The Giant List of Deskmate 3 Programs v1.00 kudut@ritz.mordor.com Kenneth Udut 20-SEP-1994 ======================================================================= This is a list of all Deskmate programs. Feel free to contact me if you know of any things to be added, corrected, changed, etc. --Ken Here is a list of previous Deskmates and their approximate dates. I would like information on the CoCo and Model IV Deskmates, as I don't know much about them. Deskmate 1 - Versions bundled with Tandy 1000/A/HD/EX/SX Deskmate 2 - Included Personal Deskmate and Professional Deskmate. Bundled with Tandy 1000 HX, TX. Look and feel are VERY similar to Deskmate 3, and the programs will almost ALL work with Deskmate 3. Some third party applications were written for Deskmate 2, but I don't know what they were. Anyone know? Deskmate 3 - Versions bundled with Tandy 1000 RL/SL/TL/RLX, 2500SX, and available for the 1000 RSX, the most mysterious and last Tandy 1000. Was also available standalone to work with *any* computer (version 3.05). Each version bundled with the Tandy computers was different. 3.00 - on ROM chip in SL/TL 3.01 - Mysterious "SWITCH.EXE" is really Deskmate 3.01. 3.02 - on ROM chip in SL/2 TL/2 3.03 - on ROM chip in TL/2 3.04 - on ROM chip in RL 3.05 - on ROM chip in 2500SX, 1000RSX(?). Available for $99.95 at Radio Shacks for standard IBM compatibles. Discounted at $19.95 and is worth picking up. Spanish version still for sale as of late 1994. 3.05.22 - on ROM chip with RLX(?). Includes some VERY customized programs. ============================ \ The Giant List of Deskmate 3 Programs v1.00> ============================ / NOTE: A * before name means it can run standalone - without Deskmate. A ? somewhere means I'm not sure, or I don't know. It also means, if you know - please tell me :-) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- DESKMATE PROGRAMS THAT RUN WITHOUT REQUIRING THE DESKMATE 3 PROGRAM. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *DESKMATE 3 Main program. Includes many programs. Friendly! Made by Tandy Corp. *QUICKEN 2 Checkbook balancer, personal accounting program. Made by INTUIT. *MEMORYMATE Freeform database program. Allows you to store an unlimited amount of text and other things and search through it all at will. I (Ken) have been using this program since 1988, and I have to say that I will be using it forever. All of my little scraps of notepaper go into MemoryMate, and I use it. I could not live without it. Oh, and you can make HyperText documents with it very very easily. All of my important E-mail is kept in MemoryMate, and linked together with buttons. Made by Broderbund. *VENTURE Business Plan writer. Includes its OWN text editor, as well as schedulers, and others for the small businessman. Made by Star Software. *HOME LAWYER Home Legal Advisor. It allows you to create professional legal documents without a lawyer. Bill of sale, letters to creditors, and other things adults unfortunately need to do once in a while. Made by ? *Q&A WRITE Word processor. Uses printer fonts. Includes ability to mailmerge in more flexible ways than TEXT. You can edit much larger files. Made by ? *HOMEWORD II Word processor. WYSIWYG. Made by Sierra Online. *GRAMMER CHECKER I may have the wrong name of this. Corrects grammer mistakes. Made by ? *PC-LINK How could I forget this? Online nationwide service. Requires modem. I was a member for about 2/3 years before running low on money and leaving. Still active. It runs right along with America Online - it is the same service, but two different pricing schemes, and one uses Deskmate, the other uses Geoworks. Messages appear in pretty, scrollable screens and it is a whole other universe. Online games such as Neverwinter Nights, take full advantage of your Tandy 1000's enhanced graphics and sound capabilities (no digital sounds though). Made by Quantum Computer Services Now known as America Online Inc *ONLINE! Terminal Program for Deskmate. Hard to find, but I've heard it is excellent! Does not include Zmodem protocol, but includes all of the others. Made by Sierra Online. *FIRST PUBLISHER Desktop Publishing program that set certain standards and formats in the IBM world. Prints at 75dpi, but allows you to use laser printer downloadable fonts! *EXPRESS PUBLISHER Desktop publishing program. Has stricter requirements than any other Deskmate program I've seen. Requires 580K to be FREE, which is easy enough using MS-DOS 3.30, but if you've moved up to MSDOS 5/6 you may not have enough free memory on your 1000. It prints at the highest resolution of the printer. Uses Deskmate 3.05 fonts (Atech fonts), and includes lots of clip art. It's not nearly as speedy as First Publisher, but it does the trick. Requires hard drive, unlike most Deskmate programs. Made by ? *FORM FINISHER If you fill out forms repetatively, like UPS forms, federal documents, etc., Form Finisher helps you create a reproduction of forms in Form Finisher, and then you treat it like the paper form, only it's on the computer now! Say goodbye to the thrice copied-by-the-time-you-got-it EPA forms! Put it in Form Finisher, and you have something nice to send back, with less work. Prints on all printers. Made by ? *MUSIC STUDIO 3 Sophisticated music creating/editing/printing program. Allows multiple staffs, and plays over Tandy 3-voice sound (and digitized, if the *L series). Compatible with Roland MPU and some other MIDI systems! Not compatible with SoundBlaster, unless someone has an emulator for the Roland/other systems listed. Includes its OWN sound editor, and the sounds are compatible with Deskmate's SOUND.PDM. Many many songs are available for this on PC-Link/AOL. Made by Activision. *FILEPRO Surpurb Database program! Import/Export Deliminated ASCII, Lotus 1-2-3, and Dbase III/IV formats! The Query screen is the same as the Form (which is RARE, and something I wish Paradox for Windows here at work had!). It is very fast, and includes a very sophisticated Screen Painting program, which allows you to made your data entry/data viewing screens look just like you want them to. And, as always, you can copy to the clipboard from DRAW, and paste it in filePro! A friend of mine on Delphi uses filePro to keep track of milk on her dairy farm. Made by ? *LOTUS 1-2-3 Home version of Lotus 1-2-3. Completely compatible with regular Lotus 1-2-3 except for Macros and Add-ons. Spreadsheet, graphing, database functions. Made by Lotus. *MAVIS BEACON Surpurb typing tutor! I've watched my speed go from 55 wpm up to 85 wpm in a matter of months! Accurately! The original disks are copy protected. Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing is its official name. Made by ? *TYPING TUTOR IV Another excellent typing tutor! I bought and installed it in the local Cerebral Palsy center where I once volunteered. I started some of the older kids on the tutor, and watched them go from being only able to play games on the computer, to being able to type accurately! Includes Letter Invaders, a game that is rather like Missle Command. Letter Invaders also comes with the Tandy 1000 RLX Deskmate. Made by ? *DESKMATE SDK The Deskmate Software Development Kit! Includes everything you need to write programs in Deskmate. Requires Microsoft C compiler (version 4.0 is fine) Includes sections on programming with the Tandy sound chips and special graphics modes. Tandy was the first company to put out a development kit for their integrated environment (Deskmate). Available from Tandy Corp @ $299. You may be lucky enough to find a used copy, but not too likely! Made by Tandy Corp. *ESPER Directory/File management program. Allows you to run most common MS-DOS commands from within Deskmate! Look in PCM Magazine or 1000 Magazine for advertisements. Made by Bob Jack Software. Independantly sold. There are also tons of education software made under Deskmate's Interface. Can anybody help me with the names/what they do? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- DESKMATE COMPANIONS: Programs that require Deskmate 3 to be installed. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- THESARUS I'm at work and without Deskmate & spell checker, so I probably spelled it wrong. Look up alternative words in Deskmate TEXT - one of the handiest things I've used! Made by Tandy Corp. HOME ORGANIZER 15 extra programs, originally bundled with RL, offered separately due to HUGE customer request. It carries the Goodhousekeeping Seal of Approval! Made by Tandy Corp. MACROS For making boilerplates, running everyday tasks, you can automate them with Macros. When installed, it's found either under F10 or under F10 | SETUP | F2 Very simple to use! Made by Tandy Corp. GRAPHS Make colorful graphs using data generated by anything, as it imports Deliminated ASCII, as well as other formats. Includes special color printer driver that only works with GRAPHS for the Citizen/Tandy color dot matrix printers/emulators! Made by Star Software. FINANCIAL ASSISTANT Make complex calculations easily! Even Amortization! Made by Star Software. SCHOOLMATE Networks school computers together, provides special Deskmate programs for teachers and students. Includes a DeskMate BBS (internal) and E-Mail. Made by Tandy Corp. WORKGROUP COMP. Workgroup Companion. Connect two computer together with serial cable, or many computer with LAN cards. Run Deskmate software from another computer! A Tandy 1000 HX, for example, hooked with a TandyLink card, can run the Deskmate programs off of a Tandy 1000 TL/3, even if the HX only has floppy drives!! Includes Deskmate BBS (internal), chat modes, and E-Mail. Also a special shared calender and address book, so that many people can access their stuff, but not yours! Made by Tandy Corp. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- AVAILABLE ONLINE SOMEWHERE: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Recipe Importer - allows you to import recipes into the recipe database in Home Organizer. DMCLIP - Convert DRAW files into .CLP art! Both made by Tandy Research and Development. Available on PC-Link/AOL, as well as ftp site musie.phlab.missouri.edu under pub/trs/Tandy1000. *Test Drive of LOTUS 1-2-3 Available on PC-Link/AOL *Test Drive of Q&A WRITE Available on PC-Link/AOL ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Mysteries - Deskmate programs that might have existed, but I just don't know. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *DACEASY ACCTING I haven't tracked it down, but I've spoken to people who have used it in the past. DacEasy made a version of their fabulous personal/business accounting software for Deskmate. If anyone tracks it down, please let me know. *PAINT POWER I may have the name wrong, and it may not have ever truly existed. In the 1990 catalog, there exists a painting program for Deskmate. You can create .GIF and .PCX with this program, save them, print them, contort them, etc. Tandy has no record of anything ever having existed with its catalog number, and software replacement (which has EVERYTHING!) from Tandy hasn't heard of it. *FILEPRO PROFESSIONAL Everything regular filePro does, but with absolutely NO limits. filePro allows unlimited records, but limits you to 99 fields (as if that's a limitation!). But filePro Professional allows an unlimited amount of fields, which is a rarity indeed! Includes many many extra features. Unfortunately, it never made it to the stores. A listing on the back of filePro's box is all that I know of it. NOTE: A * before name means it can run standalone - without Deskmate. A ? somewhere means I'm not sure, or I don't know. It also means, if you know - please tell me :-) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- WHATEVER HAPPENED TO TANDY, DESKMATE, AND THE TANDY 1000'S? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 21-SEP-94 Kenneth Udut (kudut@ritz.mordor.com) In 1990, Tandy Corp. went through a lot of changes. One of which was the firing of the head of the Deskmate development team. No one replaced him, and no one was able to do the work he did. They were able to add new things to Deskmate, but future development of Deskmate was not going to come through Tandy. Tandy Corp was also changing their focus with computers. In 1993, the last Tandy 1000 was released, the mysterious Tandy 1000 RSX. It was a Tandy 1000, and it wasn't. A hybred. Could be fitted with Windows or Deskmate, your choice. Included the awesome additional programs that came with the RLX, but it was odd. The last in the lot. The final Tandy 1000. The Tandy Sensation, which came afterwards, was to be the final original Tandy computer. It was the be all and the end all. We had the Sensation, the Sensation/2 and now, the 1995 catalogs are out. Outside of the durable Tandy laptop, everything else seems like a generic computer with a Tandy sticker. Oh, and to replace the Sensation, a monster 486/66 with everything the Sensation had in it, for the same price. And WinMate? Well, you'll notice that it has something called AST Works on it. It looks astonishingly familiar. AST now manufactures Tandy computers. But the game isn't over yet. WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF THE TANDY 1000 AND DESKMATE? It looks brighter than one might expect. The Software Development Kit has changed around a few hands recently. New people with new ideas that love the Tandy 1000 and love Deskmate. The Tandy 1000 series of computers sits on kitchen countertops, bedrooms and home offices all around the country. Tandy sold the highest quantity of computers during the heydays of their Tandy 1000 series period of time. They are everywhere! Why don't you see too many for sale? Because people use them! People trade them to little cousins, to parents, to children. It is almost like a legacy passing around. And "The Friendly Face of Deskmate" will stay around longer than anyone in the computer industry expects. Deskmate has caught a niche. People who want a friendly computer. Dependable one. Deskmate never crashes! And Tandy 1000's simply don't die. Time and time again, people who buy Tandy 1000 series computers use them and depend on them. When everybody around them telling them to upgrade gets to them, sometimes they do it. And regret it. And some, like the author, go back to Tandy. It's a slower model, but it's a workhorse, and it is dependable. It's never going to die. Neither will the legacy of the Tandy 1000.