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VisiCalc Executable for the IBM PC (1999)
- xtracto 5y agoTakes 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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- crb 5y ago(1999)
- dang 5y agoAdded above. Thanks! https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.bricklin.com/histor... is an impressive run
- timClicks 5y agoThanks for the edits dang. I wasn't too sure whether I should post the full title at submission time.
- Shared404 5y agoInteresting 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!
- zabzonk 5y agoBut if you actually need a simple spreadsheet, then Google probably has you covered (and yes, I know we all hate google).
- taviso 5y ago...or if you need one that works in a terminal, I've got you covered :) https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/spreadsheet.html https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/spreadsheet.html
- drewzero1 5y agoI 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!
- LVB 5y ago>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 5y agoThanks! 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 https://github.com/taviso/lotusdrv), but once that was working I don't really have any complaints, it really works beautifully.
- bombcar 5y agoThe HP Palmtop was amazingly powerful for its time - because it came with 123. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_95LX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_95LX It's arguably still better to this day at being a portable spreadsheet computer than phones.
- antimatter15 5y agoFor 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/ https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/app/other/visicalc/1981/
- unnouinceput 5y agoOr you can use DosBox
- chasil 5y agoIf only it was Lotus 1-2-3, it would all come rushing back. /FileRetrieve, /DataTable.
- blihp 5y ago/ppg
- ck2 5y agoI 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/ http://www.trs-80.org/visicalc/
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kazinator 5y agoThis 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 5y agoarticle says: "The original VisiCalc program that ran on the IBM PC in 1981 still runs on today's PCs."
- kazinator 5y agoThere was no VisiCalc program that was both original, and that ran on the IBM PC in 1981.
- jhbadger 5y agoThe 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 5y agoI'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 5y ago"original" isn't simply a verbose way of spelling "first". https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/original https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/original
- dragonwriter 5y agoOf 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”.)
- kazinator 5y agoI 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 5y agoYep... 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 5y ago100% 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 5y agoSome 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.
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- Thorrez 5y ago>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 5y agoI imagine it would run OK in DOSBox.
- nsxwolf 5y agoTried 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!
- Zardoz84 5y agoRuns on "today's" PC with a 32 bit Windows
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago64 bit Windows won't run 16 bit executables.
- CTOSian 5y agohere you are : 16-bit Windows (Windows 1.x, 2.x, 3.0, 3.1, etc.) on 64-bit Windows https://github.com/otya128/winevdm https://github.com/otya128/winevdm
- nailer 5y agowow.
- tonyedgecombe 5y agoa 16-bit Windows emulator
- badsectoracula 5y agoShould 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)
- sheetjs 5y agoSoftware 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/VisiCalc/DIF_Technical_Specification.pdf
- triyambakam 5y agoThere is a (derivative?) tool call VisiData that I think is really neat - https://www.visidata.org/ https://www.visidata.org/
- haunter 5y agodosemu2 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-processor.html https://blog.cmpxchg8b.com/2020/09/finding-console-word-proc...
- anthk 5y agoEmu2 allows to run 8086 software in text mode too, such as Turbo Pascal: https://github.com/dmsc/emu2 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.
- thomasfl 5y agoSC-IM is a terminal based spreadsheet. It is the modern version of visicalc. https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im
- pjc50 5y agoGiven how short it is, I wonder if someone's got an annotated disassembly.
- wiso 5y agoRemember: To quit, use "/SQY" (Storage, Quit, Yes).
- mkovach 5y ago/SQY .. ah, the Q.E.D of the early 80s.
- TradingPlaces 5y agoThe most important app in PC history.
- TMWNN 4y agoThe first killer app. It made the Apple II a must-buy.
- jhallenworld 5y agoAtari 800 browser emulator version: https://archive.org/details/VisiCalc_1.74A_1980_Software_Arts https://archive.org/details/VisiCalc_1.74A_1980_Software_Art... Keys: Ctrl-' Left Ctrl-\ Right Ctrl-] Down Ctrl-[ Up ' + [ - \ *
- mwexler 5y agoAh, the power of the /. My fingers fell right back into those patterns.