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At least for hard disk drives, what happened to just using the low level tools?
Historically it was dead easy to run them from DOS. Still looks like it's possible, e.g. with Seagate it's an .iso file that is distributed.

See there, page 6/20, section G. : (an emphasis added)
http://www.seagate.com/files/s...

Seagate is not responsible for lost user data. Erase Drive is available for Seagate or Maxtor drives only.
Five choices are available under this section:
  Secure Erase. This method uses the drive firmware to erase the data by overwriting the data
with zeros. In Enhanced Erase mode, all previously written user data shall be overwritten,
including sectors that are no longer in use due to reallocation. Secure Erase requires a user
password to run which is deleted at the conclusion of the procedure. If your drive does not have
a user password, SeaTools for DOS will set a temporary password "idrive" without the quotes.
This password will be removed at the end of the Secure Erase so you never need to actually use
it to access your drive. If ... BLAH BLAH BLAH

No idea if you have a UEFI computer, maybe you need to use BIOS emulation, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't because you lack BIOS emulation etc.
But then, they've got a Windows version as well. The pdf for that is harder to read says it's from October 2015. It has a changelog.
It's more terse but says stuff like :
http://www.seagate.com/files/w...

- SED Crypto Erase
Self-Encrypting Drive Instant Secure Erase. If the drive supports hardware
encryption, this menu will be displayed. Like Full Erase this command will permanently destroy
access to all user data on the drive, but will do so by the erasure of the drive encryption key which
takes less than one minute to complete. Both SAS and SATA drives are supported, but the boot
drive should not be listed as an available choice.

- Sanitize Erase
Write zeros to all user data sectors on the SATA drive including unallocated and
cache sectors. This command is mostly found on SSD drives

Failing vendor tools, see what the FLOSS punks have
https://tinyapps.org/docs/wipe...

So, a quote, with a bolding on what I thought was fun.

Explanation

According to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-88: Guidelines for Media Sanitization, Secure Erase is "An overwrite technology using firmware based process to overwrite a hard drive. Is a drive command defined in the ANSI ATA and SCSI disk drive interface specifications, which runs inside drive hardware. It completes in about 1/8 the time of 5220 block erasure." The guidelines also state that "degaussing and executing the firmware Secure Erase command (for ATA drives only) are acceptable methods for purging."
Benefits

        Can securely wipe most PATA/SATA hard drives manufactured this century
        Reportedly restores peak performance to SSD drives (though SE fails to securely wipe some SSDs) [hummm...]
        hdparm/Linux offers much better hardware support than HDDErase/MS-DOS
Overwrites blocks marked as bad by the hard drive (which DBAN and similar tools ignore)
        Though speed (vs. block erase wiping tools like DBAN) is often cited, the difference is negligible.*

I've been through most of this thread and see a lot of gratiutious nastiness, a bit of serious discussion of GUIs vs CLIs, and some humor. But few answers to the original question. Anyway, there are a great many little and not so little tools out there. It's unclear what OS the OP is using, but if he/she can get access to a Unix system, there are a zillion command line tools in the /bin and /usr/bin directories (probably. I imagine there are distributions where the binaries have been "improved" to some other location(s)).

On unixlike systems "man whatever" and/or "info whatever" and/or "whatever --help" will likely get some usage information (which may be a bit incomprehensible in some cases). Many -- by no means all -- of these programs are available on multiple platforms

some useful websites for little tools -- not that all the stuff there is multiplatform,useful, or even usable
    - https://github.org/
    - http://sourceforge.net/
    - http://www.onethingwell.org/
    - http://tinyapps.org/blog/

Follow these instructions, mainly the ones that say, "For the truly paranoid"
http://tinyapps.org/docs/wipe_drives_hdparm.html

You so silly. The classic Kindle is perfectly rootable. It even has an motd set for when you ssh into it the first time! Installing weird fancy programs like nibbles or a local terminal is as simple as adding the appropriate signature to your keychain and popping the .jar (well, .azw2) into the documents folder. Amazon's effort toward securing the device against local attacks has been described as "accidental at best."

Welcome to Kindle!

The ATA Secure Erase is a function built in to most drives to wipe them. NIST 800-88 (pdf warning) shows that apparently it's on par with degaussing in terms of recovery.

How to wipe in Linux
CMMR link from the PDF (Windows software)

I think I first ran into The OffByOne browser from a /. post or perhaps from TinyApps.org. I, like you, used Netscape almost exclusively, starting with version 1.22 or so. I agree that the 3.x series was among the best, with its quick ability to disable images and other things. Version 4 added the nice ability to disable cookies (although I was already learning to set cookies.txt to read-only in the 3.x era.)

Anyway, back to the point, OffByOne is self-executable, does not require an installer, and fits on a floppy. Most importantly, it does not rely on any other browser, so it will work just fine out of the box, even if you want to run it on old versions of Windows that did not bundle a browser, like NT 3.51 or 95a. OffByOne maintains that simplified, no-frills approach, so you do not have to worry about Java / Javascript / shockwave flash / etc. getting in your way. It's perfect for forums like this, when you're mostly interested in just reading.

Oh, and it has tabbed browsing too. It's even faster than Opera 6.

I know it won't completely replace Netscape 3, as there are some things it lacks (I'm picky too), but I think you'll find it to be a very nice supplement for your browsing needs. Caching everything to RAM not only keeps your disk from fragmenting, but it also cleans up all traces of your history when you're done with it. :)

Options - [uncheck] Enable Meta Refresh

I found this browser off of http://tinyapps.org/ years ago, and it's a great minimalist browser.

http://www.tinyapps.org/

If you're running Windows, I also like Sumatra PDF

http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/

(not sure if that's listed at the former or no, which is why I specifically mention it --- the balance of my preferred small programs are)

William

I dunno. Maybe because Microsoft's designed wheels tend to be irregular polygons with the axle connected at someplace other than the centroid? Often, not always, but often, they ride really rough..

OTOH, I'm far from sure that it is possible to do much better. Microsoft made some really awful decisions early on with regard to data handling (expanding the Windows 3 OLE Registry into the Windows 9-NT horror show) and libraries (failure to control libraries and to provide rational support for multiple versions of DLLs). I fear that it's going to be just about impossible to unmake those decisions.

===========

Since I expect the original poster will read through everything posted I'll comment here that he or she might want to look at http://www.tinyapps.org/blog/ for a fairly decent trove of small, well-behaved, MSDOS/Windows programs. Many are ports of Unix software. Some are real jewels -- OffByOne is a small, fast, Web Browser that does a pretty good job with most web sites (better than, say dillo). Scanner is a very pretty disk analysis tool. OffByOne runs fine with Wine BTW. Haven't tried Scanner -- think I'll go do that right now.

RSX - thus it probably was a DEC PDP-11? Those were available with CMOS or core memory (core as in: miniature ferrit rings on thin cables - one for each bit). Depending on which memory it probably had a CPU speed of ~2MHz

Today it still is possible to write great software with small footprint, e.g. for windows at http://www.tinyapps.org/ or http://www.xtort.net/office/floppyoffice.php

One example: how big is your .ZIP-Tool (the one with a GUI)? Probably much more than the 100k (=0.1M) FloppyOffice's 100k-zipper needs...

I agree - most of my apps run just fine on my machine, but some apps, like video editing, are still a nightmare. I'd like to upgrade and just have that app run faster, but you need a newer OS to take advantage of newer computer features (multi-core or more memory or SATA or RAID), which then requires an upgrade to the app, which, instead of bug fixes, has been fattened by unwanted extra features.

Try this site, though.

Perhaps the most exciting news of all (besides saving over $100) is that Virtual PC 2004 runs BeOS beautifully!

Why should we assume Microsoft or any OS maker (cause others have been guilty too) are printing realistic reqs that are based on OS + apps when more than two decades of desktop computing say otherwise?

Sure, maybe that bootleg Vista beta didn't require 1GB of RAM, but maybe the retail release will. If I'm not mistaken, Vista is doing a lot under the hood outside of graphics that XP did not. If this 1GB *is* based on OS + apps, how did Microsoft reach that conclusion? I doubt it would be Vista + various AnalogX and TinyApp programs. Would it be Vista + MS Office 2008 or Vista + nextgen FPS game?

I did a fair amount of video processing on an XP machine with less than a 1GB of RAM. It kinda sucked, so playing Devil's Advocate here, I suppose that 1GB could have in mind a lot of MPEG2 and WMV transcoding.

for windows apps; tinyapps.org.

My question is " How is this different from NoMachine's NX Server?"

NoMachine and their NX server also allows you to testdrive a linux desktop on windows, over a remote connection. I found my FreeNX server usable even over dial-up, and could show my parents what my linux desktop looked like, and think it might be a useful migration step for some users. It's even bundled with Knoppix.

I could not find any 1 site out there to get portable applications

Guess you somehow managed to miss tinyapps.org

The article referenced by the Slashdot article, Reverse VNC connection, recommends TightVNC version 1.2.9. However, the TightVNC 1.3dev6 development version is a release candidate, and in my experience works fine.

Read the TightVNC Windows Documentation.

These also support RDP and VNC protocols by converting to the compressed X protocol, which also gives bandwidth gains over the raw RDP/VNC. Check out this description of the technology.

Recent versions of Knoppix live-CD include the NoMachine client and FreeNX server, making it easy to test it out.

Installed on my computer right now are:

Avast! Antivirus
OpenOffice
Ad-Aware
Audacity
Azureus
CDex
ExplorerXP
FeedReader
Gaim
Mozilla
Spybot S&D
Tweak UI
TightVNC
OpenSSL
MP3Gain
PowerMenu

All of those programs are truly free with no spyware or nag screens.


When I'm looking for new programs, I go to:
TinyApps.org
Pricelessware
SourceForge
In that order.

Of course, you're safe on older versions of Windows, regardless of browser, as long as you don't update IE. I knew there was a reason for adding Windows for Workgroups 3.11 to my existing setup. :)

If you prefer something ultra-light, there are some good ones at TinyApps.org too.

Hmmm sounds like 4DOS. Personally I was never a huge fan. I did write a couple of real and joke shells. Ahh those were the days when you could fake an entire DOS application in a few minutes in front of a compiler. I remember one of our programming teachers used to suddendly appear and start scrolling up and down to read our code as we were busy typing away (very annoying) so one day I wrote the program we were asked to write and another program which displayed the first program and looked just like the programming editor. Imagine his surprise when he hit the down arrow to be greated with a personal message being typed up on the screen.... ;-)

I wonder if there are any explorer.exe replacements?

Yes. How to is documented in both official and unofficial programmers guides. Miles's useful site TinyApps links to a few (as well as some other useful OS distributions and other OS tools of interest). However at a really simple level:

SYSTEM.INI
[boot]
shell=explorer.exe / progman.exe / taskman.exe / myprog.exe

Even possible to start DOS.... better stop there :)

Hmmm sounds like 4DOS. Personally I was never a huge fan. I did write a couple of real and joke shells. Ahh those were the days when you could fake an entire DOS application in a few minutes in front of a compiler. I remember one of our programming teachers used to suddendly appear and start scrolling up and down to read our code as we were busy typing away (very annoying) so one day I wrote the program we were asked to write and another program which displayed the first program and looked just like the programming editor. Imagine his surprise when he hit the down arrow to be greated with a personal message being typed up on the screen.... ;-)

I wonder if there are any explorer.exe replacements?

Yes. How to is documented in both official and unofficial programmers guides. Miles's useful site TinyApps links to a few (as well as some other useful OS distributions and other OS tools of interest). However at a really simple level:

SYSTEM.INI
[boot]
shell=explorer.exe / progman.exe / taskman.exe / myprog.exe

Even possible to start DOS.... better stop there :)

The first place I usually go is versiontracker, though sometimes they say have the program type- free, commercial, shareware wrong. Another awesome site, but with much more limited use is tinyApps. They keep track of various small, simple and free apps for Windows. Comes in handy a lot. Usually, if I need some app quick, I don't want to deal with a huge bohemoth- just give me something simple.

http://www.tinyapps.org/ - I've had some good luck here too.

it will be next to impossible to write Windows software in the future without embracing .NET
this is such horsecrap !
you mean that any old app written in C or C++ will break ? that gcc won't compile anymore ? FUDFUDFUD ! amazing this shit gets moderated insightfull !!!
this is so much alike 8 years ago when everyoner was yelling that soon MFC would be the only way out. guess what ? I still write non-mfc c++ code. you might want to look at this site. are you suggesting that none of these will run/compile anymore under longhorn ? dude : it's JUST AN OS on JUST A CPU. it runs machinecode. that's all

hmm, try XPLite from Litepc.com... one of the things I found through tinyapps.org remove IE and many other things from your XP, 2000 or 98 flavoured DOS...

Drive #1 - 8 MB IBM M-Systems DiskOnKey

This is basically for Windows only, i.e. only when I'm at work.

In the unencrypted 6 MB section, I've got some basic "stuff" - C / Perl code I'm working on, text files, edna playlists, and a copy of FCE Ultra, just in case it's needed.

In the encrypted 2 MB section (which is accessed with M-System's KeySafe util), I've got a copy of PuTTY + key, TightVNC, and i.FTP, which is a small FTP client that's not too shabby (picked up from TinyApps.org.

Drive #2 - 64 MB Lexar JumpDrive

All that's really on here is my Knoppix /home directory. In there is my Perl script, data files, emulators and ROMs that I'm currently working on for an HTPC-type of project (more info can be found at http://dev.tonydanzabonanza.com/tuxstation/ ).

Tinyapps has some nice gems for Win32. The collection is not very big though.

I know after years of not having any money, and using shareware for free, I LOVE that I can afford to pay people who make shareware, and support independent software.

Recent shareware fees paid:

• 10 licenses of the Opera web browser
• A ton of Chank's fonts
• Limewire
• UltraEdit

Whenever I need a program/tool, the first places I look are TinyApps (very small software for Windows), and Tucows.

I sure HOPE it's not just me that's out there doing what I can to support the independent shareware programmers!

The problem ,with the qnx disk mentioned above, is that you can't find the "incredible 1.44 challenge demo disk" (or something like that) on the qnx site anymore... Using the wayback machine, you can see it

And as mentioned on Tiny apps.org, the downloads are available here

Everyone should try these at least once. I was really impressed by what you could acheive with a simple 1.44 floppy disk. You get a gui with a net acess and a simple browser! (And this was done in 1998!)

Anyway, this a good starting point for making those computers works.

One advice i can give it that theses olds computers can be put to simple use like routers or graphicals terminals, but don't expects a lot out of a 386. Your best bet would be to start by visiting google and google directories. You can also try the Linux terminal server project page. They have debian-based packages, so it's not to hard to install on any computer.

Old enough, by the sound of things, that running X would likely be painful. You should be able to squeeze a non-GUI install into 500M without too much difficulty. Check out TinyApps for so small distros.

to some excellent comments and feedback, I'd like to offer the following:

1. Yes, 1.44mb can hardly be called "tiny". To be honest, the reason it was chosen is that I just *had* to include the QNX Demo Disk and the OffByOne Web Browser. But much of the site is dedicated to apps in the 2 to 200kb range, which I think can fairly be called "tiny". One example is EVE, a very cool vector graphics editor whose executable is a mere 39k. There are many more listed along these lines.

2. Yes, Windows is very bloated, but by customizing the shell, removing IE, and performing a host of other surgeries, it can actually be quite a nice little OS. I just received an email reply from the author of Optimizing Windows (published by O'Reilly). His book explains (among many other things) how to get Windows 95 down to 17 mb.

3. I realize that Slashdot is generally geared towards *nix users and want to thank you for being kind enough to list a site mainly covering DOS/Windows apps. As I mention on the home page, folks (from any OS) interested in contributing to the site or having a link posted are more than welcome to contact me.

Also, many thanks to those responsible for the mirror mentioned in one of the posts.

Much aloha,

Miles Wolbe
miles@tinyapps.org
http://www.TinyApps.org/

to some excellent comments and feedback, I'd like to offer the following:

1. Yes, 1.44mb can hardly be called "tiny". To be honest, the reason it was chosen is that I just *had* to include the QNX Demo Disk and the OffByOne Web Browser. But much of the site is dedicated to apps in the 2 to 200kb range, which I think can fairly be called "tiny". One example is EVE, a very cool vector graphics editor whose executable is a mere 39k. There are many more listed along these lines.

2. Yes, Windows is very bloated, but by customizing the shell, removing IE, and performing a host of other surgeries, it can actually be quite a nice little OS. I just received an email reply from the author of Optimizing Windows (published by O'Reilly). His book explains (among many other things) how to get Windows 95 down to 17 mb.

3. I realize that Slashdot is generally geared towards *nix users and want to thank you for being kind enough to list a site mainly covering DOS/Windows apps. As I mention on the home page, folks (from any OS) interested in contributing to the site or having a link posted are more than welcome to contact me.

Also, many thanks to those responsible for the mirror mentioned in one of the posts.

Much aloha,

Miles Wolbe
miles@tinyapps.org
http://www.TinyApps.org/

Anyone find the irony in having an app called NotGNU Emacs on a 'Tiny App' page? I wonder if there's any GPL issues, as the source is not free (from what I can tell.)
Tho it is mostly windows software, there's a link to google's directory on floppy disk based linux distro's.

I am trying to think of an off the top of my head way to find single disk games using a favorite search engine, but am not thinking of any really good queries. This is under the assumption that I don't find aggregation sites such as tiny apps.

I remember somebody posting a message about a couple of tiny programs that would print an Estes style fin alignment sheet and a centering ring template for single and cluster engines. These were not big or pretty, but they did the job. Does anybody know where these programs may be hiding? I've looked at Tiny Apps with no luck.
Thanks for any assistance.