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My IBM 5160 - questios.

Can I safetly open 5153's case? I want to clean it inside a bit.
There is lot of dust.
 
I opened it and cleaned - monitor still work!

Where can I find some old IBM BASIC apps, or IBM software?
 
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I've got some apps that are good for an XT

XTREE

Xtree was a very popular disk manager. I have a few versions, but the one I've put on my XT is one of the first versions - 1.06 (from 1985).
Strangely, it didn't want to run on my 256K motherboard until I added a RAM board that gave me a total of 640K.

WORDSTAR

One of the early word processors (see http://wordstar.org/wordstar/history/history.htm).
I have version 3.31 from 1987.
WordStar was so popular that others writing text editors sometimes used some of WordStar's editing commands. The key combination to delete a line in WordStar is CTRL-Y. Guess what CTRL-Y does in Visual basic?


Get them from http://members.dodo.com.au/~iamextinct/
 
Ok, thanks.
I have noticed that on both XT machines with hard disks I have, IBM Disk Manager was installed. Is this app functional?
I have also found SideKick, what is this?
 
Sidekick is a classic Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) productivity application from the early 80s from Borland, the same people who bought you Pascal. Do a Google on 'Borland Sidekick' for details.
 
WordStar 3.31 is a classic. It goes back much earlier than 1987 though .. I am sure that I was using it in 1984 on my PCjr.

I remember that there was a series of patches for 3.31 that you could do against the executable to change the number of lines on the display or change other features. I need to dig those up again.

WordStar for the PCjr was essentially the same as 3.31, except that it added support for subdirectories.
 
Luke said:
I have noticed that on both XT machines with hard disks I have, IBM Disk Manager was installed.
Click to expand...
When I used 'disk manager' to describe Xtree, it was meant in a very broad sense.

The term 'disk manager' was used in the names of applications that had different functionality.
There was 'Seagate Disk Manager', 'Ontrack Disk Manager', 'IBM Disk Manager' and so on.

These 'disk managers' were typically used when you needed to fit a hard drive that was larger than what your computer's BIOS and/or DOS would allow.
I avoided their use where possible because of complications. For example, Nortons Utilities would get confused.
 
mbbrutman said:
WordStar 3.31 is a classic. It goes back much earlier than 1987 though .. I am sure that I was using it in 1984 on my PCjr.
Click to expand...
I'm sure I was using WordStar on my CP/M machine as far back as '81
 
I don't really need Word Star. I just need small, simple and old text editor.
For writing I need graphics editor to support these strange letters from our alphabet ęóąśłżźćń....
Will early ChiWrite run under PC-DOS 2.10?
 
Luke said:
I don't really need Word Star. I just need small, simple and old text editor.
Click to expand...
I think most people in this forum would describe WordStar as a "small, simple and old text editor".

An early 'word processor' that had multi-language support is WordPerfect. Version 4.2 lists as a feature, "Foreign language support" (with a caveat of, "not available on all machines"). Also, the Requirements section includes, "DOS 2.0 or later" and "256 Kb memory".

WordPerfect is a more complex than WordStar, but now you know of another option.
 
But doesn't WordStar have the control keys (user interface) from H*ll? I've never tried it, only heard about it, but there seems to have been two distinct groups in WordStar people and Emacs people.

(ok, I can see if anyone wants to counter with Emacs also has a user interface from the same heated place that never is supposed to freeze over)
 
carlsson said:
But doesn't WordStar have the control keys (user interface) from H*ll?
Click to expand...
You bet it does. I'm not espousing the use of WordPerfect other other software, justing trying to give Luke some options.
 
DOS 2.1 introduced the use of code pages (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page ).
Implemented via a COUNTRY command in CONFIG.SYS
I have never had to use it.

Some of the references on the Internet suggest that it changes DOS' character set (as well as other things).
Perhaps that may help.
Perhaps you are already aware of code pages.

COUNTRY
========

Enables MS-DOS to use country-specific conventions for displaying times,
dates, and currency; for determining the order by which characters are
sorted; and for determining which characters can be used in filenames. You
can use this command only in your Config.sys file.

The COUNTRY command configures MS-DOS to recognize the character set and
punctuation conventions observed when using one of the supported languages.

Syntax

COUNTRY=xxx[,[yyy][,[drive:][path]filename]]

Parameters

xxx
Specifies the country code.

yyy
Specifies the character set for the country.

[drive:][path]filename
Specifies the location and name of the file containing country information.
 
modem, codepage is only useful when you have right ROM in MDA, CGA, Hercules or you have EGA, VGA card...
I'll try to find this WordPerfect, and what about ChiWrite?
I can't find this WP, 5.1 is everywhere, but there is no 4.2.
 
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Both Wordstar and Wordperfect were full-featured word-processing programs. IIRC Sidekick also used Wordstar.

My favorite was PCWrite. More spartan than WS or WP but easier to use and with a smaller footprint.

Should still be available on some archive site.

Lawrence
 
Luke said:
I can't find this WP, 5.1 is everywhere, but there is no 4.2.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, I have a 4.2 box/manuals but no disks.
Version 5.1 also has DOS 2.0 as a minimum. It requires "384k of free memory".
 
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