KERMIT
Powerful shareware communications program able to work on a speeding Pentium (which Procomm will not do) and to display Cyrillic with Lynx using text-mode VGA screen fonts . Also resends the remainder of an interrupted binary file transfer. Use Kermit to telnet and do file transfer. Also available for UNIX (C-Kermit) or Windows 95. The tech support is fantastic!
SKIPPER
Newdeal's real deal on a DOS-based office suite.
This site appears to have disappeared.
Three smaller (fit on a floppy) browsers
ARACHNE
Download here.
Will work on a 286 if you are very patient. Displays Cyrillic, Hebrew and PNG
files. Not suitable for the complete novice or for TTL monitors. Available
for UNIX too. Sets up miniterm dialer, which can be used standalone for
telnet and ftp (ask me how).
NETTAMER
Download here
Easy to use and
exceptionally reliable mail and easy ftp, and NEVER CRASHES. Works on
even CGA or TTL. Will work on an XT (the browser part only if you have
infinite patience). Excellent support from the author, who plans to
improve html handling. Separate versions for PDA/XT, 286, 386, and beta
version for math-coprocessor (much faster).
By the same author, small fast simple automated programs for receiving and sending mail even with binary attachments, or for FTP upload and download. Dials, sends/receives/hangs up. Very reliable and works on anything with a hard drive OR a 9600 or faster modem. Increase MTU to 1500 for faster transmission (if your phone line can handle it).
LYNX FOR DOS
Download Lynx 2.8.5rel1 for 386.
Package by Doug Kaufman set up to view images with Display (see below). World's fastest browser, usable on any monitor. Text-only (ideal for use by the blind) will also view image links. Supports VGA screen fonts, text modes to 132 column and 50 line, SSL, frames, HTML forms, but not yet javascript. Built-in telnet and ftp and sendmail (no attachments or receive mail). Add a packet driver such as DOSPPP , and pdftotex (read pdf files online) and midi player for online use. Contact me for help. I had to use Bobcat's netdial or Arachne's miniterm to connect rather than the recommended setup with chat as a dialer.
Email me about DOS versions of w3m (views html with tables), pdftotext and pdfimage (to extract text and pnm images from pdf files), and pnmmerge (to flip or rotate pnm images), and ghostscript 8.30.
PCFILE III / PCFILE 3 / PCFILE 3.4 / PCFILE 5
Since the PCFILE support site does not post older versions, download mine.
Please let me know if these versions work properly. They are from various sources and I zipped 3.4 myself. I have the book for 5, write for help.
EASY DATABASE (EDB)
A lovely little database program that can do subtotals and scroll to display beyond 80 columns. Simtel has EDB31.
A greatly improved version not available at simtel is edb33r.zip but you may need to slow it down (due to a turbopascal bug) with mo'slo. Longer documents will not print properly on a dot-matrix printer because the page length is not quite right. I cannot get hold of the author to fix this. This program is less powerful than pcfile but much easier to learn and quicker to use. I keep business records with it, and my LP collection.
VIEW
Views all versions of WORD (the programs listed below do only the newer versions), WP4.2 and later, Wordstar, Amipro, RTF, HTML etc. and converts to ascii (DOS or Unix). Does not handle embedded email addresses or URLs or other character sets, messes up columns or tables. Use for English or other plain (non-extended) ASCII only. An excellent general purpose program for many formats but not perfect at any of them.
RTF files can also be converted (to and from HTML and ASCII) with shareware DOX for DOS version 2.30d
VIEWING WORD in non-English character sets (Cyrillic, Unicode)
These programs are all freeware, and are DOS ports from UNIX.
ANTIWORD - WORD to text or postscript (with images)
Download antiword.
The version posted as of August 1 2002 is missing all the files needed for DOS codepages, such as cp866.txt. Unzip without the -d switch, and copy all the cp8*.txt files from catdoc's charsets directory because the program looks for all *.txt files in c:\antiword. (A fixed version ought to have all the *.txt files in c:\antiword\resource.)
antiword -m cp866.txt -p letter filename.doc > filename.ps converts a Cyrillic WORD file into letter size postscript output.
antiword filename.doc > filename.txt converts a plain English WORD file into plain English text output.
CATDOC - WORD to text
See the main page for catdoc for UNIX. Download from an ftp link there or via http catdoc-0.90.3.zip. To view WORD 97 or later (which encode with unicode) you must use the -u switch to tell the program it is unicode.
catdoc -u filename.doc > filename.txt
converts any non-English WORD 97 or later file to text.
WVWARE - WORD to html (with links to png or jpeg images)
I have a DOS port provided by the author of DOS for lynx. Write me. wvware filename.doc > filename.htm and then use lynx to convert to text. The UNIX version also produces ps or pdf output. View with ghostscript.
Write me for help with these programs. I was unable to find any easy way to use WORD itself to convert WORD Cyrillic to text Cyrillic.
LXPIC
Download LXPIC. Freeware, very fast command-line image viewer that works on CGA-SVGA 256 colors. Deletes, renames. Low-quality images. Use with Lynx on a slow laptop, or for quick review of downloaded digital photos when shelled from Kermit, as it requires minimal RAM. The author's other programs work on a palmtop.
COMPUSHOW
Download Compushow for DOS cshow904.zip. Download Compushow for Windows 2show204.zip.
Both are under 300K. Registering lets you print. Displays on TTL, CGA, EGA, VGA, SVGA, in monochrome through true-color. Converts easily between formats including PNG but not PPM or PBM.
DISPLAY
Freeware (local copy of) Display Version 1.90 beta 5 for viewing or modifying images in many formats (PBM, PNG) on VESA 1.2 compatible video. Not recommended for viewing monochrome as it converts to 8-bit first, VERY slowly. Prints to Postscript or Laser but not dot-matrix. Works command-line with Lynx as online viewer. (Author's site seems to have disappeared).
PICTVIEW
Freeware. Views (not on TTL), modifies, and converts all image formats I ever heard of. Displays but won't yet rotate BW files. Resize, rotate, flip, invert colors. Download from Jan Patera's website . Under continuous improvement.
PRINTGF FOR DOS
Shareware program ($24) displays (nicely on TTL through SVGA) and prints gif, jpeg, png, pcx but not pbm files on dot-matrix through laser printers). Command-line or menu, many options.
Download Printgif for DOS or Win31.
GHOSTSCRIPT FOR DOS
Freeware unix port to DOS (also in later versions for Win32) of older 1997 version of Ghostscript previews and prints Postscript and PDF files. Download gs510dos.zip (911K), gs510ini.zip (824K), gs510fn1.zip (1.2M) and for extra fonts optionally gs510fn2.zip (1M). Unzip the first two into a directory called gs or gs510 (if using pkunzip omit -d) and the fonts into \gs\fonts or \gs510\fonts. Type gs386 and the file path and name to preview, or read the documentation to print on your printer. Faster and less buggy than pdfimage/pdfmerge/printgf method of dealing with pdf files.
UNIVESA
Add VESA 1.2 support to pre-1994 video with freeware UNIVESA, a 9K TSR. Load high in autoexec.bat .
Some Oak cards need their own VESA drivers (search on otivbe.*), as does Tseng (tlvesa.*).
Here are the Tseng vesa driver and Tseng vmode.com command that work on our IBM 486 and on a new PCI STB video card with Tseng et4000 chip. (There is another vmode.com for Diamond Speedstar cards.)
GRAPHIC AND TEXT MODES, WP51/DOS
There is a generic vmode.exe command that can be used with most video cards to set text and graphics mode. To run WP51 while retaining the mode you set, type WP /F2. For Tseng use the Tseng mode command and skip the /F2. WP51 also works with .VRS graphics and text drivers for cirrus, s3, tseng, trident, hercules, etc.. There are also specific mode commands for Trident, Cirrus, and Oak, but not S3 (not that I could find). The S3 graphics drivers do not work with Virge cards. All cards that I tested work with VESA.VRS, nicely.
For lots of help with WP for DOS see WPDOS site. Look under graphics and text modes. There are links to vmode.exe and the vesa.vrs and card-specific .vrs drivers here.
Contact me for vmode.exe, vesa.vrs and the other .vrs, and the card-specific mode commands and general-purpose vesa drivers.
You will need to use a VESA driver with most DOS graphics programs. The VESA drivers drive these video chips/cards only to 256 colors even though the native mode may provide 16 million colors.
Vuimg (gif or jpg) and printgf (gif) work with even a Hercules card. So does WP51. Fuzzily. They are small and can be used while shelled.
Contact me if you need help or files or find broken links or have comments.
We have designed koi8, iso 8859-5 and Win CP1251 text-mode fonts for use with Lynx, Kermit and PCPlus and for general offline uses. (For instance, download a Bulgarian book from Project Gutenberg to read offline with CP1251.) You can also download vgacyril.zip, the three screen fonts and loader with detailed text instructions for use.
I have made a zipped copy of four programs for
downloadable printer fonts:
circa 1987-1989
lqchr121.zip - design and load Epson LQ24-compatible draft or LQ fonts
hpril.zip - Cyrillic (Russian/Serbian) fonts for HP Laserjet PCL
gof10.zip - edit and load .sfp laserjet fonts
fnted57.zip - edit another format of laserjet fonts
The Cyrillic fonts in hpril.zip are in Latin alphabet order (ABCDE instead of ABVGD) but can be imported into go_font (gof10) and I hope rearranged to be in a more useful order such as cp866.
I advise using a VGA monitor to edit. go_font requires VGA and the other two editors crashed on my dual-monitor system in MDA.
These programs are supposed to work on the early Laserjets through IIP but I have not managed to print anything with them on my HP deskjet 600 series, which works with the same ghostscript driver as ljet. Please let me know if you get them working.
There is also cyril104.zip for typing in Russian using a standard keyboard layout and printing with downloadable font to Epson 9 or 24-pin, but some odd character sequence so that you cannot share the output, just print it. (The lower case letters are one character off from cp866).
Russ.zip or russed.zip prints graphically and has an English-based keyboard layout (based on sound or look of the Russian letter - for instance English C for Russian C, but English Z for the Russian letter pronounced as Z.). Russ.zip works on a 286 and maybe an XT, cyril needs a 386 and does not display properly on one of our laptop 386s.
We started to redraw our house plans with Homepro for DOS (mouse-optional, lots of nice features.)
We switched to the small and elegant general purpose CAD program Microcad 4.0
(if you register the author will send you version 4.15). It lets you draw one full-size drawing and zoom in to do details, and to 3-D, all in about 60K download. These programs are both real bargains (under $40).
Here are sbpro1-2.zip (1.38M) and sbpro2-2.zip (29K) for those with old Creative Soundblaster Pro or compatible 8-bit sound cards. Includes a nice program for writing and playing tunes on your computer keyboard and wav and midi players. Use pkunzip -d to unzip with directory structure and run install. If you have AWE32 use PMB (see SAC archives) as a viewer that works with lynx. CDP does not require AWE32 but needs updated SB16 drivers. Search on SB16UP.EXE.
JIM DEIGERT
My partner Jim's background includes formal training in graphic arts, electrical wiring, nursing, and digital electronics. He has worked in precision repair, general home maintainance and apartment rental, and interior and exterior painting, and knows a lot about building bicycles. He edits my electronics and other technical translations and keeps my office equipment functioning without Microsoft.
Visit Jim's site and download the latest version of his 4K NASM assembly language text editor, updated as often as three times a day.
Or look here (may not be up to date).
The latest version prints 1" margins on request and will adjust lines to fit 80 columns, and can be used by beginners to type and automatically upload email to a UNIX system. Works in 132 col 43 line mode with split screen - copy from one file to another. Ideal for sending mail with Lynx 386 as it line wraps and imports. Works with Cyrillic VGA screen fonts, too. Does split screen editing of two small files, with cut and paste between them. It now works under dosemu. $5 for source code or customization.
GEOCITIES
Our Geocities site. In case you missed other links to it, see our Sept. 2001 train and bike trip to the wilds of La Crosse WI, SE Minnesota, NE Iowa, and Chicago, with lots of photos.