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1993-12-24
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Sat 16-Mar-91: Having had the opportunity to use PCs extensively
both at work and at home for several years I decided to take a very
subjective look at what have been the most useful MsDos shareware
and PD utilities for me. Here are my choices in an alphabetical
order.
Note that this list is subjective reflecting my own usages. Hence
one cannot "submit" to this list, as some users and authors have
done after this list has become fairly widespread. Comments and
views are naturally welcome, nevertheless. There is also another
list that might interest you. It is useful32.zip "The Most Useful PC
Programs at SimTel and Garbo" by Samuel Ko.
Fri 11-Oct-91: Updated the text and added some new items on my list.
Sat 2-Nov-91: Added one further item (shrom) on the list, and
rewrote some others a bit. For the record. I have registered all the
shareware programs on this list.
Fri 17-Apr-92: Updated the version numbers and added one new item.
Tue 19-May-92: Updated the version numbers and added two new items.
Sat 20-Feb-93: Updated the version numbers and added one new item.
Fri 2-Jul-93: Made no additions but changed one choice and rewrote
most of the items.
Sat 3-Jul-93: Corrected the out-of-date information about
target15.zip.
Fri 24-Dec-93: Merry Christmas. Added information to same of the
entries and updated the version numbers. Added three new items.
The addresses of some of the authors can be found in
27493 Dec 4 17:57 garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/pd2/author23.zip
author23.zip Email addresses of 160 MsDos shareware and PD authors
All these programs can be found on the Garbo MsDos archives.
ask.exe The most important command originally missing from
MsDos batch programming. Ask comes under many names
and has been rewritten by countless programmers.
Also I have written my own in garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/
tsbat43.zip. The basic idea of asks is to prompt the
user for a choice, and return an errorlevel (or
sometimes put a value to an environment variable),
which then can be used for a conditional jump in the
batch in accordance with the user's choice. My own
ask uses the most common ask standard of returning
as the errorlevel the ascii number of the first
letter of the user's response, but I also have
written an errorlevel version. It is interesting
that MicroSoft finally succumbed and introduced a
similar command in MsDos 6.0 calling it CHOICE. You
can find a choice clone choose.exe in tsutlf13.zip.
scrlit18.zip A resident screen scrollback utility by Charles
Aitkens. This handy TSR utility allows one to see
back what has been written on the screen. Because
the scroll-back buffer reserves a lot of memory even
if it sensibly utilizes compression, srollit is best
used with an upper memory manager like loadhigh
introduced in MsDos 5.0's or lastbyte (see a later
item). I have this tsr routinely loaded in my
autoexec.bat. This is one case where I have changed
my mind when a better utility came around.
Originally I had buffit30.zip as my choice, but
scrollit can capture colors and some output that
buffit can't. So, after the srollit author made some
crucial improvements based on my feedback
suggestions in releasing version 1.7, I had a change
of heart.
ced10da.zip Command line editor. This facility lets the user to
recall earlier commands, edit the commands, make
aliases (synonyms) for the commands, and optionally
ignore commands. CED is old, but still extremely
useful as such even compared doskey which was
introduced with MsDos 5.0. Don't go without it, or
some other good, alternative command line editor.
Despite being old, CED still often features on the
best program lists of many computer magazines. The
one feature CED unfortunately lacks is file name
completion present in some other command line
editors. The later versions of CED have gone
commercial, as far as I know.
dc106f.zip Directory control from the PC-Magazine by Michael
Mefford. A simple, but a very useful point and shoot
facility to copy, move, rename, or delete files. DC
is an excellent example of the fact that a good
program doesn't need to be over-packed with features
nor need it be flashy. There is also an advanced
rendition df460.zip by Gordon Haff called Directory
Freedom. The interface is the same but there are
much more options, and the program is very
configurable. Also highly recommended.
dcf40d.zip A fast 1-pass copying facility for floppies. One of
the most irksome MsDos task is copying a floppy in a
single drive. I have been looking for a suitable
1-pass program for quite awhile, and found quite a
few, and this one is it for the time being. It has a
nice interface and is fast since it can skip the
empty sections. Yet, I included this utility with
considerable doubts, because there still is ample
room for improvement starting from the missing
possibility of storing the option settings, removing
the nag screen, etc. A simple but useful alternative
to look at is xdcpy200.zip. Another option worth
looking at is the more professional copyq312.zip.
dirmat20.zip Dirmatch for comparing & manipulating two dirs side
by side. Another really great utility from Michael
Mefford. Originally appeared in the PC-Magazine.
dirw.exe From my own garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsutil39.zip
utility collection. It is like MsDos dir /w, but it
also shows the file attributes, and it can be made
to recurse all the directories. I use it on a daily
basis to have a backup list of what my hard disks
contain. It is vindicative to note that in DOS 5.0
the new dir command was endowed among other things
with abilities what my dirw already had. Yet
dirw.exe still has a feature which the MsDos dir
curiously lacks (at least in MsDos5.0). My dirw.exe
displays the size of a disk also if it has no files.
dirx110.zip A shell for listing and handling lzexe and pklite
etc. compressed executables. A very useful companion
to lzexe and pklite. Nothing is perfect, though. The
documentation leaves much to be desired in a top
utility. But the basic idea is very sound. Most
importantly to my knowledge there are no
alternatives (which is rather odd) so dirx is left
to hold the field at the moment despite its faults
and the non-support. Strangely, the author has shown
no interest whatsoever in the feedback I have tried
to give on the configuration problems with the
program. Fortunately such a supercilious attitude is
not common among the authors.
dosclip.com "A TSR utility that provides Windows-like
cut-and-paste facilities to applications running
under DOS". A PC-Magazine utility by Douglas Boling
in vol11n07.zip. I use it for example for cutting
and pasting commands and data when being connected,
using MsKemit or Telnet, to your Unix hosts Garbo
and Chyde. The only problem is that the hot keys are
too common and may thus interfere with other
applications. For a patch see garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/pd2
/tspost09.txt.
fed153.zip FileEDit binary editor for MsDos by Phillip Nickel.
Binary (or rather hexadecimal) editors are
specialized utilities needed only occasionally for
advanced usage. As with ascii editors the choice of
one's binary editor is a matter of taste and there
are other goods ones like the MicroEMACS-like
beav140.zip.
gsz1129.zip Full-screen version of Zmodem file transfer
protocol. Chuck Forsberg's Zmodem has become the
veritable standard of file transfers from BBSes and
between PCs and hosts. GSZ brings the visual
interface to DSZ that has been formerly lacking
while it has been offered by some telecommunication
programs such as Telix. In the long run Forsberg's
programs must have been one of the the most
frequently updated programs on the scene, which is
not always an unqualified boon.
inter38*.zip Ralf Brown's MsDos Interrupt List. A staggering
amount of internal lore absolutely essential for
each and every serious PC programmer. Another
definitive reference is helppc21.zip, which has some
even more advanced material.
keyrate.exe From my own garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsutld20.zip
utility collection. What it effectively does is that
it speeds up the cursor movement. An absolute
necessity because the slow default keyrepeat rate
makes moving the cursor a real pain in the neck.
Mostly found only in commercial packages. Haven't
seen many shareware or PD "competitors", but I may
be too "optimistic". MsDos 5.0 finally introduced
this feature into the mode command, which goes to
show that the idea was a good one. - On MsDos 3.3 I
have in my autoexec.bat "keyrate 0 0". In 5.0 (and
6.0) I use "mode con: rate=30 delay=1"
list90e.zip Vernon Buerg's list program, a definite must for
file browsing. It is so good that many other
programs rely on list instead of having browsing
routines of their own. Currently contains three
versions of list of varying program sizes. Very
handy also as a "grep" finder using the /F option.
Like with so many programs I have retained also an
older because of the gone features reported by the
users. In the case of list the older version
retained is /pc/goldies/list77a.zip.
moder33.zip A list of MsDos FTP sites and moderators by Timo
Salmi and Rhys Weatherley. Frequently updated. Yes I
know that it is dubious to list so many of my own
works, but this choice is unequivocally supported by
the download statistics. With the natural exception
of the file indexes this is by far the most heavily
downloaded information file. There is also a more
general FTP site list /pc/doc-net/ftp-list.zip newly
inherited by Perry Rovers.
pcopy787.zip Norm Patriquin's really fabulous copy program with a
huge selection of useful optional switches. The
current version is pcopy93.zip, but the program and
its installation have become so bloated that I have
personally preferred to stay with an older version.
In fact I still use version pcopy 5.0 from
/pc/miscutil/patriqui.zip on my old Zenith XT
portable. The phenomenon is what the columnist John
Dvorak calls excessive featurism. It is not just a
question of disk space, and more features than one
can usefully master, but also a serious question of
increasing loading times despite faster and faster
PCs.
pklte115.exe PKWare's compress and uncompress executables. One of
the great ideas of 1990 came from France from
Fabrice Bellard. He wrote lzexe91.zip (currently) to
decompress executable at call time by putting the
decompression code into the executable. PKWare took
the idea (an echo of the ancient .arc debacle?), and
developed with their background a more professional
product. I must say, however, that I don't like
pklite's (commercial version's) ability to make
irreversible compressed executables, because this
increases the danger of virii going undetected. Of
course, there are cracking programs in circulation
to expand even the "irreversible" executables, but
this situation is not stylish.
pkz204g.exe The most useful all-round archiver. From PKWare.
(Surrounded by some totally stone-age hassle around
the encryption issue when exported outside North
America). Pkzip was born out of the controversy and
litigation on .arc archiving. There is also a Unix
(actually multi-platform) version of zip by Mark
Adler, Rich Wales, Jean-loup Gailly, and others of
the InfoZIP programming group. Zip is our now
compulsory choice in garbo.uwasa.fi archive
maintenance with for example ZOO outdone with its
date stamp problems and ARJ with its lack of a
proper Unix version. Despite its dominance, pkzip is
not without its downsides. Beside the encryption
issue, the 2.0 release was advertized in PC
magazines almost a year prematurely. It became known
as a classic case of vaporware, and at first release
pkz204c.zip was outrageously buggy and sloppily
documented (the latter aspect still leaves a bit to
be desired). But 2.04G is the dominating archiver
with perhaps ARJ having the second most following
with its excellent multi-disk capabilities. No
wonder that the debates about "the best archiver"
have been very common for example on the UseNet
news.
qedit215.zip QEdit, SemWare's text editor. More than perhaps any
other category of programs, the choice of a text
editor is a matter of taste. I have opted for QEdit
because it has the same basic WordStar-like commands
than Borland's Turbo Pascal interface, is nicely
configurable, and has a fair macro language for
advanced users. The only major thing I personally
miss very much is a right-side justification. That
is a problem I know will be corrected in the SemWare
Editor (TSE), that will an upgrade of QEdit. At the
time of writing this I have the prerelease version.
I don't know, however, whether it will be shareware
or fully commercial. TSE has a very much improved
macro language. If I had to choose one single
program to be the number one on my list, this would
be it.
scanv109.zip VIRUSCAN scans for a great number of major virus
strains. McAfee's virus scanner has drawn true
world-wide acclaim. I've needed it just once in
earnest, but that's enough to get it on this list.
One of the utilities that has been very frequently
updated to keep up with the developments. By the
time you read this, it is likely that the version
number has grown again. I have been personally very
pleased with the exemplary support from McAfee.
Naturally, there are also other fine virus utilities
like Skulason's F-PROT with its excellent interface
and virus detection record, Greenberg's VIRX, and
the very fast TBAV from the Netherlands. All
available from Garbo's /pc/virus directory.
shez95.zip A shell ("Compress Companion") to drive the many
archivers for MsDos (that is for the programs
un/compressing and clustering files). By Jim Derr,
who has constantly been keeping Shez up to date with
archiver developments. Makes life easy with so many
alternative archiver methods in use. The number of
the menu driven / hotkey options in this program is
something to behold. Like most of the other programs
on this list, I need it every day. Among its many
advanced usages is the possibility of using it to
convert archives from one format to another.
shroom2d.zip ShellRoom. Swap to disk when shelling from an
application. One of the big problems with many
programs that allow the user to shell to Dos, is
that the user is left with little memory. This very
useful utility remedies that by swapping the
application to dos when the application shells.
Borland's Turbo Pascal 5.0 is the only important
application I have found so far that is not amenable
to SHell ROOM. (TP 7.0 no more causes this problem.)
snippr26.zip Snip the screen into a file originally by Tom
Kihlken in the PC-Magazine. The later versions are
tweaks, that is the original source has been
developed by several different savants. This TSR
utility can capture text from the screen, and send
it to the printer, a file, or the keyboard buffer as
if typed. See garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/pd2/tspost09.txt
for a patch to customize the Snipper hotkey.
Personally I have stayed with /pc/goldies/
snippr24.zip since I do not need the new features.
target15.zip Formerly sst_53b.zip "Seek and thou shalt find
Supersonic Search Tool" originally called Whereis.
An excellent filename finder by Keith Ledbetter now
distributed by McAfee Associates. Fast, with a
plethora of useful options including browsing inside
archives, executing commands on found files, or even
going to the directory of the found file. (Echoes
Unix find in many respects). Can also find and list
the duplicate files on a hard disk even if there are
better, specialized programs in that particular
respect.
tcpy202.zip TurboCopy, Speedy multi-volume file transfer
program. It is particularly useful if you often need
to copy material from hardisk to floppy or vice
versa. But is it a strange program in a way. It
triggers the heuristic virus alert of the f-prot
virus checking scanner. The f-prot author Frisk
Skulason kindly told me that tcopy does not actually
have a virus, but some strange superfluous code at
the tail of the executable. Unfortunately the
TurboCopy author is unreachble. In general I wonder
why fast copying has not drawn more attention of the
programmers.
tlb-v220.zip The Last Byte MsDos Upper Memory Manager by Dan
Lewis. It enables loading device drivers and TSRs to
high memory. Such a utility becomes a practical
necessity when the number of memory-hungry TSRs
grows as happens on my MsDos 3.30 office 386 where I
have, for example, a network driver to connect to
our department's laser printer. None of the upper
memory managers are simple to use, but Dan's is not
prohibitively difficult as some others. At the time
of first writing this Dan was upgrading to 2.00 with
a new user interface. (I was of the beta testers,
and I don't accept such a task easily because of my
own time limitations). Last Byte is a typical
example of a utility grown out of deficiencies of
the earlier MsDos versions. The upper memory
management was finally introduced in MsDos 5.0 with
the all important power user's loadhigh command.
tlx320-?.zip Telix 3.20 telecommunications package. There are
many excellent telecommunication packages on the
scene, and the choice is somewhat arbitrary between
them. Telix was one of the first with inbuilt
Zmodem, and its user interface is the most
convenient I know. Telix has a new owner deltaComm
Development which released one update right away,
but nothing has been heard since. None of the
telecom progs is completely without problems, and
this goes for Telix, too. Another of the fine
telecommunication packages is TeleMate. The most
prevalent MsDos telecommunication program would,
however, seem to be the fully commercial Procomm+.
There is also a shareware Procomm version
prcm243.zip. But when it comes to terminal emulation
rather than full telecommunication none of them can
touch the flexibility and power of MsKermit.
tsrcom35.zip TSR utilities from TurboPower Software, also a must.
Most importantly includes mark, release, and mapmem
for unloading terminate and stay resident programs.
The veritable standard of TSR maintenance. I have
often advised the users of TSRs to apply mark /
release from tsrcom rather than using the TSRs' own
methods for removing them from the memory because of
the danger of leaving holes and finally crashing the
machine.
..................................................................
Prof. Timo Salmi Co-moderator of comp.archives.msdos.announce
Moderating at garbo.uwasa.fi anonymous FTP archives 128.214.87.1
Faculty of Accounting & Industrial Management; University of Vaasa
Internet: ts@uwasa.fi BBS +(358)-61-3170972; FIN-65101, Finland
