2 brand new, sealed and never opened CD-ROMs. Rare in brand new condition. In stock. Ships same or next day from Northern California.
This is a mid-1990s CD-ROM product from American Business Information, Inc. (Omaha, NE), a business-data/marketing company. In 1996 the company released its "ultimate" CD-ROM product, The 130 Million Listings Ultimate Phone Book, which combined its 88 Million Households, 16 Million American Yellow Page Businesses, 800 number, and nine-digit zip code products into one single-source reference tool, and its bestselling CD-ROM titles in the mid-1990s included The Ultimate Phone Book, American Manufacturers Directory, 88 Million Households Phone Book, and 16 Million Businesses Phone Book. So your 2-CD set (households disc + businesses disc) is one of ABI's flagship data products from that era — originally sold to businesses for sales-lead generation and market research, not to consumers.
Official system requirements: Minimum 4 MB RAM, minimum 8.5 MB available disk space, Windows 3.1 or higher, CD-ROM drive with Microsoft CD extensions 2.1 or higher, Soundblaster 2.0 or higher (optional), Hayes compatible modem (optional). That's Windows 3.1/95-era software — almost certainly a 16-bit installer.
- Modern 64-bit Windows (10/11) cannot run 16-bit applications at all — no compatibility mode fixes that; it's a hard OS limitation, not a settings issue.
- Modern laptops also don't have optical drives, so a buyer would need an external USB CD/DVD drive just to read the disc in the first place.
- The only realistic way to actually run it today is a virtual machine or emulator running Windows 3.1/95.
Sold as a vintage collectible for retro-computing use — not compatible with modern 64-bit Windows systems without emulation. No optical drive on most current laptops; external CD drive is usually required to read discs.
