Licence Terms
- All of the tools and utilities below are, unless otherwise stated, Copyright (C) to M Shaw
- All the programs below are freeware, free for both commercial and private use
- The programs have been written for the author's own personal use and are used regularly
- Most are around 30 years old but may have been recompiled to check for errors
- No warranty offered or implied, no liabilitiy is accepted in connection with or arising from the use of any of these programs
- All programs must be subjected to full evaluation and acceptance testing before use in a production environment
- No support is offered. Use entirely at your own risk
- You may not sell, resell or upload to any redistribution media without the direct permission of the author
You must virus scan all downloads before use and satisfy yourself of suitability and
reliability before use
All uploads will have been scanned with a current (2021) version of Avast AV and
contain no known malware
You can get a free virus scanner for personal use from Kaspersky, AVG or Avast
- Unless stated otherwise, all of the tools are 16-bit binaries and will not run on Windows 64-bit
- All programs should run on MS-DOS, recent DOS clones, DOSBox, ReactOS and 32-bit Windows
- Command-line DOS programs can be run on 64-bit windows using MSDOS-Player
- All exe files are packed using UPX (32 bit) to keep download bandwidth use low
Keystroke interactivity for Batch Scripts with colour highlighting and banner facility to enrich batch output. Can also embed "C"-like escape sequences and time-out with a default response
Use ask.exe /? for help
ask.exe - 33 Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
An implementation of a "desktop" calculator from the very early 1990s, back it the days before Windows was common and when PC calculators were rare (also before the internet was born). This uses my own lightweight windowing system and hypertext help system based on the Borland design. Includes 2 help files. for the popup help system. Has been recently recompiled from ancient source code.. Unzip the EXE and HLP files to the same folder. Hard to believe that this application is almost 30 years old.
Use: calc.exe /? for help
calc.zip - 74Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
Batch script "Windowed" menu choice via text file configuration input. Shortcut accelerators are indicated by wrapping the letter in angled brackets <>
Use: choostxt.exe /? for help on configuring the text input file
See also: choose.txt
choostxt.exe - 36Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
Batch script "Windowed" menu choice via direct command-line arguments rather than a configuration file. Menu strings must be quoted where spaces are present. Shortcut accelerators are indicated by wrapping the letter in angled brackets <>
Use: choose.exe /? for help
See also: choostxt.exe
choose.exe - 70 Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
A simple "Windowed" clock for DOS (not multi-tasking). Y2K and Windows 3.x compatible
Use: clock.exe /? for help
clock.exe - 73 Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
Convert a 16-bit COM file to a relocatable 16-bit EXE file. The resulting EXE will run only on 16/32-bit Windows (not 64-bit except under DOSBox). Of possible use for converting COM files to run as CGI apps under 32-bit Apache or other Web servers. Not for 64bit Windows. This is a 32 bit application.
Use com2exe.exe /? for help
com2exe.exe - 40 Kb
Command-line tool to create an XBase DBF file from a CSV text file
Use: csvtodbf.exe /? for help
csvtodbf.exe - 51Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
DBF
Command-line
tool which lists the contents of the current folder (optionally by filespec) to a DBF
file. Was used to create databases for a file comparison tool
UPX-packed binary
Use: dbflist.exe /? for help
dbflist.exe - 56Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
Command-line
tool which packs (removes deleted records) from a XBase DBF file
UPX-packed binary
Use: dbpack.exe /? for help
dbpack.exe - 53Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
DBF
Command-line
tool which records in a XBase DBF file on any selected field
UPX-packed binary
Use: dbsort.exe /? for help
dbsort.exe - 84Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
DBF
Command-line tool which exports a DBF 3/4 (XBase) database file as an SQL file which can be used to recreate the table. UPX-packed binary
Use: dbtosql.exe /? for help
dbtosql.exe - 49Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
Quick view an XBase DBF 3/4 file via a mouse and keyboard driven interface. Browse or search records and show file information. This program has been very useful over a period of years and has been reincarnated to a degree as a non-windowed Tcl script. The windowing routine was fast and efficent and took advantage of DOS being able to access the screen memory directly.
Use: dbview.exe /? for help
dbview.exe - 120Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
A simple text-mode scheduler. Run a command after a configurable delay. Intended for use with Windows 3.x/NT/2K but can also be used with DOS using the /DOS argument.. This ran for many years as a scheduler on a Win2k webserver running Apache log pruning jobs etc.
Use: delaycmd.exe /? for help
delaycmd.exe - 49Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
Command-line utility to convert any file up to about 32Kb into a "C" source code of a program which, when compiled, will recreate the original file.
Use file2hex.exe /? for help
file2hex.exe - 63Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
Command-line/run-time configuration of INI files on-the-fly using template files. This was originally written to support the dynamic reconfiguration of Windows 3.0 INI files to reconfigure video drivers for roaming desktop use. Has seen frequent use dyamically configuring a number of apps on-the fly in server environments. Has also been ported to 32-bit version. UPX-packed binary (See: win tools)
Use: iupdate.exe /? for help
iupdate.exe - 37Kb - v1.22 (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
A converter for the 1980s vintage CP/M and DOS based LocoScript wordprocessor.
This application will convert about 90% of a document from LocoScript 1, 2 and PC Professional formats to Rich Text (RTF), keeping major styles. Does not handle LocoMail, LocoFile etc. just basic text with formatting, nor is it optimised for speed. I had plans to optimise the code and export to a DLL but there was really no need.
This is a VB5 setup. Unzip and run setup.exe from the disk1 folder. Be sure not to run from a folder with an underscore _ or other non alphanumeric character in the path. Conversion is slow but unlike other converters I tried, this does work
Runs on 32 and 64 bit Windows
lococonv.zip (installer) - 1,969 Kb
lsdocs.zip (LS1, LS2, LSPro test documents) - 235 Kb
Command-line tool to create a blank DBF file from a rudimentary SQL script. The table name will be used to name the output DBF file. Any existing DBF file will be overwritten. UPX-packed binary. SQLToDBF is used to import the data rows.
Use: sqldbcre.exe /? for help
sqldbcre.exe - 89Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
DBF/SQL
Command-line tool to insert SQL records into an existing DBF file as created by SQLDBCre. Data structures must match. SQLDBCre can be used to create the empty file. At one time it was intended to merge the two SQL import programs and create a single program which handled both processes but the requirement for the program vanished abruptly before it was finished.
UPX-packed binary
Use: sqldbcre.exe /? for help
sqltodbf.exe - 86Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
DBF/SQL
Converts simple text files into RTF format files, while specifying the font size, type, tab expansion and author info. UPX-packed binary. This was written as part of a report generator component for another program which required RTF file report to be emailed.
Use: txt2rtf.exe /? for help
txt2rtf.exe - 52Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
RTF
A simple, windowed text viewer for DOS. Left to right scrolling was never implemented but vertical scrolling and scrolling via using the mouse via the scrollbar was. This was a test program for a Windowing library. UPX-packed binary
Use: view.exe /? for help
view.exe - 100Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
A simple, file hex dumper for DOS. UPX-packed binary
Use: xdump.exe /? for help
xdump.exe - 48Kb (DOS and 16/32 bit Windows only)
