If there was a top 20 for dumb questions, this one would be ranked at number 4.

dr_st wrote:

If there was a top 20 for dumb questions, this one would be ranked at number 4.

no comment...

This site has plenty of DOS tools http://dosprograms.info.tt/utils.htm

retropol wrote:

for sure norton commander was on every pc these days... other?

I think so. There was this rumour/stereotype that people in USSR had never seen a plain DOS prompt, because NC was "pre-installed" everywhere.. 😉
Seriously, though, NC was very, very popular. My father bought a real copy from the very beginning since it was known that
there used to be police raids because of piray (in offices).

Speaking of commercial software, these used to be popular.
- Norton Commander
- XTree
- PC-Tools by Central Point or Symantec
- QEMM, 386MAX
- dBase or any other database tool
- DoubleSpace, DoubleDisk
-

And last, but not least, DR-DOS. That was the best package of tools, apparently. 😉

Fore more, I would have to check the attic and examine our boxes with ragbag of 35 years of 5.25" disks.

4dos
F-Prot

1994 onwards: TERMINATE

my rough list for pure dos...

- list.com / t.com from Vernon Buerg
- good editor (qedit, semware edit, aurora)
- good ansi viewer (I like my own, SickView, but acidview/iceview/etc)
- ansi driver (I like my own micro uAnsi best 🤣!)
- good mod player (ocp, awemp for awe32 etc).
- good debugger
- for me, lots of packer/unpacker/scrambler tools (amber, unp, etc)
- zip/unzip, lha, arj, rar, hap/pah, ha.
- something like doskey if its not built in.
- file commander (I like Dos Navigator)

Arj and pkunzip/pkzip were among my favorites because diskspace was tight.

Quikmenu3 was my favorite non-windows GUI.

BananaCom was my favorite dialer/terminal for connecting to BBSs over modem.

PixView. The slideshow mode changed my life as a teen.

^^^
This is definitely the reply of the week.

+1

about USSR - I remember a clone of NC - Volcov Commander 😀

mod player - I think when gravis started to be sooo popular, everyone have INERTIA on their PCs

I dont remember now, but there was also very popular pic viewer, which did not look only on extension, but header part of a file, this way I was able to uncover nice pictures etc from demos and games even they were filename changed... was good sw - aghhh if i could recall it.

I use Volkov Commander on my PC 5150... not sure why I use that over Norton. I guess it came up in a search when i first started playing with that system, so I've gotten used to using it. I think my bad memories of bloated Norton software from the past 15 years have made me less interested in putting anything with Norton in the name on a system with 640K of RAM.

I'd also recommend:
CuteMouse for a nice, tiny mouse driver.
Checkit for basic diagnostics
PakuPaku for testing music playback (it is tiny and supports adlib, cms and MPU401 devices with a simple command line switch)

retropol wrote:

about USSR - I remember a clone of NC - Volcov Commander 😀

mod player - I think when gravis started to be sooo popular, everyone have INERTIA on their PCs

I dont remember now, but there was also very popular pic viewer, which did not look only on extension, but header part of a file, this way I was able to uncover nice pictures etc from demos and games even they were filename changed... was good sw - aghhh if i could recall it.

Ok, come clean, be honest, you were renaming all your porn to .txt

Speaking about image viewers I remember SEA was best in terms of convenience. Can be found here.
And for image manipulation (also viewer which can be bound to F3 in Dos Navigator) - Image Alchemy - commandline tool.

Vern Buerg's LIST.COM

Volkov is very nice, I use it on mostly all my pc's. In some cases the NC is the better choice.
I can't get into why QM3 should be great. Perhaps if a hardcore-user tell's me why it's so great?

QM3, as in QuikMenu? It's great because I like it.

NC
QEMM
LHA - because of SFX archives
ARJ - because of volume split support
RAR - had both and better ratio
PKLITE / UCEXE - Save space
STACKER 3/4 Disk Compression
TERMINATE - lightyears ahead of TERM90 and similar programs
CROSSPOINT 3.11 / PGP
CUBIC PLAYER / XTC-PLAYER / PLANY
AUDIO (CD player application)
CDDA (Audio CD extractor for DOS)
NNANSI, KDRIVE, NU 4.5a / KBDBUF
McAfee SCAN/CLEAN/VSHIELD, TNTVIRUS, later F-PROT (actually the McAfee stuff was good at this early time)
DLH
QuickView Pro / PLAYFLC / QUICKFLI / VPLAY / XMPEG / MPEG
Novell Personnell Netware
UNIVBE
HED / HIEW
WORDSTAR
TURBO PASCAL (all versions incl. TASM), GWBASIC with BASCOM
SCREEN THIEF
FDFORMAT / VGACOPY with VGAREAD
GIFLITE / GIFTRANS
UD (Unremove Directory)
COPYWRITE / LOCKSMITH
HYPERRAM
GRAPHICS WORKSHOP