July 1986; Volume 4 No. 9; Whole No. 45

CFOG's PIP, July 1986, Volume 4 No. 9, Whole No. 45, page 7

Bargains Found

by Mike Andrews

Since Osborne Computer Corporation (both the new and the old corporation) has gone there are a few firms selling the remnants. I recently came across some great deals on the old Osborne Approved Software.

J&D Associates has BASCOM, the MicroSoft BASIC compiler for $29.95. BASCOM takes any compiles any MBASIC ".bas" file into a regular CP/M .COM program. MBASIC is not required to run the compiled COM programs. The compiled programs run faster than .BAS programs with the MBASIC interpreter. BASCOM includes MicroSoft's macro assembler and linker programs, M80 and L80. BASCOM was originally $300.00! J&D has MicroSoft's FORTRAN, also including M80 and L80, for $24.95. J & D Associates, 546 Green Lane Union, New Jersey, 07208 (201) 351-6860.

The Public Domain Software Company (P.D.S.C.) has a lot of the old Osborne software, too. For $17.00 each (or 8 for $95.00) they have: Deadline, a murder adventure game; ZORK-1, an adventure game; Starcross, a "Galaxy game"; Documate plus, index and table of contents programs for WordStar documents; Enumerator, which numbers the lines of WordStar documents (great for lawyers); Footnote, and Math, which allows simple math calculations to be done inside WordStar documents.

For $28.00 each (or 4 for $95.00) P.D.S.C. has : StartPAC, the audio cassette and flipcard tutorial program for CP/M, BASIC, SuperCalc, and WordStar; SuperCalc; MBASIC; Forth ver 2.0; MicroLink, a communications program; dBase Tutor; the Osborne 1 disk diagnostic program; Disk Doctor, a diskette repair utility; Milestone, a project manager program; Mailman, a mailing list database manager program for use with MailMerge; Spellguard, a spelling checker program. For the same price ($28.00) P.D.S.C. also sells MicroSoft Fortran with M80 and L80; and MicroSoft Bascom with M80 and L80, but without the manual.

For $39.00 each (or 3 for $95) they have: BSTAM, a command-line file transfer program; SuperSort; Personal Datebook, an appointment scheduler program; DataStar, the MicroPro database program; Real Estate Manager; SuperCalc; MBASIC; and WordPAC, the writers program package which includes Grammatick, Spellguard, Documate plus, and Footnote.

The rest of the P.D.S.C. offering isn't as great a deal, in my opinion, unless you need to get new software licenses for another computer. For $95.00 each P.D.S.C. has: the Osborne 1 bundled software package including MBASIC, WordStar, SuperCalc, and manual; plus Personal Pearl, a menu driven database program. For $175.00 each P.D.S.C has: the dBase II <Note: probably the old version 2.3b> with the ZIP screen layout program; and the Osborne Executive bundled software package which includes CBASIC, MBASIC, CP/M 3.0, WordStar, SuperCalc and Personal Pearl. Public Domain Software Company Suite L 333 Gold Street New York, NY 10038 (212) 732-2565

For more information about these programs look at back issues of The Portable Companion or Foghorn -- inquire at CFOG meetings of some old Ozzie veterans, or order back issues of Foghorn from FOG. Most of the Osborne software will run on any CP/M or CP/M compatible system. Exceptions include SuperCalc versions 1.12 and higher, which use memory mapped video, thus specific to one computer system. Even if you don't have an Osborne computer, most of the prices are right if you can read or transfer from Osborne format disks, but you might want return privileges in case they won't run.

[Some of these programs are available at 48 State Computer, 8888 West Dempster, Niles, which has some Osborne and other CP/M software as well as many other computer items. Compare prices before you buy.]