pcjs/apps/pc

IBM PC Application Demos

Below are selected demos of classic IBM PC applications running on PCjs.

• VisiCalc (1981)
• Executive Suite (1982)
• Rogue (1985)
• ThinkTank (1987)
• The Dungeons of Moria (1988, 1992)

More software is available in the IBM PC Disk Archive.

Developer Notes: How To Produce A Demo

We'll use the VisiCalc Demo as an example. First you must choose a machine configuration. For VisiCalc, we chose a Model 5150 machine with a Monochrome Display, and then inserted a link to that machine in the demo's Manifest:

<machine href="/devices/pc/machine/5150/mda/64kb/machine.xml"/>

Next, the Manifest required a disk image containing the VisiCalc program (VC.COM). We used the DiskDump module to create that disk image:

cd apps/pc/1981/visicalc
node ../../../../modules/diskdump/bin/diskdump --path="private/VC.COM;../README.md" --format=json --output=disk.json --manifest

The DiskDump command created a disk image named "disk.json" containing two files ("VC.COM" from the "private" subdirectory, and "README.md" from the "private" parent directory) and automatically added that disk image to the demo's Manifest:

<disk id="disk01" size="163840" chs="40:1:8" dir="private/" href="/apps/pc/1981/visicalc/disk.json" md5="61494f998d5fb0e31e7b8bd99f1cc588" md5json="3ad82ed815725e6bd786f92a4714e84f">
	<file size="27520" time="1981-12-16 23:00:00" attr="0x20" md5="28997dfedb2440c6054d8be835be8634">VC.COM</file>
	<file dir="../">README.md</file>
</disk>

Now that the manifest contains a disk image, we were able to add the manifest to our set of Sample Disks:

<manifest ref="/apps/pc/1981/visicalc/manifest.xml" disk="*"/>

Next, we started a version of our chosen machine that's also configured to use the Debugger, by loading the following machine.xml into a web browser (it's assumed the Node web server is already running on port 8088):

http://localhost:8088/devices/pc/machine/5150/mda/64kb/debugger/machine.xml

Then we booted DOS, loaded the VisiCalc disk, ran VisiCalc, pressed the Debugger's "Halt" button, pressed "Clear" to clear the Debugger's output window, and typed the following Debugger command:

d state

We copied-and-pasted the entire contents of the Debugger's output window into a file named "state.json", and then updated the <machine> entry in the Manifest:

<machine href="/devices/pc/machine/5150/mda/64kb/machine.xml" state="/apps/pc/1981/visicalc/state.json"/>

It's important to use a state file only with the machine configuration it was created with; in this case, we're OK, because the only difference between the two chosen Model 5150 machines is the addition of the Debugger.