SequoiaView Homepage

I thought I had scheduled a blog post about the great tool on [WayBack] SequoiaView Homepage, but didn’t. In the mean time, Paolo Buffa posted an overview with a really nice historic perspective:

Is amazing from how many years I’m using this program, and how many operating systems it managed to go thru almost unscathed, without modification.

Paolo Buffa

Source: [Archive.is] SequoiaView: a piece of history. – Data Center IT – Spiceworks

I still use it, despite it being quite old: 2002 era, written in Delphi 5. It’s beautiful in part because of its anciency, but also because it is so simple and intuitive that I still use it regularly.

The age also shows in the web page (which when writing it was still on-line): The SequiaView home page link above is actually a classic frame inside [WayBack] The SequoiaView Homepage. Back then, it was already starting to be considered obsolete to write HTML using frameset [WayBack] Framing (World Wide Web) – Wikipedia.

The SequoiaView [WayBack] Download Page even points to non-existing ftp-download URLs via counter CGI scripts:

• Version 1.2 installer: http://www.win.tue.nl/cgi-bin/usr/sequoia/counter2.cgi -> ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/home/sequoia/SequoiaInstall.exe
• Version 1.3 installer: http://www.win.tue.nl/cgi-bin/usr/sequoia/counter3.cgi -> ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/home/sequoia/Sequoia1_3Install.exe
• Version 1.3 installer for Windows XP: http://www.win.tue.nl/cgi-bin/usr/sequoia/counter3xp.cgi -> ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/home/sequoia/Sequoia1_3XPInstall.exe
• Version 1.3 zipped installer: http://www.win.tue.nl/cgi-bin/usr/sequoia/counter3zip.cgi -> ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/home/sequoia/Sequoia1.3Install.zip

None of them have been archived by the WayBack machine: https://web.archive.org/web//ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/home/sequoia//

To verify alternative downloads, just check these hashes:

hash command	filename	hash output
$ md5	Sequoia1.3Install.zip	MD5 (Sequoia1.3Install.zip) = 28d356f2bafe258805794257c284a075
$ md5	Sequoia1_3XPInstall.exe	MD5 (Sequoia1_3XPInstall.exe) = 142586a5cc7a0139bde8c13e5cc4d301
$ shasum	Sequoia1.3Install.zip	762ab30177a7f6a0d4f173fd2442ba7b61df4c2e Sequoia1.3Install.zip
$ shasum	Sequoia1_3XPInstall.exe	c1db10a0f7d36adbc14b5a7a3f08fc35db1bee8b Sequoia1_3XPInstall.exe

I’ve a copy in my archive that I just use in a portable way: just copy over SequoiaView directory with these files in it:

• Archives.col
• DEFAULT.COL
• Images.col
• License.txt
• Movies.col
• ReleaseNotes.txt
• Sequoia.cnt
• Sequoia.exe
• SEQUOIA.HLP
• Sound.col

A few things that could be fixed (if ever hopefully MagnaView open sources it: [WayBack] @jpluimers More @magnaview did you ever consider to open source the Delphi code for http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/ or give someone NDA access to fix some bugs?):

• Access violation when re-scanning a drive
• Option to show multiple links to the same physical file
• Indication of more rights  needed to index a file or directory
• Better explorer integration (via context menu)