Tag: dos

Posted on by

Ancient Web: KeyHut Still Turns Old PCs Into Cash Registers

KeyHut’s cash-register software is a reminder that an old computer does not become useless just because Silicon Valley has stopped admiring it.

Visit the KeyHut POS page

The program, maintained by Dale Harris, turns a DOS or Windows PC into a point-of-sale terminal. It handles the things an actual small shop needs: receipts, inventory, taxes, employee access, scanners, cash drawers, customer information, sales history, ticket sales, scales, networking, and assorted retail hardware.

What it deliberately does not require is almost more interesting.

The documentation says the program does not need a mouse. It does not process credit cards itself. It does not need a modern graphical interface. Keyboard navigation is treated as an advantage because cash-register work consists largely of repeating known actions quickly.

The site is equally direct about price: the software is free.

Harris’s donation pitch asks satisfied users for five dollars, donated equipment, a link from their Web site, or helper software. It reads less like a software company funnel and more like somebody keeping a useful machine alive because people keep using it.

Software that refuses to become obsolete

KeyHut is valuable as old-Web archaeology because the page and the program reinforce each other.

The site explains parallel-port printers, serial devices, pole displays, receipt printers, scanners, DOSBox, older Windows versions, networking, and file-based register configuration. It assumes the reader might still have hardware that most modern software has forgotten exists.

That is not purely nostalgic. Old retail equipment can be durable, cheap, and perfectly adequate for a small operation. A computer that would be miserable at running a modern browser can be extremely competent at adding prices, printing receipts, and opening a cash drawer.

The documentation even explains that the .POS file effectively is the register configuration, a wonderfully concrete contrast with modern cloud software where the important state may live somewhere the user cannot see.

The result is an odd kind of longevity. The interface looks ancient because the job did not require reinvention.

CacheRat’s 1,967 Ancient Web Domains research list includes sites like KeyHut because old software sometimes survives for the best possible reason: it still solves the problem.

A touchscreen, subscription, analytics dashboard, and animated onboarding sequence would certainly make this more modern.

They would not necessarily make the cash drawer open any better.

See the KeyHut cash-register system

Posted on by

Ancient Web: Rowan Crowe’s MoonRock BASIC Compiler Was Proudly Half Finished

Rowan Crowe released version 0.50 of his MoonRock BASIC compiler with a wonderfully honest explanation for the number: the project was probably nearing its final major release, and 0.50 was a joke because the compiler was about half finished.

Visit Rowan Crowe’s original site address

MoonRock was a hobby compiler for DOS developed through the 1990s. It accepted a BASIC-like language and generated assembly that could be turned into compact DOS executables using assemblers such as MASM, TASM, A86, or the included ArrowSoft assembler. Contemporary compiler archives describe it as an alternative to QuickBASIC and preserve version 0.50 as a roughly 1994–1998 project.

The surviving README is better than any polished product history could be.

Crowe explains that the six BASIC source files making up MoonRock had grown to roughly 280 KB and 10,000 lines. Its assembly-language library was around 100 KB and 7,200 lines even after comments and other material were stripped. He calls the compiler a monster full of kludges and exceptions and admits that returning to a hobby project after a month could mean figuring out how his own code worked again.

That is not failure. That is software development with the marketing department safely removed.

By the final release period, Crowe was running his own Internet service provider and moving much of his programming attention from DOS toward Unix. His main workstation still ran DOS, but he says it was increasingly being used to telnet into Unix servers. The paragraph captures a specific moment in computing history better than a timeline does: DOS was still the machine under his hands while the work had already moved through the network.

The compiler survives as an entire little ecosystem

Copies of MoonRock still include far more than MRC.EXE. There are .MOO example programs, configuration files, an interactive help utility, linker tools, reference documentation, bug and error lists, headers, source directories, and assembler support.

The changelog shows a surprisingly ambitious language growing in public: arrays, pointers, structures, software interrupts, file operations, FOSSIL serial functions, 386 code generation, DPMI protected-mode support, conditional compilation, inline assembly, memory management, and switches for optimizing either size or speed.

The filenames are part of the charm. HELLO.MOO, LIFE.MOO, STARS.MOO, CALC.MOO, and the compiler’s other samples make this feel less like an abstract programming-language project and more like a disk somebody genuinely used.

Crowe’s original personal site is no longer as dependable as the surviving software copies, but the address remains embedded in the documentation along with his FidoNet address and email. That is why preserving old software with its README matters. The file carries the author, the context, the limitations, the jokes, and the reason development slowed down.

MoonRock did not need to become the next C compiler to be worth remembering. Somebody wrote a 10,000-line compiler for DOS, used it, distributed it, documented it, and then openly admitted where the monster had gotten away from him.

Try the original Rowan Crowe site address

Posted on by

Ancient Web: The QBasic Games Directory Came Back From the Dead

The QBasic Games Directory already died once, which makes its continued existence considerably more interesting than another retro-gaming list somebody assembled last Tuesday.

Visit the QBasic Games Directory

The directory was created and maintained by Lachie Dazdarian as a database of games written in QBasic, the beginner-friendly BASIC environment bundled with MS-DOS-era Microsoft systems.

For a generation of hobby programmers, QBasic was less a language choice than a door somebody had accidentally left unlocked.

It was already there. It had an editor. It could run code immediately. A teenager could type a few lines, make something move on the screen, and then lose the next several years of his life.

The resulting community produced platform games, shooters, role-playing experiments, puzzle games, graphics demos, engines, libraries, tutorials, and an impressive quantity of software created because somebody wanted to know whether it could be done.

The QBasic Games Directory cataloged that scene.

Then its old home at qbasic.com disappeared.

In 2017, Phat Code announced that the massive database had returned. Dazdarian publicly thanked Plasma for restoring it and said he did not expect to make major changes. The point was preservation.

That is a small but important distinction.

A database can outlive the scene that needed it

When an active hobby community is healthy, everybody knows where the files are. People recognize author names. Forums link to current releases. Someone remembers which engine a particular game used.

Twenty years later, all of that assumed knowledge becomes archaeology.

A directory suddenly matters more.

The QBasic scene is particularly vulnerable because so much of its output came from individual hobbyists rather than commercial publishers. Programs moved between personal pages, FTP servers, free hosts, community portals, magazine disks, and forum attachments. Many of those distribution paths vanished.

A surviving catalog gives the software context. It can connect a title to an author, screenshot, description, review, release period, or neighboring projects. Even when an individual file needs to be hunted elsewhere, the index tells you that the thing existed.

Phat Code itself wears its persistence proudly. After almost nine years without an official update, the site returned in 2016 with the message that “old school never dies.” The following year the QBasic Games Directory was restored there.

That is about as appropriate a hosting arrangement as one could ask for.

CacheRat’s 1,967 Ancient Web Domains research list includes programming-community survivors because obscure software rarely disappears all at once. First the community quiets down. Then the hosting goes. Then the filenames become meaningless.

A directory interrupts that process.

Sometimes the best preservation project is simply putting the old index back online.

Browse the resurrected QBasic Games Directory

Posted on by

Ancient Web: A86 Is Still Selling an x86 Assembler From the DOS Era

A86 is the kind of software product page that assumes the visitor already knows what a .COM file is and considers that perfectly reasonable.

Visit the A86/A386 and D86/D386 site

Eric Isaacson’s A86 assembler and D86 debugger belong to the DOS programming world, but the website still preserves the full ecosystem around them: downloads, documentation, feature lists, source libraries, pricing, licensing, Win32 examples, and the 32-bit A386 and D386 versions.

Version 4.05 of A86 can generate DOS .COM files directly, create .OBJ files for a linker, or produce raw object output suitable for ROMs. D86 is a screen-oriented debugger that freezes a program’s state so registers, flags and memory can be inspected while execution is stepped instruction by instruction.

The 32-bit A386 material stretches across the x86 family from the original 8088 through Intel’s Pentium III and AMD’s Athlon, including MMX, SIMD and 3DNow instructions.

The commercial shareware web never completely vanished

The page is fascinating because it still behaves like a software storefront from another computing era.

There is a combined A86/D86 ZIP download. Registered users can buy a library containing more than 200 procedures and macros plus source for roughly 200 short programs. A Win32 package includes a complete HELLO32 example for building programs that run under Windows NT, Windows 95 and later systems.

The language of the page is wonderfully direct. Isaacson calls A86 the finest assembler available and then immediately tells you exactly what it outputs, what processors it understands, and what the debugger does.

No animated product tour is required.

For programmers studying DOS software, old PC development workflows, assembly-language tooling or the transition from 16-bit to 32-bit Windows, the site is more useful now than an abandoned product brochure would be because the actual binaries and technical explanations remain connected.

CacheRat’s 1,967 Ancient Web Domains research list contains many surviving software pages where the product itself became historical evidence.

A86 is one of the better examples.

The web page still expects somebody might show up wanting to assemble some x86 code.

Return to the A86 site