PC / GEOS

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PC / GEOS
Developer: BreadboxComputer Company et al. a.
Version: 4.13   August 25, 2009
Size: 20.0 MB
Start medium: All data carriers (with DOS booted)
Family tree: OS / 90, GeoDOS, PC / GEOS 1.x to 4.x
License: Proprietary
Others: Language: English, German, French, Spanish; as NewDeal Office 2000 also in Arabic, Zulu, Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa

PC / GEOS ( P ersonal C omputer / G raphical E nvironment O bject S ystem ) is a graphical user interface for computer running DOS -compatible operating system. It is also known under the names GeoWorks Ensemble , GeoWorks DTP , IBM SchoolView , NewDeal Office and Breadbox Ensemble and was introduced in 1990 by the US company GeoWorks Corporation , in the meantime by the US company NewDeal Inc. and since 2000 by Breadbox Computer Company, LLC with headquarters in Florida developed and sold.

commitment

The graphical user interface PC / GEOS can be used on computer systems on which an operating system compatible with MS-DOS is installed. A required DOS-compatible operating system is not part of PC / GEOS. PC / GEOS uses and extends the capabilities of DOS. When used as a DOS extension, it functions as a DOS program starter and file manager. When starting a DOS program, PC / GEOS itself is shut down except for a small loading function and restarted after the DOS program has ended. Under DR-DOS , however, PC / GEOS registers itself instead of TASKMGR as a graphic menu system for the preemptive protected mode multitasker (KRNL386.EXE or EMM386 / MULTI) from DR-DOS and thus allows the seamless operation of several parallel running DOS and GEOS Applications at the same time. PC / GEOS replaces the DOS- CLI with dialog-based operation using a mouse and other input devices. It offers various user interfaces that can be selected. System-specific and strongly integrated layout and DTP applications, office, school and Internet software are included in the scope of delivery for PC / GEOS and are also available .

advantages

The advantage over other operating systems and user interfaces is the low resource consumption of PC / GEOS. Due to its low hardware requirements, it works not only on current personal computers, but also on almost all IBM-compatible computers built since 1986. Therefore, PC / GEOS is also suitable for use on computers, including the latest products such as Windows XP, Linux - distributions or macOS due to their high requirements are not run on the hardware. In addition, there is a higher level of data security through retention of the data formats.

disadvantage

The biggest disadvantage of PC / GEOS is that it has so far only been available as a 16-bit version for real mode . Due to the low distribution, there is no lucrative sales market for professional software manufacturers. In addition to software from the PC / GEOS manufacturer, there is hardly any other commercially available software. The manufacturer has not yet supported special keyboards or input devices for physically handicapped people.

system

Hardware required

As a 16-bit system, PC / GEOS makes low demands on the hardware.

From an Intel 8086 - microprocessor with 512 KB of RAM, Hercules - or CGA - graphics card as well as a previously installed DOS operating system can be run basic system, the PC / GEOS. However, optionally available software requires at least an EGA or MCGA graphics card.

The manufacturer recommends a minimum of 386 or better, 640 kilobytes of RAM, a 15 MB hard disk and an EGA card for comfortable operation of PC / GEOS 4.x. The system should benefit greatly from up to 32 megabytes of additional RAM.

Over 250, mostly from the years 1990 to approx. 2000, printers with parallel and serial connections, including PostScript printers, are supported. Due to the lack of a USB driver, USB printers are not supported by a PC / GEOS installed on DOS.

PC / GEOS can be burned on optical media CD and DVD and installed on various RAM cards or USB sticks . It is dependent on CD and USB drivers in the underlying operating system, or a hard drive emulation in the BIOS that can boot from CD or USB stick.

The different PC / GEOS versions support the following additional hardware standards:

  • PCs from the IBM XT standard to today's models. PC / GEOS benefits from math co-processors.
  • The minimum required CPU clock frequency is 6 megahertz for PC / GEOS 1.x, 16 megahertz for PC / GEOS 2.x and 3.x, and 33 megahertz for PC / GEOS 4.x and higher.
  • As of PC / GEOS 3.0, VESA 1.02 to 2.0 SVGA and occasionally XGA for true colors are supported. Later, non-standardized graphics cards that rely on their own drivers are only supported very sporadically with a certain degree of compatibility with the VESA standard.
  • It has drivers for data entry devices such as keyboards or mice.
  • For data transmission , for example in connection with BBS or the Internet PC / GEOS 4 supports AT - modems , all speeds, including external ISDN modems that support the AT command set. Internet access via DSL and ISDN is also possible via appropriate external routers.
  • From version 1.2 the system has the capabilities for use in a network and supports previously installed Novell NetWare , Artisoft LAN-Tastic , IBM LAN Manager and from PC / GEOS 3.x additionally Bay Networks PowerLAN , Microsoft , also for redirecting the printer output Windows network and IP network drivers compatible with DOS . For some PC / GEOS versions such as version 4, complete network versions were available on request.

Required operating system

PC / GEOS works on operating systems that are compatible with DOS, including current ones such as FreeDOS .

The advantage of an installation on MS-DOS-based Windows versions is the fact that PC / GEOS can use many Windows device drivers, such as for RAM, USB, network and printer, which increases the possibilities compared to installation on a DOS- Operating system expanded.

PC / GEOS works on OS / 2 from version 2 as well as on the OS / 2 successors Warp / 4 and eComStation in direct operation.

Due to the design concept of Windows NT (and its successors) of denying DOS programs direct access to the hardware, PC / GEOS only works under Windows NT-based operating systems with the normal Geos drivers in full-screen mode in the DOS window. Depending on the hardware and Windows drivers used, Geos z. Sometimes no “Truecolor” mode, only a 16-color mode possible. As of Geos 3.x there are therefore a few special graphics drivers that enable Geos to run in a window under Windows. Unfortunately these drivers are not very stable and run e.g. Sometimes only if Windows is running in a graphics mode with 16-bit color depth. Sound input and output is only possible using emulators (VDMSound, DosBox ...). Geos programs that are used to play audio CDs also need emulators, since MSCDEXNT can do significantly less than its DOS counterpart MSCDEX.

PC / GEOS can a. be installed on FAT12 , FAT16 or FAT32 formatted data carriers.

Emulators

In addition to a direct installation on DOS or MS-DOS-based Windows versions, PC / GEOS can also be installed on systems that are not compatible with DOS such as Windows XP, Linux distributions, Mac OS X from a CPU clock frequency of around 1 gigahertz, using a Previously installed emulators such as DOSEMU or DOSBox can be executed at a reasonable speed.

Andreas Bollhalder has created a QEMU installation with FreeDOS and PC / GEOS 4 with Breadbox Ensemble-Lite and offers it for download. QEMU is available for this with an adapted VGA- capable BIOS .

With the help of the commercial product Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac OS X, PC / GEOS 4 runs best with the ISUI interface. The speed on a G4 Macintosh moves to 80486 levels with MS-DOS 7.

System structure and kernel

Located in the object-oriented 8086 - assembly language Espire and also object-oriented derivative of the C programming language named GOC developed PC / GEOS provides true preemptive multitasking , multithreading , dynamic linked libraries, vector fonts and since 1990 an advanced file system that long file names and file comments supported.

PC / GEOS, along with all the applications supplied, including extensive office software, depending on the version, requires 5 to 20 megabytes of storage space and thus belongs to the group of the most optimized programmed systems possible.

The base of PC / GEOS forms a depending on the version approximately 70 to 100 kilobytes of less than 16 bits - kernel with callable operating system routines for preemptive multitasking, dynamic memory management, task communication, object support as well as graphics and window management. The kernel uses the device drivers provided by GEOS and DOS.

GUI technology

The user interface, which can be operated completely via keyboard , stylus or mouse, offers real WYSIWYG with freely scalable vector fonts and vector graphics. It is based on a device-independent coordinate system with 72 points per inch and adapts elements of the Unix interfaces OpenLook and OSF / Motif .

With ISUI (Industry Standard User Interface), Motif, OpenLook and others, several PC / GEOS user interfaces that can be freely created and largely composed of the same elements have already been created. In addition to Motif, a desktop environment based on Microsoft Windows 9x , the NewUI, currently also called ISUI, has been available since 1999 as of version 3.0 . GeoManager , the main component of Motif, can also be started from the NewUI and serves as a file manager there .

Since the object system in GEOS is able to save its current status, all applications are in the same status as before after returning from a DOS program.

driver

PC / GEOS uses its driver as a DOS extension. It is therefore dependent on the support of the host system. It can also use extended memory such as EMS or XMS. A few drivers allow preemptive multitasking under DOS.

Application software

For PC / GEOS exist interlocking office applications for word processing , database management , vector - and grid - graphic programs or spreadsheets . PDF files can only be viewed to a limited extent, as the size of the main memory is very tight. As of 2005, the manufacturer Breadbox Computer Company sold 58 optional PC / GEOS applications, primarily for the office and education sector. There are also 10 other commercial and around 100 shareware programs. Due to the dependency on DOS, many old games can still be used under PC / GEOS.

Internet software

In addition to the application software, there are also software for internet usage, including an HTML 3.2 fähigen- web browser , a POP3 - e-mail client and news reader , and IRC - FTP - Instant Messenger - and HTML editor software.

The current version 3.0 of the browser WebMagick (formerly Skipper ) supports neither JavaScript nor stylesheets and is not designed for multimedia content such as audio or video.

Due to the widespread use of JavaScript, HTML5 and HTTPS today, PC / GEOS is defacto excluded from the Internet.

Computer virus security

When using PC / GEOS, protective measures are mainly in place against old DOS viruses that are only rarely in circulation. PC / GEOS itself has not yet known any viruses or malware.

Software development on PC / GEOS

For programmers, PC / GEOS offers two SDK versions for the Borland C ++ 3.1 IDE (DOS, for GEOS 2.0, conditionally also suitable for higher versions) or the Borland C / C ++ 4.5 compiler (last 16-bit compiler from Borland) . The previous and GeoWorks internal Sun Workstation SDK version is no longer available. A separate precompiler and linker convert the proprietary GOC object model to C ++. Both versions of the SDK contain a macro assembler for the object-oriented assembly language Espire, the use of which is mandatory for driver programming. Espire implements an object model and messaging system. The kernel itself was developed entirely in Espire. Geo-Basic is a convenient UI designer for GOC programmers. There are also other programming languages.

Market situation

From 1990 to 2000 PC / GEOS was a competitor to similar graphical user interfaces for DOS. Windows 3.x and Windows 9x, Digital Researchs GEM for the PC or Quarterdecks DESQview / X were well-known competitors. PC / GEOS was the market leader in this area for two years after its launch in 1990. AOL chose it as the platform for the first two software versions for telephone dialing into the commercial AOL offer. According to a statement from the previous manufacturer "NewDeal" in 2000, the version of the NewDeal Office was also able to achieve significant market shares in South Africa, Brazil and India.

Today PC / GEOS like ZETA , AmigaOS or RISC OS belongs to the group of locally or continentally weak and especially for special purposes of common systems.

Since 2002, PC / GEOS in its latest version 4, together with the office software versions Breadbox Ensemble, in multi-user licenses, for example for schools and NewDeal Office 2000 for individuals, is the only one with the current manufacturer and owner of the rights, the "Breadbox Computer Company", and with the only one worldwide Distributor Clicks-Ltd. available. Breadbox, which mainly develops as a contract company for Nokia smartphones in the SymbianOS segment, plans to use PC / GEOS to win back learning software market shares from educational institutions and OEM learning computer manufacturers. Since Breadbox is not a public company, reports on the status of development and planned goals are rare and sparse.

Similar competing products

Current, but not commercial DOS-compatible competing products to PC / GEOS with similar objectives and technical requirements are OpenGEM and the developments around Matrix-OS, Qube-3P and SEAL-OS . RISC OS can be described as a commercial competitor product with a philosophy and areas of application that are similar in terms of technology and market policy . This is used on Risc PCs and other RISC systems with a StrongARM CPU. With other GEOS systems based on the same philosophy such as GEOS-SC and GEOS for z. B. the C64 and Apple II , PC / GEOS has no data compatibility and only minor visual similarities.

Development history

PC / GEOS 1 with GeoWorks ensemble

In 1990, GEOS, which was already available for the home computer models Commodore - C64 , - C128 and Apple II , was written in pure 6502 - assembler , adapted to x86 -compatible personal computers with installed DOS operating system and for the first time at the IT technology fair "Comdex Fall" Released in Las Vegas in the fall of 1990 as PC / GEOS 1.0.

It was bundled with office software by the original inventor, the stock corporation GeoWorks Corporation, which before 1990 called itself Berkeley Softworks and previously operated under the name The Softworks , and subsequently offered it under the name GeoWorks Ensemble in versions 1.x to 2.01 .

OS / 90 and subsequently GeoDOS were the original names for the later PC / GEOS. Journalists who received OS / 90 and later GeoDOS beta versions for testing enthusiastically reported several GUIs that were included, which were missing from later publication due to licensing reasons. OS / 90 (GeoDOS) and the later PC / GEOS 1.x were developed on Sun SparcStation workstation computers in assembler.

In the first few years only the US $ 4,500 Sun SparcStation computer platform could be developed. It was not until around 1994 that the first DOS version of the software development system (SDK) could be purchased for widely used x86 computers.

Version 1.2 had a spell check of the respective national language in GeoWrite as well as drivers for PostScript printers. Version 1.2 also offered management of the printer queue, sample documents, new symbols for DOS programs, additional keyboard assignments with shortcuts, assistance with installation and additional applications such as a NIMBUS font converter. The equipment variant GeoWorks 1.2-Pro was also offered with a functionally reduced version of the Borland Quattro-Pro - spreadsheet for DOS. There was also a viewer for Quattro Pro files.

PC / GEOS 2 with GeoWorks ensemble

In 1993, PC / GEOS 1.x was largely reprogrammed in object-oriented assembler for the kernel and almost all applications, as well as partly in C, and published as PC / GEOS 2.0 together with the revised, integrated GeoWorks-Ensemble office software package. The OEM PC manufacturer Vobis brought computers with installed PC / GEOS 2.0 OEM onto the market. The company Heureka and subsequently Digit-Ostermann GmbH marketed the system exclusively in German-speaking countries for a number of years.

In 1994 another version of the system was published with GeoWorks-Ensemble 2.01, with which two computers using PC / GEOS could be connected for data exchange for the first time. It also contained AOL software 2.0. Due to the supremacy of Microsoft, "GeoWorks" developed a new system based on PC / GEOS in the years 1992 to 1995 under the name PEN / GEOS for use primarily on smartphones and PDAs.

PC / GEOS 2 with NewDeal Office

In 1994 GeoWorks sold the license rights for PC / GEOS to the company NewDeal, a company newly founded for this purpose by the former AOL, Quantum Link and Commodore manager Clive G. Smith . NewDeal was obliged to rename PC / GEOS and GeoWorks-Ensemble. NewDeal Office 2.5 was launched in 1996. To overcome marketing problems, NewDeal made NewDeal-Publish 2.5e available, a limited English shareware version. An unofficial German version of this first NewDeal shareware product has been available since 2003.

NewDeal Office 97 was the first PC / GEOS version that did not crash with more than 32 megabytes of RAM, but could use it. It also had an SVGA driver for a maximum resolution of 800 × 600 pixels and 256 colors, which, however, was unstable.

NewDeal Office 98 contained eight other applications under license from the Breadbox Computer Company, including, for the first time, a web browser, VESA- compatible SVGA graphics card driver for True Color and could also import and export files in RTF and HTML formats .

NewDeal has focused its marketing efforts on families, schools, nonprofits and non-governmental organizations , education, used computers, development aid, small businesses with fewer than 25 employees and OEM licensees. PC / GEOS was supported and used in the form of "NewDeal Office 98" by the US government for development aid and school projects in its own country and by the United Nations. Some Canadian states licensed "NewDeal Office" through the marketer Universal Software International (USI) as school software and included learning with PC / GEOS in state curricula for several years.

PC / GEOS 3 with NewDeal Office

In 1999 the system was given the name NewDeal Office 98 Release 3 (3.1b) as an option for Motif, with NewUI, a desktop environment based on Windows 95 including a taskbar and a menu very similar to Windows technology for starting applications and selecting of files. Version 3 (3.1b) was the first PC / GEOS that was executable on Windows NT 4 and had its own driver for Sound Blaster compatible sound cards . In 2000, the improved versions 3.2 and 3.2a followed, which were characterized by the fact that the Internet software, which was only available as an option for release 3 (3.1b), was now included in the scope of delivery, and for version 3.2a it was improved, if not yet completely stable Version was available.

PC / GEOS 4 with NewDeal Office 2000

At the beginning of 2000 NewDeal launched PC / GEOS 4 under the name NewDeal Office 2000 with the help of other companies. The kernel for PC / GEOS 4 has been heavily modernized and the functionality of several main applications of the office package has been expanded again.

The entry-level, Internet and office world computer GlobalPC, together with the preinstalled NewDeal Office 2000, was manufactured in China under an OEM license with great plans in 2000 . The GlobalPC was a product of the joint stock company MyTurn.com Inc. founded by Robert E. Turner, son of Ted Turner . The GlobalPC was supposed to bridge the "digital divide" between rich and poor in the USA and developing countries with high sales and mainly processed CNN - Transport content. For this purpose, PC / GEOS was started by default in the Easy-Desktop, a user interface that was supposed to make PC / GEOS as easy to use as an “ATM”.

With the .COM crisis and the stock market crash, financially strong investors withdrew urgently needed funds from MyTurn.com in 2001. The subsequent bankruptcy of the company also tore the NewDeal financially involved in MyTurn.com into bankruptcy. NewDeal and its subsidiary GreenPC, which marketed used computers with New Deal Office 3.2 to US schools, then dismissed all 125 employees and sold the rights to PC / GEOS at a tenth of the price paid to GeoWorks to the Breadbox Computer Company.

The last product released by NewDeal in 2001 was the NewDeal Office 2000, which was not bound to the GlobalPC and was available individually, which was still the most extensive PC / GEOS version in 2005.

PC / GEOS 4 with Breadbox Ensemble

Breadbox Computer Company from Florida, now mainly working on Symbian OS software on behalf of Nokia , acquired the development and marketing rights to PC / GEOS for all hardware platforms after the bankruptcy of the former PC / GEOS licensee NewDeal in 2003.

From 2002 PC / GEOS 4.0.2.0 and the office software called Breadbox Ensemble were available in English from this company . Version 4.1.0.0 followed in 2005. Both versions were not distributed to individuals directly by Breadbox. It could only be purchased in multiple numbers from educational institutions and similar organizations. Version 4.1.0.0 was, however, also available for individual customers as an email attachment from 2005 through the sales partner sun2000. Up to the end of 2005, three different free versions, limited for demonstration purposes, were available for download from the manufacturer's website for additional product application.

In 2001 Breadbox formed several groups of translators and sent 4.0.1.x beta versions for this purpose. As early as 2002, the voluntary translators submitted a Breadbox Ensemble version completely translated into German to the manufacturer. The direct sale of Breadbox Ensemble to individuals in versions for the languages ​​German, French, Spanish or Portuguese took until January 4th, 2006.

For licensing reasons, the Breadbox Ensemble lacks the Easy-Desktop developed by NewDeal. Some other applications were replaced by less mature in-house developments. The Internet software has been greatly improved overall, so that it can be described as stable since this version. A Pentium 2,400 megahertz system can already be viewed as a high-performance device for operating PC / GEOS 4.x.

FreeGEOS

The source code of PC / GEOS has been available as FreeGEOS since 2019 and can be freely compiled and edited.

Confusion of terms with pcGEOS

pcGEOS is an x86-DOS-compatible software for the conversion of C64 / 128-GEOS (geoWrite and geoDraw) files into x86-compatible data formats, first presented in 1995 by Jochen Metzinger (Germany / University of Hamburg).

literature

  • Oerttel, Burkhard: The big book on GeoWorks Pro, Ensemble & DTP , incl. 3.5 ″ diskette, Data Becker GmbH, 1992, ISBN 3-89011-586-1
  • Oerttel, Burkhard: The big book on GeoWorks 2.0 , incl. 3.5 ″ diskette, Data Becker GmbH, 1994, ISBN 3-89011-713-9
  • Wegen, Andreas: GeoWorks DTP, Pro, Ensemble , incl. 5.25 ″ disk, te-wi Verlag or TLC The Learning Companie, series: Basics and Practice - Operating Systems, 1992, ISBN 3-89362-238-1 , (describes GeoWorks 1.2 to Pro including kernel structure.)
  • Wegen, Andreas: GeoWorks 2.0 - Operation, Applications, Examples, Tips, Internals, Reference , te-wi Verlag, 1993, ISBN 3-89362-333-7
  • Seibert, Axel: GeoWorks - Ensemble start successfully - use safely , Markt & Technik Verlag Munich, series: Workshop - PC, 1991, ISBN 3-87791-154-4 (describes GeoWorks 1.1 using the beta version.)
  • Roßkamp, ​​Alfred, Dipl.-Ing .: GeoWorks Ensemble - Introduction to the user interface , Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (dtv), series: Beck EDV-Beratung im dtv (basic knowledge - GeoWorks), 1993, ISBN 3-423-50152-9 ( describes GeoWorks Ensemble 2.0.)
  • Bartel, Rainer: GeoWorks 1.2 & Pro - Getting started in 20 steps , Sybex Verlag Düsseldorf, Series: Quick Start, 1992, ISBN 3-88745-230-5
  • Schölles, Reiner: GeoWorks 2.0 - Quick Guide , Data Becker GmbH, 1994, ISBN 3-89011-787-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ blueway.Softworks: bluewaysw / pcgeos. March 25, 2020, accessed March 31, 2020 .