FantaVision (1987) 0 Graphics DOS

Fantavision was an animation program from Broderbund originally for the Apple II but later ported to the Amiga, IIGS, and DOS. It features animation "tweening" to create smooth movements, support for digital sound to accompany animation, object-oriented animation control, and comes with an animation library. Prior to the DOS version release, similar tools were mostly found only on the Apple Macintosh. Fantavision was marketed toward both home users and business professionals. The IBM PC version supports CGA, EGA, Tandy, and Hercules video.

• 1.x (DOS)

FastBack (1986) 6 Utility DOS

Fastback, by Fifth Generation Systems, Inc, is a backup utility for DOS. Its key feature is that it can read and write both a floppy disk and hard disk at the same time by making use of dual-channel DMA. Combined with speedy data compression, it can make a very fast backup.

• 5.x
• Plus 1.x
• Plus 2.x

FastTrax (1987) 0 Utility DOS

FastTrax is a disk optimization program for MS-DOS on IBM PC computers. It rearranges and defragments files to make file access faster.

• 3.x

FileCommand (1983) 2 Utility DOS

FileCommand is an alternate DOS shell from IBM. The user interface is based on the IBM 3081/3084 mainframe VM/CMS Fulist/Filelist tool. It provides an on-screen file list, and a command area, but uses its own command set. Although advertised as friendlier DOS shell for general PC users, most users would likely find it confusing unless they had prior experience with Fulist.

• 1.00
• II

Floor Plan (1988) 0 Graphics DOS

Floor Plan, from Insight Industries, was a budget shape-based drawing tool oriented towards 2D floor layout. essential features.

• 1.1

Flu-Shot Plus (1988) 0 Utility DOS

Flu-Shot Plus (usually written Flu-Shot+) is a tiny tool that prevents unwanted reading and writing to boot sectors and specified files on a hard disk or floppy disk. The package flaunts its ability to block virus spreading, but despite this, it is not a virus scanner, and can not detect or remove viruses.

• 1x

Fontrix (1984) 0 Publishing DOS

Fontrix is a crude single-page typesetting program for the IBM PC that prints high quality custom fonts on a dot-matrix printer. It includes a font editor, and number of font packs were available for it.

• 2.x

Fontware (1988) 1 Publishing DOS Windows

Bitstream Fontware is a tool that converts commercial vectored fonts in to formats for use with applications such as Aldus Pagemaker running under Microsoft Windows 2. The program itself is DOS-based but the fonts it generates are for Windows.

• 2.0

Framework (1984) 15 Word Processor Spreadsheet Graphics Communications Database DOS

Originally created by Forefront Corporation for Ashton-Tate and first released in 1984, Framework was an early integrated office suite for DOS. It has a built in word processor, spreadsheet, database, outliner, graphing, and telecommunications.

• 1.0
• Premier 1.x
• II
• III

Freelance Graphics (1985) 6 Presentations Graphics DOS

GCI/Lotus/IBM Freelance Graphics is a vector based presentation and graphing package developed for DOS, OS/2, and Windows. It was intended for use alongside Lotus 1-2-3. Later versions were part of SmartSuite. Before it was acquired by Lotus it was known Freelance, from Graphic Communications.

• 1.0 (DOS)
• 2.0 (DOS)

Friday! (1983) 0 PIM Database DOS

Friday! is an early simplified database filing system, sometimes considered a personal information manager, built on top of dBase II. It is easily customizable, completely menu driven, simple, and easy to use. It was targeted at new computer users, and lacks advanced functionally. There were versions for both DOS and CP/M.

• 1.x
• 2.x

GEM Desktop Publisher (1988) 1 Publishing DOS

GEM Desktop Publisher, from Digital Research, is a GEM 3.x based Desktop publishing program. It is not as sophisticated as Ventura Publisher. It uses a VMM (Virtual Memory Manager) in place of EMS/XMS, and requires a hard disk. It can be used with GEM Artline to provide illustrations.

• 2.x

GEM Draw (1985) 4 Graphics DOS

GEM Draw, from Digital Research, is an easy to use Vector based drawing program for the GEM Desktop. It features the ability to open two drawing windows and drag objects between different drawings.

• 1.x
• Plus 2.x

GEM Paint (1986) 0 Graphics DOS

GEM Paint, from Digital Research, is a bit-mapped drawing program sold alongside GEM Desktop that runs in the GEM graphical environment.

• 1.x

Get Organized (1984) 0 Word Processor Communications PIM DOS

Get Organized is a bare-bones integrated tool that includes a word processor, address book, index card file, notepad, calculator, calendar, and simplistic telecommunications. It was targeted at high end home users and low end business users.

• 1.x

GOfer (1987) 0 Utility Document DOS

GOfer is a desktop search tool capable of searching many document formats. It loads as a TSR and can be called while other programs are running. It support multiple word search, operators, and inexact searches. It does not use an index, that makes it slower but requires no additional disk space.

• 1.0

Grammatik (1988) 0 Utility DOS

Grammatik is a standalone grammar checker, and was possibly the first grammar checker for personal computers. Later versions were built in to Word Perfect. It competed against RightWriter.

• II
• III
• IV

Graphics Master (1987) 0 Graphics DOS

Graphics Master, from Interplay Productions, is a low-end drawing program that supports the C64 and IBM PC with CGA. the IBM PC version on the second.

• 1

Graphwriter (1984) 0 Graphics DOS

Graphwriter is a business presentation and graphing package geared towards the production of 35mm slides. Supports Polaroid Corp.'s Palette 35mm slide producer and a wide variety of printers and plotters. For its time it was considered a large program, and targeted primarily towards corporate users. It also features the ability to create Gantt, organization, and bubble charts. In 1986 it was acquired by Lotus Development Corp along with Freelance.

• 4.x

Halo DPE (1987) 0 Graphics Publishing DOS

Halo DPE (Desktop Publishing Editor) was an attempt by Media Cybernetics to enter the desktop publishing market by shoehorning additional text processing abilities in to their Dr. Halo II product.

• 1.x

Harvard Graphics (1986) 16 Graphics DOS

Harvard Graphics, from Software Publishing Corporation and initially called Harvard Presentation Graphics, is a graphing/plotting/presentation creation application for DOS. It was extremely popular in the late 1980s. At release, it competed against many graphing products such as PFS:Graph (AKA IBM Graphing Assistant ), Microsoft Chart, ChartMaster, and Cricket Graph, just to name a small few. A Windows port was released in 1991, but it lost out to Microsoft Powerpoint.

• A.00
• A.01
• 2.x

hDC MicroApps 0 Utility Windows

hDC's MicroApps are small desktop accessories invoked through a "MicroApp Manager". The MicroApp Manager adds an extra menu to each application window's system box. The additional menu contains a list of all available "MicroApps". This is essentially a stripped down version of the Windows 2-based hDC Windows Manager.

• IBM Academic Edition

hDC Windows Express (1989) 0 Utility Windows

hDC Windows Express is a "Complete Menu System" shell for Microsoft Windows. The earliest version went under the name"hDC ClickStart", and was for Windows 1.x (Wanted!).

• 2.x

hDC Windows Manager (1989) 0 Utility DOS

hDC Windows Manager is a set of small desktop utilities that enhance the way the Windows 2 GUI works. It includes an alarm clock, auto save automator, a screen saver, font viewer, memory usage viewer, automatic window cascading/tiling, it can set a mono bitmap as a desktop background, and it can store "sets" of applications to open all at once. menu shell, and hDC Color, a tool that lets Windows 2 VGA use all 16 colors instead of just 8.

• 1.0

Hello Charlie (1984) 1 Word Processor Spreadsheet Graphics Database DOS

Hello Charlie is a suite of home-oriented rudimentary office products for the IBM PC. It includes a spreadsheet, database, word processor, drawing program, and a typing tutor. It was released in 1984 by Orion Software, an Alabama company better known for its early IBM PC games.

• 1984