dBase III Plus v1.1 (Borland 1994 vs Ashton-Tate 1986)

ibmpc5150 listed this item in one of his latest "IBM PC/Tandy 1000 floppy software on eBay or Amazon"

Borland dBase III Plus For DOS Ver. 1.1
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Borland-dBase-III-Plus-For-DOS-Ver-1-1-on-3-5-5-25-Disks-NOS-Sealed/202396225785

The date on Borland dBase III Plus v1.1 on Ebay is dated 1994.
What is so interseting about this is that Ashton-Tate started selling dBase III Plus v1.1 in 1986, and had released dBase IV in 1988.
Borland had updated dBase IV to v2.0 by 1993.

I did not realize that Borland continued to sell dBase III Plus v1.1 while also selling dBase IV v2.0.
I wonder if the Borland dBase Plus v1.1 of 1994 is the same as the original Ashton-Tate dBase Plus v1.1 of 1986 ???

Comments

  • Yea, dBase IV sucked donkey balls. It was incredibly slow, not compatible, and essentially killed the dBase product. Meanwhile there were tons of databases already written in dBase III Plus 1.1 that would not work in dBase IV. Nobody wanted to port to IV because it was so bad and dBase was seen as a sinking ship. So people kept using dBase III until they converted to something else. I guess Ashton-Tate and later Borland were happy to keep selling copies of the old version.

    I’d expect the later dBase III Plus 1.1 software to be essentially the same, because that is why people were buying it.

    Would love to see proper dumps to confirm it. Also we still need manual scans specifically for dBase III Plus 1.1.

  • I thibk it is not so easy to find dBASE series without modification.
    Once user install (setup) the program, original disk or file seems to be modified.

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