IBM has withdrawn support for the final build of Lotus 1-2-3, bringing the software's 30-year lifecycle to an end. Lotus 123 Millennium Edition, IBM Lotus SmartSuite 9.x and Organiser were.
Lotus 1-2-3 was an early spreadsheet application available for MS-DOS. It became extremely popular in the late 1980s, displacing the former leader VisiCalc. Lotus had difficulties adapting 1-2-3 to the Windows environment, and was overtaken by Microsoft Excel. Spreadsheet functionality was also included in Lotus Symphony. Later versions were included in Lotus SmartSuite.
Wanted: Additional Ports of Lotus 1-2-3, Lotus 1-2-3 1.0 (non 'A')
Screenshots
Release notes
Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (later part of IBM).It was the IBM PC's first killer application, was hugely popular in the 1980s and contributed significantly to the success of the IBM PC. IBM Lotus 123 Millennium Edition was the final build and IBM discontinued shipping it two years ago. While the loss of 1-2-3 is an occasion for nostalgia, the money it created is still doing good today. Kapor used part of his lucre to set up the Electronic Frontier Foundation to fight for online rights.
Lotus 123 Emulator
As odd as it may sound, Lotus produced a 1-2-3 ROM cartridge for the IBM PCJr. The primary reason was that the PCJr only shipped with 128K ram, which is not enough to run the normal version.
This archive includes a ROM dump of the cartridge and the floppy disks that went with it.
Installation instructions
Lotus 123 Ibm Merger
This can be used with an emulator such as MESS version 148 (Note, MESS PCjr support seems broken in version 149 and possibly later)
To use it with MESS:
First you will need the lotus123.zip ROM ZIP file, and an IBM PC-DOS 2.0 floppy disk image. (Other versions of DOS may not work. Also, MESS will crash if you omit the disk.).
Put the lotus123.zip (do not change the name!) file in your ROMs folder, and put the PC-DOS 2.0 360k disk image in the software folder.
At a command prompt in the MESS v148 folder, then type the following: 'mess ibmpcjr lotus123 -flop softwaredos2.img' Where 'dos2.img' is your PC-DOS 2.0 disk image.
Note that you do not specify a path to the ROM file.
- Finally, when the emulated PCJr is booted to a PC-DOS 2.0 command prompt, enter '123'. Even though that is not a file on the disk, it will start the Lotus 123 application.