Chevtech Disk Drive: MS-DOS Chevrolet Software from 1987 

8-bit Show & Tell dug up some more versions of ChevyTech! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VsVkIy_jNmE.html ♫ Listen to the heartbeat of America ♪ ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-_MdrOVzvb7I.html Also, Chevtech is now playable in your browser on archive.org! archive.org/details/Chevtech_Disk_Drive

I’m impatiently waiting for LGR Cars.

One of my dad’s friends used to work for Mercedes, They had this kind of software where you design a car The disk gets sent to the factory. and the card gets made and then sent to the dealership. One of the employees I’m not sure who was playing with it and designed the most vile colour combination and made the car look hideous for a laugh. unfortunately someone sent the wrong disk into the factory and this vile car got made! They only realised their mistake when it arrived on a transporter, they then spent thousands getting the car re-sprayed and reupholstered :-)

The noise of a old computer in the background, aaahhhhh clint you know how to bring back memories

So, basically .. It was Chevrolet.com before the internet was mainstream. I mean, that's essentially just a DOS version of any auto manufacturers website today. I actually wonder if this is just a modified version of their actual ordering software. You know, someone comes into the dealer and wants to special order a brand new car. They likely used a system like this to record the features that the customer wants, so they could print it off and send it to the factory to be fulfilled. If that's the case, then it's kind of brilliant, because you are paying them to do the job of their secretary when you brought in the print-off to order your new car.

I love seeing these old, weird softwares

I would have spent hundreds of hours messing with car configs, memorizing every single option for every single car, if I had access to this in the 80s. There's wasn't a lot to do then, just re-read the same magazines, but to have individual options and prices available, configure exactly how you wanted it, etc - I can't overstate how amazing that would have been at the time to be able to do from home.

Thinking of it, I probably once did see this demonstrated at a Chevy display at a shopping mall once as kid. Nice of them to show it off, even though I was obviously a kid with no possible way of buying a car.

I shared this on our internal social media site. Would love to see if this is still available somewhere within the company. #iworkforGM

My granddad managed a fleet of Chevy work vehicles for the Sprint company back in the day, and he was a big Chevy fan, so of course he had this on his computer. Seeing that "Heartbeat of America" tagline again was weirdly nostalgic! I'm not a car guy, but when you're three years old and your granddad is showing you DOS, man, everything is interesting! I used to put together dream cars and trucks with this like I knew what I was doing. :) Dang, I miss my granddad. He taught me a lot.

0:01 Just wanted to say I appreciate you waving to us via the reflection on the monitor. 👋🏼

I think Clint needs some sort of 80's-90's Regular Car to drive to Goodwill in.

My dad was “too cool” for a Chrysler style mini van and I grew up with Astro. Took my drivers test with one! Thanks for the nostalgia Clint.

I own a '98 Chevy Cavalier 2.2 RS (2 door) model. Just rebuilt the head gasket and a bunch of other stuff on it since last Fall. She still purrs at over 250k miles! Seeing this though brought me back to when my Aunt owned an 86/87 Cav convertible. So cool!

I’m so happy this channel exists. Keeps me going between LGR episodes. Also love how your “throwaway” channel is so high quality.

Thank you for looking through the graphics! I was really curious about the Corvette :) The graphics remind me how I used to mess around in Deluxe Paint on my Amiga 500, doodling all sorts of things. It must have been fun making the art for this little program.

I’m imagining cork feet... underneath.

My dad owned a Corsica back in the day. Brings back memories.

Well I'm glad to see the base coat was a standard option for the Beretta

It is 1987... It is the future... (insert darksynth song)

Nothing like the feeling of bare cork feet running on smooth woodgrain!

Cash for Clunkers ended up being the death knell for a of cars from this era, which is why you don't see them on the road much anymore. A bit of a shame, really.

man my dad's 88 corsica lasted like 14 years. drove the hell out of that thing until it disintegrated.

From my childhood watching American TV, so many cars for the A-Team to trash! Thanks for buying all the Chevies bad guys! ;-)

"Look at that generic GM design! Fantastic!"

this is now known as the Build Your Own tool on the GM brand websites. i used to work for the call center that did this via phone back in the 90's, and now i work for the company that built and maintains the current BYO tool and the websites. the version we used in the call center was basically a Windows version of what you have there.

My mom had a Sprint, the memories in that tiny car lol. Haven't thought about it in 20 years now haha, I do vaguely remember being able to fill the gas tank for $10 or less in the early 90s.

""Knight Rider 2000", good lord there's a made-for-tv I haven't thought of for a few years. Hilariously, adjusted for inflation the Corvette coupe featured would cost roughly $60,000. They were really proud of that car.

Thank you for sharing this! I had a 1988 Chevy Corsica, when I was in high school, in the late 90s. It was a generous hand-me-down from my parents and I loved it. I have many great memories of that "noble steed". There are times where I think about buying one to restore, since it's such a basic car and underappreciated car.

My dad drove a 1987 Chevy Nova 5 door hatch! The Chevy Nova was just a rebadged Toyota Corolla. That car ran forever and got over 50mpg. Thanks for another great piece of content! I love this older, obscure software. A lot of my family members drove those very cars. Most of them were terrible.

Pretty neat of you to make a disk image of this. Now we can all mess around with the beauty of CHEVTEC

My father owned the 1985 hatchback 2-door sprint when I was little. Lasted 16 years.

Man the 80s was not only the golden era for cars, but for computers as well!

Oh boy! The 1987 Chevy Nova was a rebadged Toyota Corolla, the best car GM never made!

Definitely 1987, as it said to pick a 1988 Beretta at the beginning of the program...

I always appreciate those little updates like that, seems small but it makes the restoration feel really complete and that's fun to know :)

My family was all into GM products growing up. So, this was a perfect birthday treat! Thank you sir!

I love these old computer illustrations! Always wonder how they were done, if they hand drew them on graph paper and then put in the coordinates for vectors or if they drew right on screen with the keyboard or mouse (if available at the time).

Brings back memories, my first car was a 1986 Cheva Nova 4 door notchback with a 5 speed manual, no power steering, no air, and AM/FM/Cassette radio.

As a Brit who loves cars and computers this is fascinating. Back then British car magazines did little coverage of American cars beyond the sports cars. That’s why I love watching things like Hoovies Garage as I get to see cars that we never got over here. A friend of mine had an imported Blazer mind in the late 90s and it was nothing but trouble.

This took me waaaaaaay back to my 6 year old self learning DOS. Thanks for the time trip. Subscribed.

I am continually fascinated with MS-DOS software. I grew up with MS-DOS. It never came to my full realization of just how much software was created for MS-DOS. I wish I owned a copy of every single software that has been created for MS-DOS. That would be quite the collection to peruse through.

When I was about 9 years old (mid 90's) I had a Buick floppy for my Commodore 64, it came in a shoebox of copied disks I bought at a garage sale. From memory it was more of a history tour of their older models, quite a few graphics too. We never had Buick as a brand in Australia, so I found it fascinating as a kid to look at all their wacky car designs and features.

Thanks so much for uploading this, just wonderful.

Thanks LGR for uploading it to archive.org , i love these old programs and will check the Ford sim.

The Heartbeat of America. That's Yesterday's Chevrolet.

9:39 My first car was a '97 Chevy Cavalier. Funny how retro hardware/software is a product of the times it's in, thus giving way to individual context and nostalgia...

its a miracle that all these old disks works till today ! :-D

We need @RegularCars in here.

Like your friend 5:31, I do have that exact 1988 Beretta 2-door GT coupe with all those options that you've selected. I bought from my Dad in the early 2000s and I still have it. I take good care of it and I drive it around once in a while. I have other newer vehicles but this one has been in the family for many years and I just love it.

Watching you talk about cars so much makes me wish I had more time to talk with you about early 2000s tuner culture at VCFMW

I drove my '50 Dodge over to a friend's place today and went out for a cruise in his '52 Chevy DeLuxe Sport Coupe that he has owned for over 60 years.

I love those old trucks, my first truck was an '83 K20!

Neat. I had the Buick one for the Mac and the disk came with a paper that stated how many errors the program had. We noticed all the specs that were wrong made the GM product look better always at the expense of the competitors!

There's something about watching old floppy discs load up on old IBM's that's just so comfy

What a wonderful IBM computer. I never owned an IBM desktop computer. My father owned an IBM laptop that he told me I could have, if I could fix it. I did, and so it became mine. I spent hours on the family Gateway desktop computer. Wonderful memories of playing "Where In The U.S.A. is Carmen Sandiego?", "Return To Zork", and "Star Trek 25th Anniversary".

There's probably a recall out for this... :P

My dad bought a 87 Sprint new that had a 3 cylinder but also sold with a turbo. I love that car, 45 mpg city and 54 on highway. No power and you had to cut the AC to pull up a hill in first gear. Not many cars since then with that great mpg rating, but a awesome compact.

Such a nice video! My first car was and 87 red Corvette Coupe, and it's still my dream car.

As always, thank you for putting a copy of this on IA! 😍

I'm totally loading this up on my IBM XT. My main car was an '84 Chevy Celebrity for most of the early-mid 2000s (stupid reliable, actually sold it for a profit in 2012). Thanks Clint!

Kr2000 indeed! Great memory Clint! Cool theme music too.

Hey Clint, this is Shane from The Internet Archive. Thanks for archiving this software with us! We've gone ahead and created a version of the software that can be run in the browser via DOSBox. You can find it at archive.org/details/Chevtech_Disk_Drive Let me know if you ever have other items to convert to emulation.

I somehow got my hands on Buick’s 1992 and 1993 disks like this when I was a kid. The 1992 disks were custom-printed 5 1/4” floppies in a Buick logo disk. They came in clear protective sleeves so you could see the sweet artwork on the disk and I can still distinctly recall the smell of those vinyl sleeves.

Back in late 93 or early 94 my family received a 3 1/2 inch demo floppy from Chrysler. The disk was about the Dodge Neon which was being introduced at the time. It was somewhat similar to this Chevy disk but included full VGA pictures of the car and had some simple animations. I think it even had some simple Adlib or SB music included too!

I love how it says the disk is designed for your entertainment. Seeing the list of model names gave me a brief flashback to the final round of Classic Concentration when I used to watch it around 1992. I don’t recall if they were Chevy models but that’s how my brain works. Now we wait for a dealer to get in touch and offer Clint his very own woodgrain Chevy with options chosen from this disk.

Ah yes the good ol 80's, when A/C and window defrost was entirely optional.

WeeoW! good old clint reviewing weird old software and sharing nostalgic tales, heck yes.

As a vintage computer and chevy fan I am very intrigued by this. Dude this was good enough for the main channel haha.

Thanks for the upload LGR! I was way stoked you found the 86'-87' years! That Chevy R-10 truck you deemed a "70's style" is debatably the worst Chevy truck to work on! One year truck that had the old Silverado bodies with the new TBI/Fuel Injected engines. Cool find and again thanks for the upload!

My grandpa bought a black s10 brand new with a chrome rear bumper and red stripes, the only one like it I've ever seen. He gave it to my dad and he would let me shift the gears when I rode with him. Reverse at 40 is fun :p

Like, 20 years ago, I was really big on scraping off the cork feet on my vintage systems, and replacing them with rubber feet. Then I found out that rubber feet break down and ruin tables. Those were the days.

It's like looking into a time machine, all the way into last week on an old computer running old software

I love the car videos on LGR. Musing about the cars that aren't around anymore. Feels hollow man.

I was blown away to find out gm used computers to map out dimensions into cad software with CNC probes way back in the 70s. Same tech that you see engineers using today but think it's the latest cutting edge tech.

An impressive array of sockets there friend.

Neat. I definitely remember the Ford software from the 90s, but never seen this before.

Reminds me of my first real computer a Sharp MZ-80A which my Mum bought cheap secondhand at auction, the only tape that came with it had Basic and a Car dealership program in basic! I played around with it, I remember it having Ford Cars of the day and a finance calculator on it. It was definitely bespoke for a local dealership and a very young me found it really interested looking at the code even if I didn't understand it. That old machine taught me basic and made me want more, kept me going until I got my Commodore 64c in 1989 :)

My mother had an 88 Caprice. Used it as a taxi in the Greater Toronto Area. Odometer stopped at 200,000km exactly. Trip odo kept running though. Kept it running and on the road until 1999 when it got stolen. By then we estimated 500,000km on it, front passenger door didn't lock. Key wasn't needed to start the engine which fired up every time. Shutting it down was a different story. Had a run on condition for some reason. It was some weird hybrid carburetor/direct fuel injection thing that our mechanic could never get quite right.

great reflection in the monitor

If you were into cars back in the 80's and you had this .. I bet you could literally spend HOURS playing around with this

test drive quality car shots, love it

Fun! Years ago I went to a hoarder house estate sale and found a Ford dealership branded LaserDisc player. Unfortunately, it was at the bottom of a pile of 10 other LD and CED players and they had none of the discs.

I'm always happy when one of my favorite RU-vidrs upload on my birthday.

I remember playing a car building game in the early 90's, you could choose, engine type,size and location. Brake type and adjust the design of the vehicle profile for aerodynamics and then hit the test button and the program would run the vehicle around a track for you and then give you the results of how it performed.

The only Chevys I rarely saw on german roads back the days was the Baron Cabriolet and the Corvette. I remember holidays in Sweden the early 90's. I saw plenty Chevys there, these cars fascinated me as a kid because I mostly never saw them but on TV. When I recently visit Sweden again, all the US cars were gone, and I saw the same boring Cars as everywhere in Europe :-) Nice memories.

So essencially Need For Speed Underground: Chevrolet Editon '87 Also this reminds me of that movie of that guy that went to the city to buy his dream car one day before his wedding that was a "Trovare" car (an obviously parody of a Lamborgini) and he started to add things to it and it inmediatedly breaks down minutes after he brought it, the dude was at a chair with this fancy early 90's CGI based program that allowed him to customize the car the same way as this one, with fancy futuristic Wipeout-ish sound effects and a sexy voice over as well, one of my all time favorite movies.

I did a dealer showroom demo for BMW motorcycles back in the 1985 or 86. I did all the cga artwork for it. They had a buy a BMW in europe, drive it around on vacation and then ship it home. Apparently it was cheaper than importing a BMW back in the 80's.

When I went to the Ford plant here in NE OHIO back around the time when this disc was made, we went into one of the offices for the tour and they had a computer program drawing out cars/trucks on a printer. The printer was basically like a 3D printer with a pen attached and it was drawing out your choice of car/truck that you wanted on a piece of paper. I mean the X, Y looked like todays 3D printers. Also it was just drawing the outline of the car/truck.

Ah the '80s, when a 12% interest rate was considered normal...

I daily drive a 87 Monte Carlo LS thats not modified or lowridered to heck at all so this is very awesome to see :)

Fun Fact: around this time Chevy's pickup division signed an official sponsorship deal with Brett Engleman who owned and drove The Michigan Ice Monster monster truck and he rebodied the truck with a new 1988 K1500 body and competed as The Heartbeat Of America for a few years.

I still have my grandfather's 1978 Chevy squarebody 4x4.

Most PC builders on RU-vid: Look at my new insane liquid cooling rig for my Ryzen 9 PC! Clint: Look at my new cork feet for my 286 PC Me: Nice cork feet.

We had quite a few of these cars in our fleet back in the day. Not bad for ease of maintenance.

Oh wow, I always had fun with the Buick ones of these back then, but I didn't know that the other GM marques had it too! Neat.

12:52 - The "Squarebody" crew cab pickup, Suburban and full size Blazer (and its GMC Jimmy twin) actually remained in production through the 1991 model year, 18 years after they were introduced!

HA!! Crazy software....I had an old Chevy Spectrum back in the 80s... It was a re-badged Isuzu.... That Christine from the ad was quite the lovely thing. In that early 1980s kinda way.... :)

12.5% interest?! Could you imagine paying that for a car today?

I remember the Sprint Turbo being really fast when they came out.