Old versions of RR/LC and old computers?

[Richmond Mathewson]

So, here I am in Britain for a visit with my Mum and Dad, and doing a 
spot of work on my
Tray-loading G3 iMac running Mac OS 10.3.9; and it does just exactly all 
that I need!!!!

However, this machine cannot be used with versions of RR/LC later than 
4.0 [not really a big
problem as far as I am concerned as I own RR 4.0], and I was wondering 
(again) why, whenever
Runtime Revolution produce a new version of LC they stop making earlier 
versions available,
and for sale.

This may seem like a daft question until you reflect on several things:

The world is swimming in old computers that are, supposedly outdated [as 
far as I know this G3 iMac
was made about 14 years ago], that can be reused in all sorts of places 
[especially on the educational front]
and for children at home to learn programming on.

Currently I have a Pentium II running FreeDOS with the GEM GUI that I 
use for helping kids
with PASCAL.

I have another Pentium II running Damn Small Linux [the developer of DSL 
has "woken up"
and is recommencing development after a 4 year break] that I am going to 
see about using with
versions of RR/LC.

Early versions of RR/LC, while not being as jazzy and capable as more 
current versions are very good
for many types of in-house software development, as well as for teaching 
purposes.

I belive that were RunRev to market early versions of RR/LC at cut-down 
prices they would make
some money, not detract from their sales of up-to-date versions, and do 
a lot of people a good
service.

Richmond.