Hi,

I was wondering if anybody remembers a stand alone cross-platform programme that has a very powerful db engine as well as spreadsheet and wordprocessing capabilities. Its name is Smartware Plus 2.6.5.b.
Also, if it is still popular within the linux x windows. I have just stumbled across a copy and it seems pretty good and could probably come in somewhere.
Does anybody know if there are any futher versions or was this not very popular ?

cheers

Juglugs

Hi there, I may be to late to answer this post. However, I have been using SmartWare since the late 80's to this day. Up to a week ago on a Tandy 4025 LX and DOS operating system. The PC quit on me and I now need to port it to either a DOS partition on a modern PC, or I would love to find a version of SmartWare or SmartWare4 running on Linux. There is a website smartware4.com but it is still under construction not giving any contact information. There is also a user group which I applied to but did not get an answer.
If anybody reading this has any information please email me peterfrei@cox.net, I appreciate it very much, thank you!

It's not a good idea to post your email address. Sites like this get scraped by bots that collect email addresses for spamming and worse. If I were you, I'd edit out that address and ask for a private message (pm) instead.

I'm still locking for a package I could buy from someone or, if somebody knows who owns it now.
I really need a copy, please help. Thank you! Email you will find in previous post.
Peter Frei

Hopefully, someone will see and respond to this thread but did you happen to notice that the original post you responded to was almost 22 years ago???

hello Yancek, yes, I'm aware of how old this thread is; it was the only thread I could find about SmartWare.
I bought two nodes for SmartWare from Informix in the late 1980's spent a lot of time to write programs for my business (buying and selling early artifacts of technology) and used it to keep my inventory and customer addresses on a Tandy PC till the hard drive stopped working a couple of month ago. In other words, the computer running on DOS worked for about 38 years and I was using it on a daily basis. Of course I have other computers, first running on Windows, later on Linux.
When I learned that there was a version of the software which runs on Linux I tried to get a version and I have not found on yet.
There was nothing you could not do with SmartWare, I upgraded it to SmartWareII later.
BTW, do you know that the Windows logo with the four squares in different colors is what was on each of the four manuals for SmartWare (communication, data base, spreadsheet, and word processor)?
And it was on there long before Bill Gates stole it from Informix.
SmartWare was/is such a sophisticated software that only a few (not enough) recognized its potential and the company did not make enough money to survive.
I'm still looking .......

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I would try to see if SmartWare ran in in FreeDOS using a VirtualBox virtual machine. If you have the install media backed up to image files or if you can create them it should be fairly easy to get it running. FreeDOS has a network stack so you can use ftp to transfer data as well as using a virtual CD or floppy drive.

https://www.freedos.org/

I used it for running a few DOS applications but now it is no longer necessary. It worked well enough.

Besides hazel's good advice about not posting your email address (which is still there, despite warnings), this is a community forum. Asking/expecting people to provide you with free, personalized email support isn't a good thing. Answers here are supposed to benefit the entire community, not just you.

A better question would be WHY you want to use 40+ year old software, on a modern OS?? There are MUCH better things available now, for free, that you can port your data to. Basic address/CRM programs are abundant, as are inventory programs.

Good morning Michaelk,
thank you for taking your time to get involved.
Interesting what you suggest, I have never done anything like it.
I just installed Debian 12 with Mate (my favorite GUI) on one of my Dell T3400 desk tops (I have three of them and like them as they are so quiet you can't hear them and they are well built a long time ago though). The only problem I had so far is that Dolphin (my favorite as I do a lot of ftp and the way it logs-in automatically is just very convenient) was not installed automatically (web-install with a boot CD from a downloaded image) and I use three monitors which flickered for unknown reasons. I played around with the orientation and it went away.
Anyway, Since I have three of the Dell T3400, I plan on running Windows 10 and DOS with dual boot. I have never done a dual boot but I guess I try that. Unfortunately some of my photo editing software I use is only running on Windows. I'm sure that I could do with GNU all I need to do but I'm just not use to it.
Debian 12 with Mate, just love it! There also seems to be bug, a problem with Zoom which needs to be fixed; however, if I need to participate with Zoom I do it with my i-phone.

BTW, you wrote, "If you have the install media backed up to image files or if you can create them it should be fairly easy to get it running. FreeDOS has a network stack so you can use ftp to transfer data as well as using a virtual CD or floppy drive."
I don't really know what this all means exactly, you obviously are much more knowledgeable than I am. I will have to research on Google to understand it.
Since I do have all the original floppy disks for SmartWareII, can I install it with these disks?

It depends on what CPU is running on the T3400 and if workstation supports hardware virtualization. I have VirtualBox running on my Dell Optiplex 790 which is around the same time frame as the T3400 I believe and has an Intel Core 2 CPU. With FreeDOS running as a guest it works fine considering.

VirtualBox is a hypervisor that allows you to basically run an operating system (known as a guest) from within another operating system (known as the host). It is basically just another application so no need to dual boot. Actually you can assign a physical device to a VirtualBox floppy drive or CD drive so yes you can install with the original disks.