Autodesk AutoCAD (1984) 48 Graphics Engineering DOS MacOS Unix Windows

AutoCAD, from Autodesk and first released in 1982, is a powerful Computer Aided Design tool. It was, and still is, often considered the standard for CAD tools. Primarily for the IBM PC platform, it was ported to x86 machines with higher video resolutions such as the Zenith Z-100 and NEC APC. Intermittently, versions for the Macintosh appeared. Later versions use a dongle copy protection.

• 1.x (DOS)
• 2.x (DOS)
• r10 (Mac)
• r10 (DOS)
• r10 (Unix)
• r11 (DOS)
• r11 (Mac)
• r11 (Win)
• r12 (Mac)

FastBack (1986) 1 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
• Plus 3.x
• Plus 6.x

Statistica (1993) 1 Utility Windows

StatSoft Statistica provides data analysis, data management, statistics, data mining, and data visualization procedures.

• 4.x

CheckIt (1988) 22 Utility DOS

CheckIt, from TouchStone Software Corporation, is a diagnostic tool for generic PC/XT/AT compatible computers. It can perform tests on RAM, hard disks, video cards, floppy disks, motherboard resources, and I/O devices. It has an easy to use menu interface but can also run tests non-interactively. It was followed up by the product WINCheckit.

• 1.x
• 2.1
• 3.0
• LAN 2.x
• Pro 1.x

Conner Backup Basics (1993) 3 Utility DOS Windows

Conner Backup Basics is a dumbed down version of Conner Backup Exec that only works with their tape drives. This software will not run at all without the appropriate tape drive attached.

• 1.1 (DOS)
• 1.2 (Win)

Norton Backup (1990) 2 Utility DOS Windows

Norton Backup, from Symantec, is a fast and easy to use backup tool for MS-DOS. The original 1.0 suffered from reliability problems, but these were fixed in 1.1. It does not include a backup scheduler. It competed against backup utilities such as PC Tools Deluxe PC Backup, Taketwo Manager, Gazelle Systems Back-It, Backup Pro, FastBack Plus, and Keep Track Plus.

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 2.x (Win)

IBM Communications Manager/2 (1993) 0 Server OS2

Communications Manager/2 is a server component for OS/2 1.3 that provides connectivity with IBM mainframes and acts as a gateway for OS/2, DOS, and Windows clients.

• 1.0

Microsoft Word Assistant (1993) 3 Utility Windows

Microsoft Word Assistant contains a font manager, additional TrueType fonts, additional templates, and clipart. Requires Microsoft Word 6.0.

• 1.0

MacTools (1988) 8 Utility MacOS

Central Point MacTools is a set of disk utilities similar to Central Point PC Tools for the Apple Macintosh. It includes a file system repair tool, disk optimizer, anti virus, hex editor, and more. MacTools 4.0 Pro was the final version after Central Point was bought out by Symantec.

• PC Tools Deluxe (Mac)
• 1.x
• 2.0
• 3.0

Memory Commander (1992) 6 Utility DOS

Memory Commander, from V Communications, Inc, is a memory manager similar to QEMM or 386MAX, but can expand the DOS base memory beyond 640K with some kinds of applications.

• 3.x
• 4.x

Interest Vision Professional - Address Book (1993) 3 Utility Financial Windows

This is a "fluff" program from Parsons Technology that contains a simple address book/dialer and a loan calculator.

• 1.0

Microsoft Delta (1993) 0 Windows

Microsoft Delta was a short-lived source code version control system developed internally at Microsoft. It was notable for its ability to handle very large projects, but featured a very poor user interface. It was replaced by Microsoft SourceSafe.

• 1.0

Fontmonger (1992) 2 Utility Windows MacOS

FontMonger, from Ares Software, is a font tool that can convert fonts between many different formats, move characters between fonts, and edit characters. Publisher's Type Foundry](/product/publishers-typefoundry) font editor. At release FontMonger was considered the only practical Windows-based program for modifying fonts. However, it was not considered a professional tool as it lacked kerning and hinting controls.

• 1.0.x
• 1.5.x

XVision (1993) 0 Utility Windows

XVision, from Visionware, is a commercial X-Windowing "server" for connecting client Windows 3.x computers to Unix and VMS systems.

• 5.0 (Win)

Trend Micro Chip Away (1993) 0 Utility DOS

Released in the early 90s by the Japanese company Trend Micro Devices, Inc (later just Trend Micro), Chip Away Viruses is a DOS based virus scanner that is intended to run from a hardware product built in to a PC motherboard before the system boots. It includes a custom embeddable DOS (called X-DOS), but it can be run from regular DOS. Trend Micro also produced the products PC Rx (A regular software virus scanner), and PC-cillin (a hardware/software combo that keeps critical boot information in a special device). Users sometimes misinterpreted the name "ChipAway Virus" as being a virus itself.

• 2.x

Palindrome Network Archivist (1993) 1 Server DOS

Palindrome Network Archivist is an enterprise server program to back up Novell NetWare servers onto tape drives.

• 3.0

Workview Plus (1993) 1 Engineering Windows

ViewLogic WorkView Plus is a high-end Computer Aided Engineering schematic circuit design and simulation program. This software was available for a number of other platforms, such as SUN Sparc. This is one program that needs the manual - it's not the most intuitive software.

• 5.1

Change Directory Plus (1993) 1 Utility DOS

Change Directory Plus is a small commercial utility distributed with Softdisk publishing's Big Blue Disk magazine. It indexes all folders on your hard drive, and permits you to change in to a deep subdirectory simply by specifying the final subdirectories name.

• 1.x

SSSI FacetTerm (1993) 0 Utility Unix

FacetTerm is a windowing interface software package for character-based Unix terminals. FacetTerm gives users pull-down menuing and multitasking ability.

• 3.x

Back-It (1986) 1 Utility DOS

Back-It, from Gazelle Systems, is a fast and compact hard disk backup utility. It was sometimes part of OEM system bundles. It was kind of low-end, and changed backup formats between releases but otherwise did what it was supposed to do.

• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x

DECTalk PC (1993) 0 Utility DOS

DECTalk was a text to speech system used in automated telephone, radio, and TV systems. It was notably used as an artificial voice by Stephen Hawking. Most DECTalk devices were standalone serial devices, however DEC did produce an ISA expansion card for the IBM PC that contained this functionality. This software is required to operate these ISA cards.

• 4.x

XtraDrive (1993) 0 Utility DOS

XtraDrive is a hard drive compression program that competed against programs like Stacker and SuperStor. XtraDrive was slightly slower, but was priced lower. before DOS and intercepts disk writes at the BIOS level. This allows many disk utilities to work that otherwise would not. Unlike the other drive compression programs at the time, XtraDrive features easy de-installation.

• 3.0

Lotus Domino (1993) 1 Communications PIM Server OS2

Lotus Domino, originally called Lotus Notes Server, is the sever software used for Lotus Notes clients. Notes is a powerful e-mail and collaboration tool. It was heavily used by large corporations. Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino competed against Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange.

• 3.x

Drafix (1990) 0 Graphics Engineering Windows

Drafix is a powerful, high performance, and feature rich 2-dimensional computer aided design tool. Despite being a 2-D CAD program, it had many features of high end 3-D CAD software, and competed directly with AutoCAD. Drafix was first was fist released in 1986 for DOS, and was the first professional CAD program released for Microsoft Windows.

• 1.0 (Win)
• 2.x (Win)

Winlink 3 (1993) 0 Utility Windows

WinLink 3, from Widget Software Ltd, is a utility for communicating between a Psion Series 3 or 3a and Windows. It connects to a Psion mobile device via a serial cable, and presents the contents of the device as a navigable file window.

• 1.x