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Best of the Best in Software
- Thread starter tezza
- Start date
Yzzerdd
Veteran Member
Sean, I believe you forgot the [/ before the end of your quote. Also, I got the stamps you sent, I will get the box out tomorrow.
Your advice explains why neither me or Eric couldn't get Windows 1.03 to work on our standard monochrome cards in a 5150. We tried lying to it telling it we have fancy video adapters, but to no avail. Now I know more monochrome, I need the Hercules adapter card. Oh well, as soon as I can, I will be getting a color monitor to go with my colore card, so I won't bother seeking a Hercules card. The Windows manual I have should of been more specific, as I believe it just stated it could run on monochrome, but I suppose I wasn't motivated enough at the time to look into the details of that at the time.
--Ryan
Your advice explains why neither me or Eric couldn't get Windows 1.03 to work on our standard monochrome cards in a 5150. We tried lying to it telling it we have fancy video adapters, but to no avail. Now I know more monochrome, I need the Hercules adapter card. Oh well, as soon as I can, I will be getting a color monitor to go with my colore card, so I won't bother seeking a Hercules card. The Windows manual I have should of been more specific, as I believe it just stated it could run on monochrome, but I suppose I wasn't motivated enough at the time to look into the details of that at the time.
--Ryan
Floppies_only
Veteran Member
It's actually Lenovo.
Sean
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates <-- Wild hillarity.
"640k is all anybody will ever need"
-- somebody other than Bill Gates, we don't know who
Floppies_only
Veteran Member
Hey, you're online! We're both online at the same time
Yeah, that quote definitely got mangled. I will pay more attention from here on out.
I was able to get a Hercules card off of eBay (recently) for less than ten dollars. It provides 720×348 resolution, which is pretty good. It is backwards compatible with the MDA. The card I got was a late model, only half as long as the other one I have. That means that it uses less power, because it has fewer components.
You can run Windows up to version 3.1 with a CGA card and a regular TV. It is monocrome with 640 x 200 pixels of resolution. Windows 3.0 will run on an XT. Slowly
Sean
tezza
Veteran Member
Yes, the old Hercules card. The IBM-PC I used at work all those years ago back in 1984 had one of these cards. After all, colour was considered an extravagent luxury!! For games, not serious uses!
The mono graphics were actually quite good, and many (but not all) software products had drivers which could be used with it. I don't think the card was ever officially supported in MS-DOS though? There was a piece of software you could use with a herc card (cga.com?) which made the computer think it was running a CGA card. This was often a solution for games, where hercules was almost never an option.
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tezza
Veteran Member
Well, just to clarify, I was looking for programs which typified the particular computer's use "for the time". For business applications, from what people have said, from what I remember and from what I have read, Lotus 1-2-3 would be a good choice for the 5150.
For good or for ill, it's true that Windows is a direct descendant of what most of us use today, and for that reason early versions are of historical interest. However, not a lot of people used Windows 1.0 back when the 5150 was in its heyday. It was more of a curiosity, and certainly was inferior to the OS on the Mac. Although I faithfully bought every release I was never very impressed with the early versions of Windows.
If I ever do get to display these units, I'll probably use some kind of Lotus demo mock-up for the 5051. However, people might also be interested in seeing where Windows came from too, so who knows, I may display that as well if the theme is more on software than hardware.
tezza
Veteran Member
Exactly. In terms of capability the machines were not groundbreaking at all when you looked at what others were doing but...
1. They were well-engineered, and looked and felt like solid, quality products.
2. There was a huge marketing effort and lots of excitement from the computer press which help surge uptake along.
3. IBM was unlikely to fold up and go under. When outlaying a huge expense, this fact allowed budget controllers in companies to sleep at night.
4. There was a distribution and support network
5. They were expensive, and looked like serious machines for serious business (unlike the playful Mac).
6. Every software writer and his dog started to write programs for the IBM-PC
To the chagrin of many in what was initially an anti-establishment movement (i.e. microcomputers), Johnny-come-lately Big Blue moved in and spoilt the party.
Love it or loath it, the conservative, staid IBM-PC is one of the defining computers of the microcomputer revolution. The machine and the name legitamised microcomputers for the business world.
(...and, one could argue, "computing" grew up and stopped being fun
)
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CP/M User
Veteran Member
tezza wrote:
The mono graphics were actually quite good, and many (but not all) software products had drivers which could be used with it. I don't think the card was ever officially supported in MS-DOS though? There was a piece of software you could use with a herc card (cga.com?) which made the computer think it was running a CGA card. This was often a solution for games, where CGA was almost never an option.
I personally disagree your attacks on the CGA card, sure it had that blinking problem which was fixed with a simple program and only 4 colours 320x200 graphics not to add to the fact the IBM BIOS didn't support the other low-res 160x100x16 colour mode which Software company Windmill Software made a game within and a few other games used this (not to mention the 120 Colours demo I translated into TP from GWBASIC and posted here years ago). For games the CGA card has some useful visural tricks which were found in games like the original Digger by Windmill Software, so there's most certainally a reason to have a CGA card, not to mention the Square Characters (which later video Cards need a program for to generate the characters as seen on CGA) - text mode games look heaps better.
CP/M User.
The mono graphics were actually quite good, and many (but not all) software products had drivers which could be used with it. I don't think the card was ever officially supported in MS-DOS though? There was a piece of software you could use with a herc card (cga.com?) which made the computer think it was running a CGA card. This was often a solution for games, where CGA was almost never an option.
I personally disagree your attacks on the CGA card, sure it had that blinking problem which was fixed with a simple program and only 4 colours 320x200 graphics not to add to the fact the IBM BIOS didn't support the other low-res 160x100x16 colour mode which Software company Windmill Software made a game within and a few other games used this (not to mention the 120 Colours demo I translated into TP from GWBASIC and posted here years ago). For games the CGA card has some useful visural tricks which were found in games like the original Digger by Windmill Software, so there's most certainally a reason to have a CGA card, not to mention the Square Characters (which later video Cards need a program for to generate the characters as seen on CGA) - text mode games look heaps better.
CP/M User.
tezza
Veteran Member
Attack on the CGA card? What makes you think I am doing that??
At my work, the managers wouldn't consider colour cards or monitors at first as (in their eyes) it was a frivilous luxury. This doesn't mean to say I didn't want them (I would have loved colour!). That's why I used a smiley in the post. I was being facetious.
Actually, I did make an error in that post which I've now corrected. I meant to say "This was often a solution for games, where HERCULES was almost never an option".
I've corrected this in the original post.
CP/M User
Veteran Member
tezza wrote:
Attack on the CGA card? What makes you think I am doing that??
Aparantely your earlier mistake was the attack!
Personally I'm only familiar with the Hercules video card by name and that it has a higher graphics resolution than CGA (that's about it), though a friend in the states (who seems to be no longer around!)-: was a fan of Hercules - might have even done a few graphical programs for it too.
The original Monochrome card for the IBMs I believe didn't support true graphics as such (though someone told me it was possible with some very clever and tricky programming), Mode 7 was the video mode used.
I vagerly recall a game I had on the XT which supported the Hercules graphical modes, think it was Test Drive 2 - The Duel. How many other games supported this I'm unsure.
Attack on the CGA card? What makes you think I am doing that??
Aparantely your earlier mistake was the attack!
Personally I'm only familiar with the Hercules video card by name and that it has a higher graphics resolution than CGA (that's about it), though a friend in the states (who seems to be no longer around!)-: was a fan of Hercules - might have even done a few graphical programs for it too.
The original Monochrome card for the IBMs I believe didn't support true graphics as such (though someone told me it was possible with some very clever and tricky programming), Mode 7 was the video mode used.
I vagerly recall a game I had on the XT which supported the Hercules graphical modes, think it was Test Drive 2 - The Duel. How many other games supported this I'm unsure.
DoctorPepper
Experienced Member
My favorite monitor was monochrome. I had a green and an amber monitor, on two PC's (clones, not IBM), side by side. I've never been much of a gamer (I was asking about SpaceWar in another post, and that is to just look through the source code), and always found, at least in a console or command prompt, that monochrome makes me more productive.
We need another category added to this list: Best assembler/compiler/development environment for early computers. I liked the built-in BASIC of most early micros, or even the ones that presented BASIC as the operating system. Made programming much easier, just turn on the computer and start typing ;-)
I loved Borland's "Turbo" series of development environments/compilers, but my favorite will always be MASM (Macro Assembler). It isn't a "development environment" or even contain an IDE or editor. You have to provide those. MASM 5.0 was the only compiler/assembler/dev environment I ever paid full price for. I still have the original floppies, although I can no longer find the books :-(
We need another category added to this list: Best assembler/compiler/development environment for early computers. I liked the built-in BASIC of most early micros, or even the ones that presented BASIC as the operating system. Made programming much easier, just turn on the computer and start typing ;-)
I loved Borland's "Turbo" series of development environments/compilers, but my favorite will always be MASM (Macro Assembler). It isn't a "development environment" or even contain an IDE or editor. You have to provide those. MASM 5.0 was the only compiler/assembler/dev environment I ever paid full price for. I still have the original floppies, although I can no longer find the books :-(
tezza
Veteran Member
I totally agree with you here regarding BASIC.
I never played with MASM although I do have the original disks. I did however use both TurboBasic and TurboPascal on both an XT and 386 to program several educational programs I used for my own University teaching.
They were excellent tools.
tezza
Veteran Member
I don't think there was many. I seem to recall needing to drag out cga.com so I could fool my Hercules machine into thinking it had a cga card, whenever I wanted to play graphical games.
My main gaming interest back then tended to be infocom non-graphical games and the Hercules was fine for them
willowmoon93
Experienced Member
I don't think there was many. I seem to recall needing to drag out cga.com so I could fool my Hercules machine into thinking it had a cga card, whenever I wanted to play graphical games.
My main gaming interest back then tended to be infocom non-graphical games and the Hercules was fine for them
Loved the original text-based Infocom games -- Zork I, II, III ... Planetfall ... Ballyhoo .... definitely my kind of adventure games!
Yeah although I don't have a specific list I would usually stick to cult classic games of the era. Zork, Adventure, Ultima, Kings Quest.. I don't recall when Elite came out but that's one I picked up to show off since it was a huge game.
For the Apple /// it was easy, I have the original Demonstration disk lol so it scrolls through little features and shows off spreadsheets and other graphics. I don't know how many other systems had demonstration disks but if they do that'd be the thing to find.
Apple II whether or not it was really out at the right time Oregon Trail is what most will remember on that system. Possibly Logo although you'd have to have some Logo code loaded that's interesting or looping.
- John
For the Apple /// it was easy, I have the original Demonstration disk lol so it scrolls through little features and shows off spreadsheets and other graphics. I don't know how many other systems had demonstration disks but if they do that'd be the thing to find.
Apple II whether or not it was really out at the right time Oregon Trail is what most will remember on that system. Possibly Logo although you'd have to have some Logo code loaded that's interesting or looping.
- John
Micom 2000
Veteran Member
For me the killer program that I automatically put on all my MSDOS machines is the CM(Charles Miller)Filer. It's capabilities continue to amaze me and It's worked on all my Dos machines from PC up to Win 98 (my most "advanced" Dos-type OS), While being a bit like Nortons Commander it is immensely more powerful, and can read or edit text or Hex, or launch a program from a floppy, HDD, or CD. It can also include most of the archival programs and make directories and copy files or move them. I think the original version came out in the late 80's so it can't really be considered legacy.
I have for the most part found the boring conformity of most of the early DOS machines I acquired surprising. Lotus123, Word Perfect, DB II, Disk Doctor and the usual DOS utilities. Ocasionally Tetris or some other games. It was always a treat to find some interesting or unique program such as Pop-Drop, Factcruncher(?), Sidekick or Compushow. Utilities such as Teledisk or Uniform. Even PCWrite or Wordstar showed a little more imagination than Word or WP. DeskView and Framework. Ventura Pubisher with it's GEM interface. Even Symphony.
Don't misunderstand me. I am a major fan of IBM and it's techical quality, I just found that Big Blue's business orientation tended to stifle a lot of the earlier innovative creativity of the computer community (which could be contradicted by some of the programs I mention above), but most of it had to be found on the "Home" computers or "ButtonWare.
Off the top of my head for some of the essential "Home" computer programs:
Tandy --- Scripsit, Deskmate, Dungeons of Daggorath
C-64 --- GEOS, the fast-load programs, KoalaPad
Apple --- Visicalc, ProDos, Copy II
Atari8-bit ---Homepack, Bankstreet Writer, Missile Command, Hacker
Lawrence
I have for the most part found the boring conformity of most of the early DOS machines I acquired surprising. Lotus123, Word Perfect, DB II, Disk Doctor and the usual DOS utilities. Ocasionally Tetris or some other games. It was always a treat to find some interesting or unique program such as Pop-Drop, Factcruncher(?), Sidekick or Compushow. Utilities such as Teledisk or Uniform. Even PCWrite or Wordstar showed a little more imagination than Word or WP. DeskView and Framework. Ventura Pubisher with it's GEM interface. Even Symphony.
Don't misunderstand me. I am a major fan of IBM and it's techical quality, I just found that Big Blue's business orientation tended to stifle a lot of the earlier innovative creativity of the computer community (which could be contradicted by some of the programs I mention above), but most of it had to be found on the "Home" computers or "ButtonWare.
Off the top of my head for some of the essential "Home" computer programs:
Tandy --- Scripsit, Deskmate, Dungeons of Daggorath
C-64 --- GEOS, the fast-load programs, KoalaPad
Apple --- Visicalc, ProDos, Copy II
Atari8-bit ---Homepack, Bankstreet Writer, Missile Command, Hacker
Lawrence
Floppies_only
Veteran Member
The IBM character set had various lines and bars as part of it's character set. That's why I like Micro$oft Works so much, it gives the appearance of windows in text mode.
Sean
CP/M User
Veteran Member
Floppies_only wrote:
The IBM character set had various lines and bars as part of it's character set. That's why I like Micro$oft Works so much, it gives the appearance of windows in text mode.
Yep the IBM Character Set has always been "the same" - and has made it's name under Windows as the Terminal Font. On a CGA card (and I'm assuming the Monochrome card is the same) the appearance of the characters is slightly different compared to later VGA/SVGA (maybe even EGA) with the size of the font slightly smaller and squarer on a CGA card. The only example I can give you is the vertical streaks down the screen from one of those nearly solid (or striped) graphical characters on the VGA/SVGA cards, CGA didn't have that and everything was streaked so much (if you know what I mean!).
The IBM character set had various lines and bars as part of it's character set. That's why I like Micro$oft Works so much, it gives the appearance of windows in text mode.
Yep the IBM Character Set has always been "the same" - and has made it's name under Windows as the Terminal Font. On a CGA card (and I'm assuming the Monochrome card is the same) the appearance of the characters is slightly different compared to later VGA/SVGA (maybe even EGA) with the size of the font slightly smaller and squarer on a CGA card. The only example I can give you is the vertical streaks down the screen from one of those nearly solid (or striped) graphical characters on the VGA/SVGA cards, CGA didn't have that and everything was streaked so much (if you know what I mean!).
Floppies_only
Veteran Member
I remember buying a shareware version of a program that emulated Lotus 1-2-3. Maybe you could get that?
My all time favorite program for the IBM PC is Microsoft Works for DOS. But version 2 didn't come out until 1989, so I suspect that it doesn't meet your time constraint.
Best,
Sean
carlsson
Veteran Member
Although I've collected brief experiences with most of the computers Tezza listed in his first message, I'll stick with those I know by heart.
Amiga 500
Business/work: Hmm.. Deluxe Paint, SoundTracker.. perhaps OctaMED which follows the same principles as SoundTracker but greatly improved and with its own formats. Its ancestors are still developed for Windows PCs today.
Game: There are so many to choose from. Personally I like the Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies games by Digital Illusions. Partly because the 386 conversion of Pinball Dreams was truly terrible, to the point people claimed a 7 MHz Amiga 500 was vastly superior to a 33 MHz 386. Of course this is BS, which was shown by the nice PC conversion of Fantasies.
Utility: Ditto. The whole Workbench in some respects was refreshing even compared to MS Windows. But if I should pick one utility, I'd go with Directory Opus, another program I believe still exists today in Windows versions. It is a file explorer loaded with configurable buttons which lets you view, play, unzip, move, encrypt etc files as you select them.
Commodore VIC-20
Business/work: Not so many memorable applications in that sector. There were a bunch of word processors, but word processing on a computer that can display 20-25 characters per row is not so much fun, even though the keyboard is rather good. Perhaps I'll name a Basic expansion although they probably belong under Utilities. In order to not draw a blank, I'll throw in Super Expander +3K in this category. Programmer's Aid, HES Mon and a few others might qualify too.
Game: Most VIC-20 games were arcade ports or from other systems. Games such as Omega Race, Jelly Monsters, Jupiter Lander, Gorf, Shamus and so on hold good quality, but are not unique to the VIC or arguably the best versions. Tom Griner wrote a couple of remarkable games, and so did Jeff Minter too. Perhaps I'd select something from Minter's production: Gridrunner, Laser Zone or Matrix. If I remember correctly, one of those is known as Attack of the Mutant Camels in the USA, not to be mixed up by Jeff Minter's C64 game with the same name.
Utility: Hrm, same story as with the business software. I'll play safe and throw in the DOS Wedge found on the 1540/1541 Test/Demo disk. It adds the > for sending commands to the disk drive, $ to view the directory and I think even shortkeys to load and save programs. No turbo though, but sometimes quite handy to load.
Commodore 64
Business/work: Hm, probably the GEOS suite, which is a whole operating system rather than a single piece of software. I'd also like to nominate Calc Result Easy/Advanced by Handic Software, which is less known but once upon a time a relative smash hit, ported to the IBM PC and released directly after Lotus 1-2-3 had entered the market.. and that was the end of Calc Result.
Game: Everyone have their personal favorite: arcade conversions, games from other formats.. Since you asked for nominations that boggle your mind, thinking "this is not possible", I'll recommend one of the last commercial games for the C64: Mayhem in Monsterland from 1993. It is a bit of a Sonic rip-off, but technically very advanced. You think the C64 has been upgraded (?) to at least a NES, perhaps even a 16-bit video game.
Utility: Ah.. time for more cartridges. There was a "religious war" between the Final Cartridge 3 crowd and those who preferred Action Replay V - VI. Both are fine pieces of C64 history, and essential for anyone who wants to cheat in a game, get a cheap, instant disk turbo, machine code monitor and more. The Final Cartridge was said to be more targetted towards gamers with boxes full of tapes in Turbo Tape format, while Action Replay perhaps aimed a bit more at developers and productive people. I've been a proud Action Replay owner since .. 1990 or so. Nowadays, the heritage from these freezer cartridges remain in form of Retro Replay and latest MMC Replay.
Now, I'm done with this message. :-D
Amiga 500
Business/work: Hmm.. Deluxe Paint, SoundTracker.. perhaps OctaMED which follows the same principles as SoundTracker but greatly improved and with its own formats. Its ancestors are still developed for Windows PCs today.
Game: There are so many to choose from. Personally I like the Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies games by Digital Illusions. Partly because the 386 conversion of Pinball Dreams was truly terrible, to the point people claimed a 7 MHz Amiga 500 was vastly superior to a 33 MHz 386. Of course this is BS, which was shown by the nice PC conversion of Fantasies.
Utility: Ditto. The whole Workbench in some respects was refreshing even compared to MS Windows. But if I should pick one utility, I'd go with Directory Opus, another program I believe still exists today in Windows versions. It is a file explorer loaded with configurable buttons which lets you view, play, unzip, move, encrypt etc files as you select them.
Commodore VIC-20
Business/work: Not so many memorable applications in that sector. There were a bunch of word processors, but word processing on a computer that can display 20-25 characters per row is not so much fun, even though the keyboard is rather good. Perhaps I'll name a Basic expansion although they probably belong under Utilities. In order to not draw a blank, I'll throw in Super Expander +3K in this category. Programmer's Aid, HES Mon and a few others might qualify too.
Game: Most VIC-20 games were arcade ports or from other systems. Games such as Omega Race, Jelly Monsters, Jupiter Lander, Gorf, Shamus and so on hold good quality, but are not unique to the VIC or arguably the best versions. Tom Griner wrote a couple of remarkable games, and so did Jeff Minter too. Perhaps I'd select something from Minter's production: Gridrunner, Laser Zone or Matrix. If I remember correctly, one of those is known as Attack of the Mutant Camels in the USA, not to be mixed up by Jeff Minter's C64 game with the same name.
Utility: Hrm, same story as with the business software. I'll play safe and throw in the DOS Wedge found on the 1540/1541 Test/Demo disk. It adds the > for sending commands to the disk drive, $ to view the directory and I think even shortkeys to load and save programs. No turbo though, but sometimes quite handy to load.
Commodore 64
Business/work: Hm, probably the GEOS suite, which is a whole operating system rather than a single piece of software. I'd also like to nominate Calc Result Easy/Advanced by Handic Software, which is less known but once upon a time a relative smash hit, ported to the IBM PC and released directly after Lotus 1-2-3 had entered the market.. and that was the end of Calc Result.
Game: Everyone have their personal favorite: arcade conversions, games from other formats.. Since you asked for nominations that boggle your mind, thinking "this is not possible", I'll recommend one of the last commercial games for the C64: Mayhem in Monsterland from 1993. It is a bit of a Sonic rip-off, but technically very advanced. You think the C64 has been upgraded (?) to at least a NES, perhaps even a 16-bit video game.
Utility: Ah.. time for more cartridges. There was a "religious war" between the Final Cartridge 3 crowd and those who preferred Action Replay V - VI. Both are fine pieces of C64 history, and essential for anyone who wants to cheat in a game, get a cheap, instant disk turbo, machine code monitor and more. The Final Cartridge was said to be more targetted towards gamers with boxes full of tapes in Turbo Tape format, while Action Replay perhaps aimed a bit more at developers and productive people. I've been a proud Action Replay owner since .. 1990 or so. Nowadays, the heritage from these freezer cartridges remain in form of Retro Replay and latest MMC Replay.
Now, I'm done with this message. :-D