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Full Moon Software DOS BASIC add-on products

IMPORTANT NOTICE:
Effective October 30, 2018 all of the older Crescent Software
DOS products are now public domain and available for free
at THIS site. Thanks to Gene Buckle for making this happen.

 

Full Moon Software is the leading vendor of add-on products and utilities for programmers using Microsoft compiled BASIC for DOS. Through this web page you can view or download our entire catalog, and also download demo programs for most of our products.

You may view the individual pages from our catalog by clicking the appropriate buttons below, or optionally download the text of our entire catalog (in a ZIP file). You can also download a single ZIP file containing all of our product demo programs, or individual ZIP files for just the products that interest you at this time.

2K Compatibility: All of these products are fully Y2K compliant. QuickPak Professional contains only four routines that manipulate dates: Date2Num and Num2Date, and the European equivalents EDate2Num and ENum2Date. These routines accommodate the range of dates from 1900 through 2065. Although Date2Num can accept an incoming date with a 2-digit year (in which case "19" is assumed for the first two digits), Num2Date always returns the full four digits. QuickScreen is also Y2K compliant because it uses the routines mentioned above from QuickPak Professional. However, when designing input screens with QuickScreen, the programmer has the option to use either 2-digit or 4-digit years. If only two digits were specified in the original screen layout, then that screen will not work past 12/31/99. By default, QuickScreen assumes four digits for the year, and the programmer must manually override that to create a screen having only two digits for the year. So unless the programmer goes out of his or her way to reduce the year to only two digits, a screen designed with QuickScreen will work through the year 2065.

To view a single page from the Full Moon Software catalog, click the appropriate link in the Products table below. The last "product" is a price list with current version numbers and an order form you can print out.

Just For Fun: When people called Crescent Software for tech support, while waiting on hold they were treated to a custom "radio" show we produced. At 45 minutes long this was quite a production! So this greatly edited version of WBAS Radio is reduced to only 8 minutes. But I kept some of the amazing guitar work by the late, great Phil Cramer.

QuickPak Professional P.D.Q.
PDQComm Graphics Workshop
Don Malin's XREF QuickScreen & Graphics QuickScreen
GraphPak Professional Compression Workshop
QuickPak Scientific Current Versions & Order Form
Crescent's first ad
Crescent Software's first ad in PC Magazine - it changed the course of BASIC programming forever!
The following files are available for downloading. Simply click on the underlined file name. If you don't already have the PKUNZIP program required to unpack these files, you should also click on the PKUNZIP.EXE file name below.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The QuickPak and QuickScreen demos will not run properly on current (fast) computers and crash on startup with a "Divide by zero" error. The products themselves have been updated to work on all hardware, but the source files for these demos are long gone and could not be recompiled.

 

FMOONCAT.ZIP Complete text of Full Moon's catalog (27k)
FMOONDEM.ZIP All Full Moon Software demos in one (612k)
QUICKPAK.ZIP QuickPak demo files (92k)
PDQ.ZIP P.D.Q. demo files (31k)
PDQCOMM.ZIP PDQComm demo files (21k)
QSCREEN.ZIP QuickScreen demo files (145k)
GQSCREEN.ZIP Graphics QuickScreen demo files (104k)
GWSHOP.ZIP Graphics Workshop demo files (144k)
GRAPHPAK.ZIP GraphPak demo files (75k)
PKUNZIP.EXE PKUNZIP program needed to unpack the above files (29k)

 

BASIC Techniques and Utilities Book

Basic Techniques BookEthan Winer's best-selling book PC Magazine BASIC Techniques and Utilities is now out of print, but it's available below for downloading. One file is the entire book in PDF format, beautifully re-created in 2019 by Ariella Baston. The second file contains the source files for all of the subroutines, example programs, assembly language sources, and library files that were included on diskette with the original printed edition.

Also available is Ethan's DATABASE.BAS program. This is a "skeleton" for a complete data-entry system, featuring on-screen field entry and editing. The entered data can be saved to disk, and retrieved for viewing or editing later. This program may be easily customized to suit your own needs, and complete instructions for doing that are included in the program's header comments.

FreeText is a complete, though minimal, freeform text database program that you can use as is, or integrate with an existing program. It lets you write, read, and update text entries of varying length, and access those entries by record number. The text is stored in a binary file, and it can be edited and resaved even if the new text is longer than the old. A parallel index file tracks where each block of text is located, letting you access the text by record number. Requires QuickPak Professional.

Many more BASIC source programs are available on the Articles page.

 

BTU_BOOK.PDF BASIC Techniques and Utilities PDF file (3.4 MB)
BTU_DISK.ZIP Support files included with the original book on diskette 111 KB)
DATABASE.ZIP DATABASE.BAS program (8k)
FREETEXT.ZIP FREETEXT.BAS program (4k)
ARCHIVE.ORG Many older programming products are available for free here
PKUNZIP.EXE PKUNZIP program needed to unzip the above files (29k)

 

Consulting and Custom Programming

Ethan Winer offers consulting in a variety of fields. Custom programming and programming homework help are available for both subroutines and complete applications, as is technical advice by phone or e-mail. Consulting is also available in the fields of audio electronics and recording, recording studio design and acoustics, MIDI, and technical writing and editing.

Consulting rates are based on the type of service required, though technical assistance for Full Moon Software products is always provided at no charge to Full Moon and Crescent customers. Please call or send e-mail to request more information about consulting services.

 

MS-MVP Award winnerAfter 20 years as a professional recording engineer and musician, Ethan Winer founded Crescent Software in 1986, quickly building it to become the leading provider of add-on products for use with Microsoft compiled BASIC for DOS. During that time Ethan wrote numerous articles about DOS BASIC and assembly language for all of the major programming magazines, and also served as a contributing editor for PC Magazine. In 1992 Ethan sold Crescent to his partner Don Malin, and retired in order to pursue his musical interests. At that time he built a sophisticated MIDI and audio recording studio in his home, and also started playing the cello. Read the full story on the Audio and Music page. Ethan has also received Microsoft's MVP award for many years starting in 1996 for his assistance in the Microsoft BASIC programming newsgroups.

(Click on a picture to see it full size.)

Ethan with his true love

Ethan rips a lead on his Fender Telecaster

About Ethan Winer and Full Moon Software

Crescent was sold in 1994 to Progress Software, who wanted to focus mainly on Crescent's Windows programming tools. Out of concern for the existing DOS customers, Ethan arranged to take back the sales and support for the original Crescent DOS products - many of which he wrote - so those customers would still have a way to get assistance when necessary. Thus was born Full Moon Software and this web page.

Entire contents of this web site Copyright © 1997- by Ethan Winer. All rights reserved.
Cartoons by Jay Munro