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"In the day" : The 5 Best non-game Programs on Atari 8-bit


ACML

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As far as the breadth and scope of a product, I vote for BBS Express! Professional... I remember being so blown away by all the modules and expandability of BBS Exppress! Pro - Dialin remotely, a command line OS totally inside the BBS that could do most DOS and management things without ever "exiting" the BBS. I thought it was so cool my little 8-bit could compete feature and speed wise with ST and PC BBS's of the day...

 

#2 SpartaDOS / SpartaDOS X.

#3 BobTerm (Ice-T and FlickerTerm were up there too!)

#4 (For the time) I used TextPro a LOT for editing text files on the BBS, it worked well with SpartaDOS.

#5 Basically any and all Music/Graphics DEMO disks i could get my hands on (or afford to spend $$ on long distance calls to download)

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Not in any special order:

I liked Speedscript from Compute, when they published it. 

Found Antic Character Editor (Atari BASIC program)from Byte magazine very useful.

Fontbyter (Atari BASIC program) from Compute was invaluable for level design, map layouts.

Liked using AtariArtist when using the Atari Touch Tablet.

SpartaDOS was easily my favourite DOS to use with DD 1050.

and Fun With Art would be the art program I used the most.

 

Harvey

 

 

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1. Visicalc

2. Atariwriter

3. Disk Wizard 

4. Replay

5. can't recall the name - or find the software now - but it was a disk cataloging/listing mini database.

you added the title at the top and it inserted the entry into a vertical list (all fitting across 40 columns)

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I forget Atari Planetarium.. !!! that was an AMAZING piece of software for the time. I really enjoyed Planetarium, specially growing in the southern hemisphere where the material (magazines, sky maps, etc) covering the southern skies was more limited.

 

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I sort of have 2 lists.  Top 5 when I was just aware of my own use and a few buddies and then post discovery of usergroups (LATCH being the main one, who remembers them?) and BBSs

 

First List

1. HomeTerm

2. HomeText

3. Syncalc

4. DOS 2.0s (whatever flavour that was, I don't recall)

5. AtariBasic

 

Second List

1. HomeTerm

2. Paperclip

3. Syncalc

4. DOS 2.6f (though I drooled of Diamond GOS)

5. Turbo Basic XL

Edited by 8bitguy1
Grammar and additions.
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Back then:

 

SpartaDOS 3

Rambrandt

Atariwriter+

Graphics Magician

Printshop

 

Today:

 

SpartaDOS X

The Last Word

Rambrandt

Syncalc

My Personal Net Worth

Edited by Gunstar
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1. Atariwriter (& the Plus disk ver.).  Speedscript got some use for it easy to read text style and simplicity.

2. Printshop

3. Atari DOS 2.5

4. Atari Mailing List (used for Inventory Database)

5. Atariartist and Atarigraphics (touch tablet and lightpen carts)

 

I still use all these programs to this day. 

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  • 6 months later...

I stumbled across this thread when I searched for “marshware” only to find my own post lol....

 

I will have to say that I should have put SX Express in this list.. I started out with XE-Term which came with my XM301 modem that my mom took me one warm summers day to Federated Electronics on Park Blvd in Plano TX to purchase... That purchase and really the Atari in general was the reason I am who I am today as far as the money I make. 

 

XE Term fucking BLEW.. But I didnt know of anything else and it would take a bit before I realized I could download a replacment comm program for it - which I eventually did in the form of 1030 Express...1030 and SX Express both were super neat pieces of software. I was fine doing 40 column at the time, even in my hacking endeavors since I wasn’t used to anything else - I just kinda held my head sideways lol...

 

Anyways - figured I should give credit where credit is due.. 

 

The other program I forgot about was CodeSuck - which I am pretty sure is the first program I scanned for long distance codes using. I would seriously give $200 to anyone who could come up with that program out of their archive today...

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On 5/29/2016 at 9:55 PM, Ripdubski said:

I used these regularly:

AtariWriter (but would place the Plus version higher on the list)

Amodem (the one with a war dialer built in)

Action!

MyDOS and SmartDOS (because of ResiDUP)

 

I didn't have much use for a spreadsheet and didn't use one, but would add this one:

SynCalc

There was a wardialer built into Amodem?

 

Do you mean it would simply repeat dial the bbs’s in the list, or did it truly do sequential/random dialing of a range of numbers???

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/10/2020 at 5:12 PM, doctor_x said:

There was a wardialer built into Amodem?

 

Do you mean it would simply repeat dial the bbs’s in the list, or did it truly do sequential/random dialing of a range of numbers???

You could specify a range of numbers, and it just logged which ones had carrier.  This was a modified version of A-Modem perhaps particular to the SLC area.  Upload and download were missing IIRC, and the Wardialer function was present.

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I can say that print shop had to be on the first position of my list. 

 

I didn’t have a printer, so i needed to go to my friends house to print. 

 

My 8th grade class president campaign used print shop. Now, I lost but that’s another story. I had been in course politics for too long all the way back to 4th grade (or before). 

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So... from before I got a 1050

 

A.C.E.  (Being able to verify a tape save was invaluable!)

 

And then after...

 

1. DOS 2.5 (Because the drive came with DOS 3, there was no internet, and who knew it was a POS!)

2. Atari BASIC

3. Typo-II

4. Happy Backup

5. OmniMon

 

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My top 5 were:

 

1. Atariwriter

2. Atari Basic with Monkey Wrench

3. Printshop

4. Syncalc (for my home budget)

5. Omnimon

 

Special Mention for me are:

 

1. Super Archiver

2. Disk Doctor

3. Mydos

4. Microfiler

 

Just for giggles I put together a PDF file of the Programs listed in this thread.

The top 20 are:

  1. Atariwriter/Atariwriter+
  2. Turbo BASIC XL
  3. Atari BASIC cartridge
  4. Printshop
  5. Bobterm
  6. SpartaDOS/X
  7. Syncalc
  8. Dos 2.0s/2.5
  9. Mac/65
  10. MyDos
  11. Basic XL/XE
  12. Express BBS(es)
  13. Rambrandt
  14. Amodem
  15. Disk Wizard II
  16. Mini Office II
  17. Action!
  18. Assembler Editor
  19. Newsroom
  20. Omnimon

Top Non-Game Apps.pdf

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A 4.5 year old thread and still an interesting read.  After reading over many great comments, I don't think I realized that the staying power of the Atari 8-bit was so long.  Looks like Atari 8-bits were still going strong as daily machines into the 90's.  After further reflection, I'd add MYDOS to my list.  I remember using version 4.1 mainly.  I had an ATR-8000 and I think 3.18 had the driver.  I could use MYDOS to format a 1.2MB floppy as a 77 track drive(pseudo 1MB 8").  Then there were the RAM disk options in MYDOS which were also cool.  Also, having subdirectories was nice as well.  

Edited by ACML
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What a great list! The applications that immediately came to mind for me were:

 

Print Shop - that got so much use in our family for making things. An incredible piece of software to encourage people to use a computer. I remember making a lot of images and borders using the PS Companion (?) too.

 

Micro Illustrator / Atari Artist - really got into graphic art thanks to these and both the Koala Pad and Atari Touch Tablet. I may not have been a terribly good artist but I enjoyed the process!

 

Typesetter - a number of high school assignments were made with this and when I found I could combine it with pages that had Print Shop borders (yes, double printed) I was able to leverage both with great results.

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