[HN Gopher] VisiCalc Executable for the IBM PC (1999)
___________________________________________________________________
VisiCalc Executable for the IBM PC (1999)
Author : timClicks
Score : 139 points
Date : 2022-04-06 03:14 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bricklin.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bricklin.com)
| crb wrote:
| (1999)
| dang wrote:
| Added above. Thanks!
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.bricklin.com/histor...
| is an impressive run
| timClicks wrote:
| Thanks for the edits dang. I wasn't too sure whether I should
| post the full title at submission time.
| Shared404 wrote:
| Interesting read, and I look forward to playing with the program
| later!
|
| Also, the link to other history sites is very enticing.
|
| In short, thanks for providing me my next set of rabbit holes!
| thomasfl wrote:
| SC-IM is a terminal based spreadsheet. It is the modern version
| of visicalc. https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im
| pjc50 wrote:
| Given how short it is, I wonder if someone's got an annotated
| disassembly.
| xtracto wrote:
| Takes me back to my Uni years (late 90s) were at one point we had
| do implement a (DOS based) spreadsheet program, all with stack
| based equation parsing and cell references.
|
| It was a really cool project which allowed me to understand the
| insides of spreadsheets.
| mkovach wrote:
| /SQY .. ah, the Q.E.D of the early 80s.
| [deleted]
| kazinator wrote:
| This article needs to make up its mind about which VisiCalc is
| "original". The 1979 Apple II one, or the 1981 IBM PC one.
|
| There can only be one "original".
| NonEUCitizen wrote:
| article says:
|
| "The original VisiCalc program _that ran on the IBM PC in 1981_
| still runs on today 's PCs."
| kazinator wrote:
| There was no VisiCalc program that was both original, and
| that ran on the IBM PC in 1981.
| jhbadger wrote:
| The article mentions that the Apple II version was first. I
| think it was clear that they are referring to the original
| IBM PC version, not that the IBM PC version was the
| original version of Visicalc
| morganvachon wrote:
| I'm pretty sure OP meant the original (first) release _for
| IBM PC_ , which happened in 1981. I'm not sure if you're
| being naively pedantic or intentionally obtuse here.
| kazinator wrote:
| "original" isn't simply a verbose way of spelling
| "first".
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/original
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Of the VisiCalc programs that ran on the IBM PC, there was
| an original member of that class, and it existed in 1981.
|
| You are misparsing the sentence, applying "original" as a
| modifier to the wrong phrase ("VisiCalc program" and not
| "VisiCalc program that ran on the IBM PC".)
| wiso wrote:
| Remember: To quit, use "/SQY" (Storage, Quit, Yes).
| kazinator wrote:
| I seem to remember that VisiCalc didn't follow the dependency
| graph among cells; it evaluated across the rows and columns
| something like left to right, top to down.
|
| That could work reasonably well, even in a new spreadsheet today.
| At worst you may need to iterate where the graph would settle
| everything in one round and you don't have to think about
| circularity since you're already having to iterate on acyclic
| situations.
|
| Spreadsheets are often structured to mimic the flow of
| calculations in paper documents: top down, left to right data
| flows. A spreadsheet whose cells never reference anything to the
| right or below would calculate in one round.
| blihp wrote:
| Yep... there wasn't enough code or RAM to do anything fancy. If
| you had a spreadsheet of any real complexity (i.e. much more
| than a screen worth) it was not unusual to disable auto recalc
| as things got painful fast on a 1MHz 8-bit CPU.
|
| None of this was really an issue for early adopters whose
| primary alternative was typically paper, pencil, a
| [pocket|desk] calculator and a whole lot of writing.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| 100% remember that one. Still got a habit of checking refresh
| or not ... silly these days but so natural then.
|
| Wordstar, visicalc and dBase II (need z80 and 80 column card
| to really use them). The office suite begins here.
|
| Still remember to work with one senior user to debug her
| spreadsheet program (may be 123). No fun at all. In fact we
| said end user programming is not part of the scope of work.
| But the word "senior" meant something I supposed :-) :-(.
| bombcar wrote:
| Some of the early spreadsheets had an option to NOT to
| "realtime" recalculation - you'd make your changes and then
| call a calculate.
|
| This comes in useful with large spreadsheets and multiple cell
| dependencies.
|
| IIRC the move to the "current" live evaluation allowing back-
| references was a major selling point for Excel.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Some of the early spreadsheets had an option to NOT to
| "realtime" recalculation - you'd make your changes and then
| call a calculate.
|
| Some of the early spreadsheets...including every version of
| Excel.
| zabzonk wrote:
| But if you actually need a simple spreadsheet, then Google
| probably has you covered (and yes, I know we all hate google).
| taviso wrote:
| ...or if you need one that works in a terminal, I've got you
| covered :)
|
| https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/spreadsheet.html
| drewzero1 wrote:
| I used sc to calculate my timesheets for a year or two before
| migrating to LibreOffice out of convenience. The office
| manager found it amusing that I'd print off the sc files on a
| dot matrix printer that was still kicking around, but
| occasionally I'd accidentally "put" instead of "write" and
| the .sc listing would come screaming out of the printer for a
| few pages.
|
| I'll have to check out sc-im. You had me at CSV!
| marttt wrote:
| There's also Teapot, with FLTK or ncurses-based UI:
| https://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/how-to-use-
| teapot-l...
|
| Archived homepage of the project: https://web.archive.org/web
| /20211124073408/https://www.synta...
|
| Its most relevant feature seems to be 3-dimensional tables.
| From the home page: "Instead of the unflexible and
| complicated syntax used to address the values of cells in
| traditional spread sheets ("B1" or "R1C2"), teapot uses for a
| more functional approach: "@(1,2,0)". This results in an
| easily understandable syntax and despite the very few basic
| functions, very powerful semantics."
|
| Haven't used it myself but I was quite curious about it a few
| years ago.
|
| EDIT: Has anybody succeeded in entirely replacing his/her
| spreadsheet needs with e.g. awk scripts? Seems like a nice
| exercise in the "first simplify your data structures, then
| analyze" paradigm.
| LVB wrote:
| >Perhaps I'll update this article in 3 months with my
| experiences and describe any limitations I ran into... or if
| I gave up and switched to something else.
|
| And? BTW, I've really enjoyed all of your deep dives into DOS
| software. There is a nostalgia element for sure, but I still
| think many elements of those UIs were incredibly efficient
| (e.g. the Lotus 1-2-3 menus system you described) even
| compared to today.
| taviso wrote:
| Thanks! I still use 123 basically daily, It's really grown
| on me and I can use it very efficiently.
|
| I wrote a display driver to fix a few quirks when using it
| in a modern terminal (https://github.com/taviso/lotusdrv),
| but once that was working I don't really have any
| complaints, it really works beautifully.
| bombcar wrote:
| The HP Palmtop was amazingly powerful for its time -
| because it came with 123.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_95LX
|
| It's arguably _still_ better to this day at being a
| portable spreadsheet computer than phones.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Most of my spreadsheets are long lived, I wouldn't want to risk
| tying them to something ephemeral like a Google account.
| antimatter15 wrote:
| For those interested in trying this out without dusting off their
| DOS machine, there's an online Javascript emulator here:
| https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/app/other/visicalc/1981/
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Or you can use DosBox
| Thorrez wrote:
| >still runs on today's PCs
|
| I guess it ran on 1999 PCs but not 2022 PCs. It won't run for me
| on Windows 10.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I imagine it would run OK in DOSBox.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| Runs on "today's" PC with a 32 bit Windows
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Tried it on my kid's gaming PC just now. Windows 10 complains
| about it not being 64 bit.
|
| Runs fine in DOSBox. Left it open, he'll be so excited when he
| gets home from school!
| badsectoracula wrote:
| Should run on a floppy with FreeDOS :-P
|
| (AFAIK FreeDOS has better support for modern PCs than MS-DOS
| though you might find some that also boot MS-DOS)
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| 64 bit Windows won't run 16 bit executables.
| CTOSian wrote:
| here you are : 16-bit Windows (Windows 1.x, 2.x, 3.0, 3.1,
| etc.) on 64-bit Windows
|
| https://github.com/otya128/winevdm
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| _a 16-bit Windows emulator_
| nailer wrote:
| wow.
| sheetjs wrote:
| Software Arts published an official technical specification of
| the DIF file format in 1983. [1] (to save a file in the DIF
| format, /S#S in VC)
|
| It is certainly an interesting format, and Excel completely
| mangles the data (whether it was intentional is up for debate).
| For example, the value 1,0 "0.3"
|
| represents the literal string 0.3 in VisiCalc (the 1,0 indicates
| that the next line is a string). Excel ignores the typing and
| tries to parse as a value, interpreting it as the number 0.3.
| Like with CSV, there's an awkward formula workaround for
| generating a file with the text "0.3": 1,0
| "=""0.3""" [1] https://atariwiki.org/wiki/attach/VisiCa
| lc/DIF_Technical_Specification.pdf
| chasil wrote:
| If only it was Lotus 1-2-3, it would all come rushing back.
|
| /FileRetrieve, /DataTable.
| blihp wrote:
| /ppg
| [deleted]
| TradingPlaces wrote:
| The most important app in PC history.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| Atari 800 browser emulator version:
|
| https://archive.org/details/VisiCalc_1.74A_1980_Software_Art...
|
| Keys: Ctrl-' Left Ctrl-\ Right
| Ctrl-] Down Ctrl-[ Up ' + [
| - \ *
| triyambakam wrote:
| There is a (derivative?) tool call VisiData that I think is
| really neat - https://www.visidata.org/
| mwexler wrote:
| Ah, the power of the /. My fingers fell right back into those
| patterns.
| ck2 wrote:
| I remember seeing visicalc for the first time in a Radio Shack
| store on a TRS-80 Model 1, around 1980-1981 and it was so very
| different than the rest of the very analog world at that time,
| totally fascinating.
|
| http://www.trs-80.org/visicalc/
| haunter wrote:
| dosemu2 is perfect for old software like this, it's not just an
| emulator but has a mode that translates VGA text mode operations
| into terminal operations so becames almost like a native
| application in your terminal
|
| I did this with WordPerfect for DOS thanks to a guide posted here
| years ago https://blog.cmpxchg8b.com/2020/09/finding-console-
| word-proc...
| anthk wrote:
| Emu2 allows to run 8086 software in text mode too, such as
| Turbo Pascal: https://github.com/dmsc/emu2 But what I'd like
| would be to have a Sixel backend for the EGA/VGA modes. Then by
| just using an xterm, ever over OpenSSH, I could run old retro
| DOS games under that.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-04-06 23:01 UTC)