken the time to go through other documentation and lists for its software and remove any sideways mention of OS/2 from them on top of everything else. In addition all e-mail requests for support for products already purchased either got ignored or responded to in what can only be referred to as a snarky or even bizarre manner and even those that needed replacement executables/packages due to disk failures, corruption or similar were refused any support. At the same time at the least one reseller [[BMT-Micro]] was still selling the 40th floor products and those that had purchased the software through them managed to get replacement packages and some rudimentary support from them.
-The website disappeared again after about a year although an update of the Bullet database engine for Win32 to version 3.1 was announced in another forum but the announcement linked to a non-existing web page and an unresponsive mail address. 40th Floor then suddenly pops up again in 2006 listing a couple of WinCE products in addition Win32 encrypted database engine called '''GT40''' but offered no other information on the product, although it appeared to be a development of the older Bullet engine. But more strangely the company suddenly offered all their OS/2 software for sale, some seven years or more after they had taken them off their site but at considerably higher prices that they had been when last listed, Bullet licenses were offered at 250 USD for instance but they had been USD 149 previously and so on so forth. But at the same time there were no support documents available and in fact the website stated that the software was only provided as is, and no support of any kid was available.
+The website disappeared again after about a year although an update of the Bullet database engine for Win32 to version 3.1 was announced in another forum but the announcement linked to a non-existing web page and an unresponsive mail address. 40th Floor then suddenly pops up again in 2006 listing a couple of WinCE products in addition to a Win32 encrypted database engine called '''GT40''' but offered no other information on the product, although it appeared to be a development of the older Bullet engine. But more strangely the company suddenly offered all their OS/2 software for sale, some seven years or more after they had taken them off their site but at considerably higher prices that they had been when last listed, Bullet licenses were offered at 250 USD for instance but they had been USD 149 previously and so on so forth. But at the same time there were no support documents available and in fact the website stated that the software was only provided as is, and no support of any kid was available.
 It goes without saying that no-one noticed in the OS/2 world, not only was it the best part of a decade since people had stopped visiting the site looking for updates on their OS/2 versions of their software but furthermore the link to the "Tire Fire software sale" on the company's home page was in an extra small typeface size and probably not even noticed by those that did visit it.