OS/5 - The forgotten Microsoft-based PC operating system

OS/5 is a Shareware PC operating system based on a Microsoft programming language that itself was rarely used. Intended to be an inexpensive, lightweight alternative to Windows, OS/2, and other graphical user interfaces, OS/5's Desktop runs in text mode while retaining many GUI features. Created by John Poole and released in 1996, two versions of it are known to exist, and would have been lost entirely if I had not saved them over 25 years ago, because they have not been archived anywhere online and trying to search for OS/5 or its author will turn up nothing except this video.

Ignore any security warnings; I run the site and it does not store any personal data. Feel free to archive these files elsewhere.

Time flow:
0:00 Introduction
1:00 OS/5 1.0 documentation
1:56 OS/5 1.0 review
6:53 OS/5 1.1 documentation
8:15 OS/5 1.1 review
13:25 Visual Basic for DOS
14:43 Higher resolutions
16:08 Memory & disk space
17:15 Conclusion

#RetroTech #PC #MSDOS

[JendaLinda]

This looks very similar to Turbo Vision. A framework used by many programs back then. It allowed creatng complex Windows-like text based user interfaces.

[MinerAC]

I love the fact that there was really a lot of thought and attention to detail put into this, even going as far to use darker blocks to replicate window shadows.

[segaboy]

Dude that background music is SO SMOOTH!

[MorikaWeb]

This is exactly why we need the internet archive, stuff like this should be preserved for the future.

[Retro]

That's really interesting. The UI screams that it's written in Visual Basic 1.0 for DOS. Edit: Thinking about it more, this is probably just a VB DOS program that has those built in functions (notepad, check register, etc.). It doesn't seem like there's a way to add a program for it. It just had a DOS shell for that. Given this came out in 1996, it's kind of a poor attempt at something like Deskmate, just with far fewer useful functions.

[erinw]

Love that Dave's Garage explained it was too hard for Win95 to have seconds displayed on the tray clock, and here's this little guy that did it in '92 under DOS.

[VladoT]

Made in Visual Basic for DOS. Great text mode development environment, I used that a lot.

[TheOriginalCollectorA]

Very interesting, it’s actually quite complex considering how little space it takes up. Nice to see this is now preserved and won’t be lost to time, great video!

[kFY]

The king of DOS shells was DOS Navigator for me, ever since I learned about its existence. It launched into a Norton Commander clone by default, but it contained LOTS of features, including a text editor, a spreadsheet (!), a Tetris clone, a calculator, a phone book, a CD player, a serial terminal emulator, on top of everything you'd expect from an orthodox file manager. Only the archive file support was a little lackluster, as it relied entirely on calling into external programs. But best of all, it was written using Turbo Vision, so all those features could run concurrently, in overlapping windows much like these.

It was larger of course, spanning about a megabyte installed with all those features, but it made a much more full-featured and usable environment.

[patagum]

Thank you for sharing this with us! It's really cool to have this interesting piece of history archived, and it makes me wonder if there's any other tech history that's still yet to be uncovered.

[SergiuszRoszczyk]

Reminds me about Borland Turbo Vision for Pascal and C++. About the same time, as it was initially released in 1990

[jamesdecross]

Thanks for archiving this operating system for others to try – it looks quite amazing!

[lawrenceshadai]

I am very glad you preserved this. About 30 years ago there where a lot of these sorts of programs that used what Code Page 437 had to offer. Yes, you could make a "semi-graphical" UI out of CP-437 ! One I used back then after trying out a bunch I downloaded from a BBS was the (IIRC) "Nickl Menu System" that looked amazing on MDA. So many of these have been lost.

[lv_woodturner]

Very interesting. I had not heard of this before. Sad it did not take off at the time.
Thanks for the video.

[nynexman]

Windows 3 + OS/2 = OS/5? It looks like a cute project but pretty limited in features. I wonder if the full version came with source so you could add stuff.

[carltonleboss]

Thanks for archiving this piece of history.

[jaykay]

"OS/5 Alive" has got to be a Batteries Not Included reference. OS/5 was really well done, Poole took his time to get this right. It was great to see this run in 43-line EGA and 50-line VGA mode, that really opened it up. I would love to see this run on a PC or XT, off a 5.25" floppy, with real CGA and snow. I just might have to give that a shot.

[yukimoe]

This is definitely interesting, I wonder what John Poole is doing nowadays.

[elphive]

I really love the use of the sound library for this one. It really gives that beach-ey ‘90s corpo-educational film vibe.

[Lofote]

But it isn't a operating system, it is a shell with some internal applications ;)... And there were other programs that could do most of it on similar machines, like Microsoft Works for DOS, etc.