DOS 1987

by Scott McMahan editor of the Cyber Reviews.

WHAT THIS IS - I have created a working disk image of MS-DOS software for the IBM PC (and clones like Tandy) from the year 1987 (and early 1988). These programs can be run under Windows 2000, Windows 98, FreeDOS, DOSEmu, DOSBox, etc. All programs except for two cases (WordStar 3.3 and z80mu) work fine and can be used.

WHY I DID THIS - I was writing something about a student who learned computer science starting in the 1987-1988 school year. I originally began to research what software development tools would have been used at that time. Then I realized many of these programs were still online, either at the Borland Museum, abandonware sites, old shareware archives, etc. Others were not. I began collecting the actual software, because I could still load and run it! I could take screen captures, and actually write programs. This project took on a life of its own as I began trying to build a working system with the exact software that would have been available at the time. I became amazed that so much software from this historical period had almost totally vanished. I began trying to preserve it.

DOWNLOAD - Some time I hope to create an ISO image of the hard drive that can be downloaded.

FUTURE - I would like to do screen captures and discuss the programs in more detail.

For now, you can see these galleries:

The README.TXT file is written from the point of view of a student who used this hard disk image looking back at all the software he has accumulated. It is an historical tour of the software. Also, the text file is available in hypertext as: README.HTML.

Note: I also have an anachronistic Microsoft BASIC implementation of a program called "The Death Star", a text-only Eamon adventure by Donald Brown. This early text adventure is mentioned in my story, because it was played on an Apple IIe. (Mentioned in a discussion of older computers.) The PC port (rewrite?) was much later, but is easier to work with than an Apple IIe emulator for casual use.

Note on "missing" programs and source:

Lotus 1-2-3 version 2.02 - I believe this was copy protected, which is why it isn't at "abandonware" archives, so 2.2 may be as old as possible. There is little or no difference, anyway.
The original 1987 release of MuLISP. The only one I have found is a 1989 version.
Source code to the book Problem Solving With Pascal (1986) by James F Peters - I contacted the author who no longer has it, and contacted the publisher which ignored my request.
Source code to the book Advanced Modula-2 (1987) by Herb Schildt. I contacted Schildt, who no longer has this code. I particularly want the recursive-descent parser example, which is probably the most advanced code ever written in Modula-2.
As far as I know, there was no FOCAL interpreter for the IBM PC at this time (although later one was created as a retrocomputing hack). FOCAL was a DEC language similar to BASIC.
Borland Turbo Modula-2 was never released for the IBM PC, only for 8-bit CP/M machines. I have seen this for CP/M and have run it under a CP/M emulator.

There is also another disk image, from the early 1990s.

The README90.TXT file is written from the point of view of a student who used this hard disk image looking back at all the software he has accumulated. It is an historical tour of the software. Also, the text file is available in hypertext as: README90.HTML.

Contact me by e-mail - don't worry, every spammer alive already has this address.