After Dark (1989) 79 Novelty DOS

After Dark, from Berkeley Systems, Inc, is a set of entertaining screen savers for Mac and Windows. After Dark for Windows started off as "Magic Screen Saver" for Windows 2.x. After Dark was most famous for its "Flying Toasters" screen saver. Afterdark was very popular on both the early Macintosh computers and Windows 3.0, as neither included any kind of screen saver or screen blanker that would help prevent screen burn-in.

• 1.0 for DOS

Backpack Drivers (2002) 1 DOS Windows

This CD contains device drivers for all Micro Solutions Backpack hard drives, CD-ROM drives, and disk drives as of 2002. Backpack drives were mostly external parallel port connected, and very useful on systems that could not be expanded otherwise.

• 2002

Banner Blue Movie Guide (1991) 1 Novelty DOS

Banner Blue Movie Guide, from Banner Blue Software, is a searchable movie database with built in trivia games.It features entries for more than 9000 popular movies.

• 1.0

Brief (1988) 8 Editor DOS

Brief is a text editor primarily aimed at programmers and designed to edit source code. Originally written by UnderWare Inc., and briefly sold under Solutions System / SLR Systems, Brief was later sold under Borland. Features included multiple windows, regular expression searching, extremely large file support, and high customizability.

• 2.x
• 3.x

Calendar Creator Plus (1990) 7 Novelty PIM DOS

Calendar Creator Plus from Vermont Creative Software/Power Up, and later Spinnaker Software, is a tool for creating printed calendars with different styles and custom lists of events.

• 3.x (DOS)

Cellular Automata Lab (1989) 1 Novelty DOS

Cellular Automata Lab is a powerful commercial scientific mathematical program for working with and exploring Cellular Automata, a system where individual mathematical elements grow, spread, and die based on a set of rules (like the old BASIC "Life" programs). This software provides functionality to create custom sets of rules. Although it had some potential applications, this specific product is more of a novelty, similar to fractal generators. It was published by Autodesk during a period of experimental exploration in to new scientific applications.

• 1.0

Comic Book Creator (1991) 2 Novelty DOS

Comic Book Creator is a graphics program that enables the user to quickly create customized comic strips based on a small predefined set of clip art and backgrounds.

• 1.x

Dr. Sbaitso (1992) 8 Novelty Audio DOS

Dr. Sbaitso is a simple AI program, similar to the famous "Eliza", that makes use of text-to-speech software. Distributed as a demonstration application with Creative Labs Sound Blaster cards.

• 2.x

Expert Astrologer (1993) 0 Novelty DOS

A computerized tool from Expert Software for displaying your personalized daily horoscope. It can also interpret your personality traits, values, temperament, attitudes, adaptation, [and gullibility]. Plots trends in business, fitness, creativity, and social activities. Prints chart wheels, calculates planet positions, [and empties your wallet.]

• 1993

Expert Astronomer (1992) 0 Reference Novelty DOS

Expert Astronomer from Expert Software is a budget star chart with a large number of features. Database includes around 9000 objects including stars, constellations, and planets.

• I

Expert Personality Expert (1992) 1 Novelty DOS

Personality Expert is a budget title from Expert Software, where "Dr. Expert" quizzes you about your personality to make various suggestions and predictions.

• 1992

Expert Pet Care (1992) 3 Reference Novelty DOS

Expert Pet Care, from Expert Software, is a budget title for the IBM PC. "Expert Pet Care is your complete guide to your pet's health and upkeep. Developed by a practicing veterinarian, Expert Pet Care offers valuable information and advice on nutrition, exercise, emergency care, behavioral problems, training, and medication. It also includes special tips on training, diet and grooming, plus produces pedigree and descendants charts. You can lean about the various breeds of dogs and cats, and even view pictures of them! Expert Pet Care contains information on over 150 different breeds. You'll learn about each breed's physical attributes, history, and special care considerations. Expert Pet Care Provides vital emergency health care do's and don'ts which may literally save your pet's life. You can easily create a medical history for your pet. Expert Pet Care tracks information such as vaccinations, allergies, surgery and more. All you have to do is fill in the blanks. Expert Pet Care is simple to use - it's arranged like a stack of index cards that can flip through at your own pace, and in the order you like!"

• 1992

FirsTime (1985) 0 Editor DOS

FirsTime is a source code editor that is aware of a program's syntax and helps guide you as you create code. It highlights the current relevant sections of code, has customizable macros, and alerts you to certain kinds of errors.

• 1.x

IBM - Your PCJr Sampler (1983) 0 Novelty DOS

The PCJr sampler is a set of tiny applications that, while not really useful, demonstrate the abilities of the PCJr. This software was bundled with the PCjr.

• 1

IBM - Your PCJX Sampler (1985) 1 Novelty DOS

The PCJr sampler is a set of tiny applications that, while not really useful, demonstrate the abilities of the PCJX. This software was bundled with the PCjr.

• 1.00

IBM Personal Editor (1982) 2 Editor DOS

This is a rudimentary text editor sold by IBM for the IBM PC. It runs with only 64K of RAM and a single sided floppy drive under PC-DOS 1.x. This later evolved in to the IBM "E" Editor.

• 1.00

IBM Professional Editor (1982) 1 Word Processor Editor DOS

Professional Editor is an early editor for the IBM PC. It makes extensive use of function keys, has user definable macros, and can work with files larger than available RAM. You WILL need to read the manual to use this!

• 1.00
• II

Instant Artist / Print Artist (1992) 41 Graphics Publishing Novelty DOS

Instant Artist, later renamed to Print Artist, is a greeting card and sign creation program that uses vectorized graphics. It was created by The Pixellite Group, the original authors of The Print Shop, and published in 1992 by Autodesk. It was later sold by Sierra On-line. It features a high quality set of generic reusable clip art. The clip art uses vector based technology that was also used in BannerMania.

• 1.0 (DOS)

Jingle Disk (1986) 0 Novelty DOS

ThoughtWare's Jingle Disk was a stocking stuffer for the computer geek in 1986. It plays several pieces of music on the PC speaker as it animates several winter images. It can also print a simple greeting card to a dot matrix printer using these images. While there were similar shareware or freeware programs, this was a commercial program

• 1986

Norton Editor (1990) 0 Editor DOS

The Norton Editor is a text editor targeted at programmers and power users. It features the ability to edit files of any size, supports very long lines, automatic indentation, and compressed display. It supports executing DOS commands from inside the program, and is very configurable.

• 2.0

Pyro (1990) 10 Novelty DOS

Pyro, from Fifth Generation Systems, is a commercial set of screen savers that started of as a simple black and white fireworks screen saver on the Apple Macintosh. It competed against AfterDark.

• 1.x (DOS)
• 2.x (DOS)

QEdit (1990) 5 Editor DOS

SemWare's QEdit is a powerful, highly responsive, and scriptable text-mode editor. It was also distributed as shareware. It competed with programs like Borland Brief.

• 2.1
• 3.0

The 10 Best Fortune Teller (1991) 1 Novelty DOS

The 10 Best Fortune Teller, from Expert Software, is a fun budget fortune telling program: "Excitement awaits on your mystical adventure into the future, these fun-filled fortunes will reveal the future, your personal matters and more - the most fascinating insights you'll ever find in a PC program"

• 1991

ThinkTank (1984) 0 Editor DOS

ThinkTank is an outliner program or "Idea Processor" that arranges notes and ideas in a hierarchy that you can easily re-arrange. It was marketed as a tool for writing document outlines, brainstorming, notes, and todo lists. But it proved to be a very popular program, not just for writers, but for anyone who wanted to organize and move around ideas.

• 1.x

VEDIT (1987) 1 Word Processor Editor DOS

VEDIT, from CompuView, is an extremely powerful, flexible, and customizable editor designed for power users and programmers. It can handle extremely huge files. It has a programmable command mode that can be used to automatically perform complex operations on files. It features a completely customizable keyboard layout and special features for editing programming language source files. operating systems including CP/M-80, CP/M-86, and MS-DOS, and supported a large number of terminal types.

• Plus 2.x
• Plus 4.x