Classic Applications

[Jorpho]

To this day I regard WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS as one of the finest word processors ever conceived. I might still be using it today if Microsoft Word had not become a standard (and if I didn't need to do any kind of graphical stuff). Tons of easy-to-use features and no distractions. It still has some minor support at http://www.wpdos.org.

Do you have any applications you remember fondly?

[Lady Jaye]

I remember fondly Microsoft's Cinemania series of CD-ROM. Every year, a new edition would come out. Not only was it a great database for movie reviews (including Leonard Maltins' and Ebert's), but it also had a nice structure for reference regarding actors and filmography, etc. And its best feature were the classic scenes: snippets of film and audio as well as still images.

Think of IMDB but with no advertising and nicer-looking.

Alas, Microsoft discontinued it after the 1997 edition came out. That's an example of a very fine piece of software that got bumped because of the Internet. Heck, I wish that Microsoft would have kept the website version afloat.

[IntvGene]

There was a program that was essential for any DOS-illiterate, and that was a small program called Pop-up DOS. You could rename directories, delete directories and subdirectories, change attributes, all with a simple graphical interface. It was quite helpful.

As for real applications, I used Wordperfect fine for awhile, and even a little bit of Works. Lotus1-2-3 was an essential spreadsheet program too (I'm not old enough to remember the VisiCalc days).

[Ze_ro]

I got a lot of use out of SpeedScript 128... it was a simple type-in program from Compute!'s Gazette, but it worked very nicely anyways.

A friend of mine claims that her dad still uses a Coleco Adam for it's built-in word processor.

--Zero

[Flack]

Before Word Perfect, I used PFS-Write. To be honest I don't remember WP doing anything PFSW didn't; it just became the standard, and I moved to it.

I think the movie software I had was called "Flicks". I remember being astounded that they had enough information to span *6* whole floppies!

[calthaer]

Pkunzip *.zip c:\Games\GameTitle

[Sph1nx]

WP 5.1? Oh god.

I taught a community keyboarding class on WP 5.1.

Fun time.

[Arqueologia_Digital]

Norton commander lives!!!!, in the Windows explorer...

[Jorpho]

Pkunzip *.zip c:\Games\GameTitle

Wow. Was it ever that easy? It seems so long ago.

[calthaer]

Pkunzip *.zip c:\Games\GameTitle

Wow. Was it ever that easy? It seems so long ago.

Well, maybe you had to /? to get the -L or -d or whatever switch preserved the directory structure of the files, but...

I miss MS-DOS 6.22. MEMMAKER was revelatory. I need to make a boot menu for my DOS box so that I can fire up Ultima VII.

[Ze_ro]

Y'know, I never found Winzip (or any of the GUI compression programs) to be terribly convenient. Many times I found myself in a situation where I had to open a large number of zip files (perhaps I raided a website and downloaded 50-60 individually compressed Doom levels), and I was pretty much forced to use pkunzip, since Winzip would have taken a lifetime of clicks to do the same work as 'pkunzip "*.zip"'.

Drag 'n' Drop is overrated. As long as you can type and think relatively quick, and have a good memory for commands and parameters, a command line is almost always much faster.

--Zero

[IntvGene]

I remember one archiver that used the .ICE extension. I loved it because it "melted" the files when it decompressed them. Unfortunately, it died a slow death and never really took off.

I didn't mind using PKUNZIP -p -r... I guess I got used to it. I never liked ARJ though. I could never remember which modifier extracted and which compacted..

Oh the days when I was actually concerned about hard drive space. :)

[Jorpho]

I miss MS-DOS 6.22. MEMMAKER was revelatory. I need to make a boot menu for my DOS box so that I can fire up Ultima VII.

Y'know, Exult (http://exult.sourceforge.net/) is still going strong for U7.

I was always under the impression that MEMMAKER didn't really work.

[calthaer]

MEMMAKER worked wonders for me.

Exult works alright, but the combat isn't quite the same (formations aren't like the original) and getting water from the well wouldn't work either - a necessary component if I'm going to bake bread!

[YoshiM]

Before an IBM PC:

-Telewriter 64 for the CoCo: Excellent and fast word processor.

-CoCo Max 3 for the CoCo: Fun graphics program and pretty powerful.

IBM PC:

Xtree Gold: didn't like typing DIR /w/p all the time to try and find a file? Xtree was an excellent file manager for DOS.

Professional Write: my first word processor for a PC. I don't think it was WYSIWYG (I'd have to fire it up to find out, I think I still have it) but it got the reports done and looked good on my dot matrix printer.

QEMM 386: this memory manager had it ALL over Memmaker. One of the things Memmaker never seemed to get right was setting up memory to work with both games and Windows 3.1x. Set it up for games, Windows wouldn't run. Set it up for Windows, games wouldn't run. I had to set up my AUTOEXEC and CONFIG by hand to get the right allocations (those were the days-I was able to get 600K of base RAM after fiddling). Kohl's was having a big sale on software so I snagged QEMM for like $10 or $15. Loaded it into my zippy Packard Bell 486 SX 25 with 4MB of RAM and voila, I was able to get roughly 612KB (or more) thanks to the Stealth mode of the software. Though I had to run a boot disk for Tie Fighter, but oh well.

PKZIP: oh yeah, this too was my friend. My Dad got like 5 CD-ROMS of shareware from a ham radio/CB/electronics flea market and that program was essential.

"Magic Mushroom":not really an app but it was a fun thing that became a "tradition" whenever a computer came into our possession. It was a "real speech" (same technology as the sound in Mean Streets) file that sounded like a British commercial for the little plastic air freshening mushrooms. My Dad played it on his PC and we heard the woman's voice squeak from the PC speaker. I played it on my PC when I got it. And so on. Then I lost the disk. "Maaagic mushrooooms. And the lov-el-ee frangrance in the air! New from Airadyne".

[Jorpho]

Hey, I remember that Magic Mushrooms file. It came with a program called XMSPlay that I used to test my soundcard.

Remember those old Night Owl CD compilations?


Exult works alright, but the combat isn't quite the same (formations aren't like the original) and getting water from the well wouldn't work either - a necessary component if I'm going to bake bread!

I heard U7Run (http://members.iinet.net.au/~rsd/five.html) is an excellent alternative.