FUZOMA is a collection of dozens of entertaining educational programs.
Pre-reading, English vocabulary, math, logic, science, music, computer literacy, and more. Only the most imaginative, most engaging, and most effective programs have been hand-picked from a rich history of educational software that goes back over twenty years.
FUZOMA is bootable from CD or USB.
You don’t have to install anything if you don’t want to. Your computer doesn’t even need a working hard drive.
FUZOMA is accessible.
The project was started at a primary school for the Deaf in Kenya. It works for the neediest learners, and it works on the oldest computers (tested on a 486 with 8MB RAM!).
FUZOMA is unique.
No other bootable software distribution bundles this kind of variety into a kid-friendly package.
Oh, and it’s small enough to fit on a floppy.
And it’s free.
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Note: USB floppy drives will not work for this. |
Windows 95, 98, and ME users can just extract the |
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Windows 7 users can use the built-in Disc Image Burner instead of ISO Recorder. |
Take a look at everything you get!
(Or see what’s changed since the previous versions.)
| THE MAIN MENU | |
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KIDSMENU Freeware (source code is commercial), David Dunfield |
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| EARLY READING | |
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John’s Animated Game Freeware, Flix Productions |
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Alphabet Memory Match Freeware, John Schnittker |
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Letter Fishing Freeware, Lou Duchez |
| EARLY MATH | |
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Counting with Apples Public Domain, John Schnittker |
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Animal Math Open Source Freeware, Donald L. Pavia |
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Math Boat Public Domain, John Schnittker |
| ENGLISH VOCAB & SPELLING |
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Word Gallery Shareware: Additional words can be ordered via snail mail from KinderWare. |
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Vocabumonkey Freeware, John Schnittker. |
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Word Rescue Episode One Shareware: Additional episodes can be ordered from Redwood Games. |
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Wordtrix! Shareware: Bonus games can be ordered via snail mail from Tea Time Software / "Papa" Joe Kretschmer |
| ENGLISH USAGE | |
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Troll’s Tale Commercial-turned-Freeware, Al Lowe (Sierra). |
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Billy Open Source Freeware, Gregory G. Leedberg |
| MATH | |
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Super Worms Math Arena Freeware, Mike Wiering |
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Super Worms 3D Racing Shareware: Extra tracks and powerups can be ordered from Wiering Software. |
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MathTest Freeware, Kenneth Perrine |
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Number Munchers Tribute Freeware, Nick Andren |
| MATH USAGE | |
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Bali’s Calc Shareware-turned-Freeware, Bálint Tóth |
| ENGLISH & EARLY MATH | |
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Bozzball Shareware: You can order twice the number of lessons from Bozz Software. |
| ENGLISH, MATH, TIME, MUSIC, & ART |
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School-Mom Plus
Kids can use this program to learn to tell time, compose music, and draw and color! An array of Math and English games are also present, including a unique animated Frogger-like sentence strip game. There’s even an exam module with sample tests. Trialware: You may be able to use this program indefinitely and get technical support by registering it with Motes Educational Software / Dr. Andrew “Andy” Motes; however, the rights to the software were sold by Major Motes to an unknown party in 1999. |
| SCIENCE | |
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Omniscent Freeware, Sanction |
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Mars Freeware, Tim Clarke |
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Tank Time Shareware-turned-Freeware, Klaus Reimer |
| COMPUTER USE | |
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Tater Head Freeware, Axelgraphics |
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BabyType Freeware, Doka Studios |
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FUZOMA Edit Open Source Freeware, Paul Blair |
| COMPUTER PROGRAMMING | |
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GW-BASIC BASIC is an interpreted programming language, meaning that with GW-BASIC, programs can be launched directly from source code. Because Amy’s First Primer is written in BASIC, it’s possible to edit the code in FUZOMA Edit and run modified versions of the programs! Start by changing the frog maze difficulty… it’s an easy introduction to programming. Freeware, Microsoft (newest BASIC interpreter, QBASIC, is part of Olddos.exe) |
| EARLY LOGIC | |
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Amy’s First Primer: “Help the Frog” and “Load the Truck” Open Source Shareware-turned-Closed Source Shareware: If you find this program useful you should register via snail mail with Rob Robinson (direct download). |
| ADVANCED LOGIC | |
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Pitman Open Source Freeware: hitchhikr SoftWorks |
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Rival Chess Shareware (commercial source code)-turned-Open Source Freeware, Red Hot Pawn / Russ Newman and Chris Moreton |
Additionally, there are many programs that work behind the scenes to make FUZOMA possible. Credit is due to the following:
- FreeDOS Kernel 2039 FAT16 (which I modified), Jack R. Ellis’ XMSMGR and RDISK 2009-11-27 (which I modified), Color Laptop Utility 1.2, IBM PC-DOS 3.30 Command Interpreter (Version 7.10 is freely available from IBM), Rugxulo’s 7-Zip ANSI-C Decoder 4.65, FreeDOS Cutemouse 1.9.1, WorkTSRs 3.2 Mark/Unmark, Brett Johnson’s Scancode 5.00 & Slowdown 2.00, Ciriaco García de Celis’ HBreak 5.5, Sebastian Schuberth’s PCX View 2, Horst Schaeffer’s DriveReady 2.2
There is no commercial software in FUZOMA. Some programs are ex-commercial, but have since been made freely available by their authors, eg. Al Lowe’s games and IBM’s PC-DOS. Due to limited space and a noble cause, however, I do allow myself some flexibility in choosing versions. If Al Lowe is only technically giving away the Amiga version of his games, but the Atari files are smaller, I use them. And even if, technically, only the newest DOS 7.10 is free from IBM, I don’t flinch at using the older version 3.30. You get the idea. If I’m causing you or anyone you know to lose money, let me know and I’ll fix it. Similarly, if you like any of the shareware software, buy it!
FUZOMA Back Story: My school’s computers were sitting unused in the library. They’re old, 1994-era, and no one knew what to do with them. Trying to boot to Windows would bring up errors, which had convinced the other teachers that the computers were broken. One has a USB port (but the old version of Windows didn’t support USB), and another has a busted CD-ROM drive, and none had more than 32MB or memory. The only way to load software onto them was through floppy disks. I started transferring files in order to fix all the specific Windows problems, but I quickly decided that it would be better to make a single boot disk that could benefit others in similar situations.
The idea of a bootable floppy disk with a compilation of useful programs isn’t new. See:
- Bob Newell’s Bootables (variety)
- TechW0rm Floppy (general utilities)
- Bart’s Network Boot Disk (networking tools)
Similarly, the idea of a ton of kids’ programs on a bootable disk isn’t unique:
- Sugar on a Stick (One Laptop Per Child)
- EduPuppy (for “older” (128MB RAM) computers)
- Freeduc
- Edubuntu
Unfortunately, none of the USB or CD-based solutions worked at my school, for the following reasons:
- The currently-available bootable CDs and USBs have relatively steep memory requirements.
- Even if I buy more RAM, overcomplicated start-menu-style interfaces make it difficult for students to find the educational content.
- The educational content itself is rather weak.
I believe I have addressed all these issues with FUZOMA. It only needs 8MB of RAM, the menu is easy to use, and there’s plenty of good educational content. Enjoy it… I know my kids do!























You have done an incredible job with this software collection! I came here just looking for vocabumonkey for my son to play on an older computer, but I leave with not only even more games for my little child but a cool disk to give to other non-profits I sometimes deal with. THANK YOU!!!
I like to learn software!!
But i’ll learn it better in future when i’ll hav bought my own laptop!
As for now i’ll learn a lil bit! gimme more to learn.
Thanks n bye! see you some other time!!
Great job!