{"id":6383,"date":"2024-08-09T12:14:27","date_gmt":"2024-08-09T12:14:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/?p=6383"},"modified":"2024-08-09T12:14:27","modified_gmt":"2024-08-09T12:14:27","slug":"wordstar-7-archive-released","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wordstar-7-archive-released\/","title":{"rendered":"WordStar 7 Archive Released"},"content":{"rendered":"

WordStar 7, the last version of the first word processor, has finally been posted as a complete application<\/a>, with manuals and much more than ever came in the box by science-fiction author Robert J. Sawyer.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To describe the impact or the rationale would simply be to recap one of Sawyers’ bests posts<\/a> on WS, which go back to the early days of the internet.\u00a0 I will simply link to some relevant pages and provide a few notes.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, here’s the first three paragraphs from his post:<\/p>\n

As you all know, I continue to use WordStar for DOS 7.0<\/strong> as my word-processing program. It was last updated in December 1992, and the company that made it has been defunct for decades; the program is abandonware.<\/p>\n

There was no proper archive of WordStar for DOS 7.0 available online, so I decided to create one. I\u2019ve put weeks of work into this. Included are not only full installs of the program (as well as images of the installation disks), but also plug-and-play solutions for running WordStar for DOS 7.0 under Windows, and also complete full-text-searchable PDF versions of all seven manuals that came with WordStar \u2014 over a thousand pages of documentation.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also included lots of my own explanations on how to use and customize WordStar, many WordStar-related utility programs, and numerous other goodies.<\/p>\n

— Robert J. Sawyer<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That post itself is a mini-whopper, with one piece of well-written good news right after another.\u00a0 Rest assured that this is the WordStar archive you always wanted but feared would never get done.\u00a0 it is here.\u00a0 We have arriven.<\/p>\n

The complete package he provides is ready-to-run for PCs; I have to do some work to find out how to get thisgoing on a Mac, especially since I already have a copy of DOSBox-X running and do not want to destroy it through incautious install.\u00a0 So more to be seen on that.\u00a0 I’m taking Sawyer at his word here, because the current DOSBox-X installation of mine houses an *older* version of WordStar, which I was able to get going in part by following his instructions several years ago.\u00a0 Believe me when I believe that this is the right path<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Note that some of Sawyers’ advice (various blog posts) revolve around an enhanced version of VDOS called vDOSPlus which he helped optimize for tasks like WordStar.\u00a0 Well the “plus” version is no longer supported, and at any rate, its best features seem to have been somewhat taken up by DOSBox-X, so please do not invest too much effort into his posts on vDOSPlus.\u00a0 VERY good for understanding some of the nitty-gritty, yet obsolete in a way that WordStar is not — WordStar remains perfectly usable while vDOSPlus lies twisting unsupported, an orphan unfortunately born in a time when software needs maintenance.<\/p>\n

Short answer — use DOSBox_X, just like Sawyer says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\r\n
\r\n \r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n 1 <\/span>\r\n<\/div>
\r\n \r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/span>\r\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WordStar 7, the last version of the first word processor, has finally been posted as a complete application<\/a>, with manuals and much more than ever came in the box by science-fiction author Robert J. Sawyer.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To describe the impact or the rationale would simply be to recap one of Sawyers’ bests posts<\/a> on WS, which go back to the early days of the internet.\u00a0 I will simply link to some relevant pages and provide a few notes.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, here’s the first three paragraphs from his post:<\/p>\n

As you all know, I continue to … Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6383"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6386,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6383\/revisions\/6386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}