The Wire

A window with two lines of text in it. Hello does nothing else. It ships as the smallest working example for anyone writing a program of their own, and as the one package with no icon of its own -- which is why the Disk window draws it with the generic application icon while every other program shows its own.

747 byte package · 747 bytes with files · Load Program

HELLO.O88

Minesweeper, on a 9x9 board with ten mines. Click a cell to open it, F for flag mode, N for a new game. Empty regions open in one click, the numbers use the traditional colors, and the first click is always safe -- the mines are laid after you have chosen where to start. It was the first program the loader ever ran.

2,021 byte package · 2,021 bytes with files · Load Program

MINES.O88

The four-function calculator accepts mouse clicks or keys and keeps a fold-away list of the last eight sums.

6,508 byte package · 6,508 bytes with files · Load Program

CALC.O88

A plain text editor. Type into it, and it wraps at the window edge. Open, Save and Save As go through the system's file dialog and write ordinary files onto the FAT12 floppy, so a note written here opens on a modern computer and one written there opens here. Open as many at once as memory allows.

18,407 byte package · 18,407 bytes with files · Load Program

NOTEPAD.O88

A bitmap editor. Pencil, eraser, fill, rectangle, ellipse, selection, eyedropper and text tools down the left edge, a resizable canvas, undo, a clipboard, and sixteen colors along the bottom. It reads and writes BMP and GIF. On a machine with less memory it starts smaller and drops features rather than refusing to open, and on a monochrome display the palette becomes black, white and a dither.

27,400 byte package · 27,400 bytes with files · Load Program

PAINT.O88

A web browser. It fetches pages over an Ethernet card or a parallel cable and lays them out as text and tables, following links and keeping a history. Encrypted sites go through a helper program on another computer; the arithmetic is minutes of work at 4.77 MHz. There is a page about it.

15,283 byte package · 15,283 bytes with files · Load Program

BROWSER.O88 Read the Spotlight →

Telnet logs in to another machine over the network and understands the terminal codes a login prompt sends -- the browser's quieter companion, over exactly the same network calls.

4,719 byte package · 4,719 bytes with files · Load Program

TELNET.O88

The FTP Server is the first program here that answers an incoming connection instead of making one, so a laptop on the same network can drop a file onto the machine while it is running. There is a page about that one.

15,921 byte package · 15,921 bytes with files · Load Program

FTPD.O88 Read the Spotlight →

A Mandelbrot explorer. Zoom into the set, choose a color scheme, and watch the picture sharpen through three passes. It draws in the background, so the desktop stays usable the whole time, and you can move or cover the window mid-render without losing the work already done.

3,768 byte package · 3,768 bytes with files · Load Program

FRACTAL.O88

A sound recorder. Record, stop and play, with a waveform display of whatever is in the buffer and a built-in demo tone to try it with. It records through a Sound Blaster where the machine has one and plays through the PC speaker where it does not; the status line says which it got.

3,843 byte package · 3,843 bytes with files · Load Program

RECORDER.O88

A two-octave keyboard. Play it with the mouse or with the computer keys lettered onto the keys themselves. Every note you play is written onto the staff above, and the staff plays back. Three built-in songs come with it. On a machine with a sound card the notes come out of the card's FM chip instead of the PC speaker.

4,171 byte package · 4,171 bytes with files · Load Program

PIANO.O88

A Markdown writer, ported from the Macintosh. ArtfulType is ActionRetro's writing app for classic 68k Macs, rebuilt for the 8086. Writer mode takes the whole screen and gives the program its own menu bar. It styles as you type: bold, italic, headings at three sizes and underlined links, with the Markdown markup hidden until you put the caret back in that paragraph. Documents are plain Markdown files, so they open anywhere else.

18,868 byte package · 18,868 bytes with files · Load Program

ARTFUL.O88

TeXPad is a two-pane editor for a paper-oriented subset of TeX, with source on the left and the typeset page on the right. File > Export writes PDF 1.4 or PostScript Level 1. It handles text, sections, quotes, lists and ruled tables; it has no math engine, figures or color.

24,279 byte package · 24,279 bytes with files · Load Program

TEXPAD.O88

Klondike solitaire. Deal from the stock, drag cards and runs between the seven columns with the mouse, and build the four foundations up from the aces. Dragging shows an outline and drops the cards when you let go, the same way windows move. On a monochrome machine the red suits are drawn hollow instead of red, so they stay tellable apart.

5,881 byte package · 5,881 bytes with files · Load Program

SOLITAIR.O88

A brick-breaker. Move the paddle with the arrow keys, clear six rows of colored bricks, and keep the score across levels. The ball runs on its own timer rather than on your keystrokes, so it keeps a steady speed whatever else the machine is doing.

7,025 byte package · 7,025 bytes with files · Load Program

ARKANOID.O88

Defend six cities from descending missiles. Each battery carries a finite count, and one blast can set off another before the trails reach the ground.

13,336 byte package · 13,336 bytes with files · Load Program

MISSILE.O88

TameGram gives you seven geometric pieces and a target silhouette. Move and rotate every piece until the outline is filled.

5,141 byte package · 5,141 bytes with files · Load Program

TAMEGRAM.O88

Cyclone 88 is a Tempest clone: you sit on the rim of a tube and shoot things climbing up it.

13,378 byte package · 13,378 bytes with files · Load Program

CYCLONE.O88

Tank Attack is a first-person wireframe tank duel that takes over the whole screen rather than running in a window, and has a page of its own. Drive across a flat plain, dodge cubes and pyramids, and shoot enemy tanks. The same package draws VGA, Hercules and CGA.

14,935 byte package · 14,935 bytes with files · Load Program

TANK.O88 Read the Spotlight →

Chart draws the numbers in a Sheet file. It is a program in its own right, with column, bar, line, area, pie and scatter views rendered into an offscreen picture before they reach the window.

12,107 byte package · 12,107 bytes with files · Load Program

CHART.O88 Read the Spotlight →

Sheet is a spreadsheet of four worksheets with formulas, formats, sorting and a macro language, and Chart draws the numbers in it -- both built to look and behave like Microsoft Excel 2.1, and they share a page. Cells use software decimal arithmetic and the workbook reads and writes SYLK, DIF and BIFF.

48,452 byte package · 48,452 bytes with files · Load Program

SHEET.O88 Read the Spotlight →

Frotz plays Infocom text adventures and needs story files as well, so it too has a page of its own. It is an independent implementation of Z-Machine Standard 1.1 in 8086 assembly, with v1-v8 stories, scrollback, sound and pictures. No story file is included.

24,965 byte package · 24,965 bytes with files · Load Program

FROTZ.O88 Read the Spotlight →

Microsoft Word 1.1a is a word processor that reads and writes genuine Word .DOC files -- there is a page about it in Spotlight, and its disk is in every release. Draft and Page views, the 2-row ruler, RTF import and export, Search, Sort, Renumber and Table of Contents are present. This is a native os8088 program, not Windows or the original Word binary.

48,551 byte package · 51,762 bytes with files · Add to Disk

WORD.O88 WORD.OVL WELCOME.DOC Read the Spotlight →

CWORD is a second version of the same program written in C rather than assembly, which saves RTF instead, and has a page too. It carries the 1990 menus, the 2-row ruler and Draft and Page views in a native package.

36,326 byte package · 57,008 bytes with files · Add to Disk

CWORD.O88 CWORD.OVL WELCOME.RTF Read the Spotlight →

Weave and Loom are the newest: Weave runs a program written as markup, script and formulas, and Loom is the editor that builds one on the machine itself, so they share a disk and a page. The markup lists the window controls, the script holds event handlers and the optional formula file fills a grid. The three examples are Form, Sheet and Pong; Pong is 1,008 bytes.

51,688 byte package · 80,584 bytes with files · Add to Disk

WEAVE.O88 WEAVE.OVL WEAVE.WSM FORM.WAB SHEET.WAB PONG.WAB Read the Spotlight →

A four-channel Amiga MOD player. A FastTracker II-style display: the pattern scrolls under the playing row, four channel meters move with the music, and the sample list sits down the right-hand side. Load a .MOD off the floppy, play it, and go on using the desktop while it plays. The module shown here is 116KB, comfortably larger than the machine's 64KB segment limit.

17,359 byte package · 17,359 bytes with files · Load Program

TRACKER.O88

ModPlug Player reads Amiga MOD files, mixes four channels in a background task and keeps transport controls and song facts in one compact window.

18,473 byte package · 18,473 bytes with files · Load Program

MODPLUG.O88

Audio Player reads WAV files into a 16KB look-ahead buffer while a Sound Blaster consumes the preceding block. Its playlist can keep playing while other windows run.

9,216 byte package · 9,216 bytes with files · Load Program

AUDIO.O88

Loom is the editor that builds a Weave program on the machine itself. Open any project file, edit the markup, script, formulas or sprites, then pack the result into one WAB bundle. The Wire adds the Weave runtime beside it so a packed program can run from the same disk.

54,978 byte package · 192,888 bytes with files · Add to Disk

LOOM.O88 LOOM.OVL LOOM.WPV WEAVE.O88 WEAVE.OVL WEAVE.WSM Read the Spotlight →

RunCPM is a CP/M 2.2 machine in a window -- it emulates a Z80 processor and comes with a disk of CP/M software, and there is a page on it. CP/M drives are folder trees on the FAT floppy; the Wire cannot create that tree, so this entry points to the release disk rather than offering either machine action.

39,592 byte package · 46,981 bytes with files · Release floppy only

RUNCPM.O88 RUNCPM.OVL Read the Spotlight →

Get the RunCPM release floppy →

VICE 3.10 puts Commodore BASIC and VIC-II graphics in an IBM PC window. The package runs the Commodore ROMs as embedded parts, one 6510 instruction at a time, and the SID produces three-voice sound. A 486+ is recommended; an XT or 286 can start it but does not run it at a useful speed.

61,440 byte package · 85,420 bytes with files · Add to Disk

C64.O88 C64.OVL README.TXT COPYING Read the Spotlight →