Notices by The FreeDOS Project (freedosproject@fosstodon.org), page 2

FYI: I'm in the middle of the website move, and something got stuck.

Right now, you can visit http://www.freedos.org/ and see the new website, but https://www.freedos.org/ (note the "https" instead of "http") is showing an error. So something didn't get updated for https when the move happened.

I have a support ticket open for the site hosting folks to fix this.

@clacke Yes, exactly. VisiCalc couldn't do it, you had to tap the ❗ key until the numbers stopped changing.

Lotus 123 could do it.

LANPAR did it by default in 1969, ten years before VisiCalc, but it was basically a compiler so that's not surprising.

@trilobyte It's amazing that VisoCalc invented many of the standards that continue today, especially A1 addressing.

When I show my students the history of spreadsheets, I start with VisiCalc.

But VisiCalc can't do forward referencing. I'll show that in the next video. That's why there was the recalc key shortcut.

We take fwd ref for granted today, not there in VisiCalc. (To be fair, it would have been a big performance problem on the Apple II.)

@goosey @brouhaha

It gets better with background: At the time, say you wanted a change in your company's budget software, it would take months to implement on the mainframe (programming, etc)

For those who could get it, LANPAR was huge because you could make your own budget plan in a weekend.

When VC came out, loads of companies bought Apple II computers just to run VisiCalc. Because now you could make your own budget plan in an afternoon.

@brouhaha Yes! I highlighted that to my students and they were surprised

First desktop spreadsheet: VisiCalc on Apple II (1979)

First computer spreadsheet program: LANPAR (1969)

So I also teach this university course about the history of technology, where students also learn how to use spreadsheets.

This semester, some of my students were surprised to learn that (a) spreadsheets existed before Windows 🤨 and (b) even a DOS spreadsheet could do everything we learned on the modern spreadsheets, just differently in some cases.

In this demo, we'll compare LibreOffice Calc on Linux and Quattro Pro on DOS.

https://youtu.be/Z5LXMpcZjEw

@allison I agree! 👍

A lot of "features" now are old features on a faster CPU.

Some of those labs are kind of basic spreadsheet stuff, but some are pretty advanced, especially if you haven't used DOS spreadsheets before. 🤩

*where this comes from:

I sometimes teach university classes, including an "intro to tech" class that includes how to use spreadsheets.

I have some labs I'd like to do with DOS spreadsheets. 😎

I'm thinking about doing some videos where I show that yes, you can do the "modern" spreadsheet stuff on classic DOS spreadsheets.

And I do love a good DOS spreadsheet. ❤️🤓

Very exciting news! Dave Dunfield has decided to release the source code of over 40 years' work "in the hopes that others may find it useful or maybe learn a few things." This includes the Micro-C compiler, a very nice C compiler for DOS.

You can find everything on Dave's website.
https://dunfield.themindfactory.com/dnldsrc.htm

The source code license isn't an "OSI open source" license, but aims to release the source code for others to use. Thanks Dave!

Not my video, but ah - love that sound!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgxrLMmyGhw

♥

I just learned about the DOS COM Game Jam, which opened a few days ago. Runs thorugh Sept 29.

https://itch.io/jam/dos-com-game-jam

→ Write a casual DOS game as a DOS .COM program. 👾 🎲 🎮

Two people asked me recently about graphics on DOS. Here's how to do 256-color graphics with an OpenWatcom C program:

https://youtu.be/0wf-KqsOfnE?feature=shared

@vrruiz @dhouard That's my preferred way too. I shut down the virtual machine then transfer files by mounting the image

https://www.freedos.org/books/get-started/24-guestmount-freedos/

https://opensource.com/article/21/6/copy-files-linux-freedos

@dhouard There are a few ways to transfer files. One way is VBADOS if you use #virtualbox
https://git.javispedro.com/cgit/vbados.git/about/

https://youtu.be/2W6fHooKRB0

Someone asked me online if it's possible to install other DOS applications without using FDIMPLES - like, can you install Borland TurboC.

And the answer is yes, of course you can! FreeDOS is just DOS, so you can install any DOS application the usual DOS way.

The FreeDOS virtual get-together is happening now for the next hour (11am-noon US/Central). This month's meeting is focused on technical issues - debugging, programming, and other tech topics.

The meeting is on BlueJeans: use this link to connect:

https://bluejeans.com/909315200/0433

@freedosproject Oh interesting. The version I had definitely didn’t have that limitation. I used it for years. When I’m back at my computer I’ll try to track down the particular version I had.

@withaveeay Maybe not, though. Chip (@bytex64) found older copies of Galaxy that look to be inspired by Wordstar. Maybe these versions used WS key bindings?