Phar Lap FrontRunner – The Winning DOS Desktop for Windows

https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/phar-lap-frontrunner

by todsacerdoti • 4 years ago

71 21 4 years ago

computeradsfromthepast.substack.com

xenonite• 4 years ago

Looks a bit like Mac OS X to me, only upside down: menu bar, app bar, status bar.

chx• 4 years ago

Phar Lap made amazing DOS extenders.

mrlonglong2• 4 years ago

I liked DOS4GW better.

gattilorenz2• 4 years ago

This is not Phar Lap’s DOS extender, is kind of an iTerm2 for Windows 3.x

AshamedCaptain• 4 years ago

Except that writing a windowed DOS terminal emulator involves writing an entire VGA card emulator, likely a VGA BIOS, hooking a bunch of DOS routines.... probably a DOS extender too.

jamesfmilne• 4 years ago

Like a smell from a cupboard in your grandmother's house, some of these names conjure up strong memories from your childhood.

CamperBob2• 4 years ago

"Smells like that DOS extender I wanted to use but couldn't afford. The one that was steamrolled into a thin red paste by DOS/4GW."

_0ffh• 4 years ago

Spot on! :-)

dhosek• 4 years ago

It goes both ways too—just thinking about K&R C is enough to trigger the memory of the smell of the copy of K&R that I borrowed from one of my high school teachers which was imprinted with the smell of coffee and cigarettes (including a coffee ring on the front cover).

dblohm7• 4 years ago

The two companies I miss most are Phar Lap and NuMega.

jvandonsel• 4 years ago

NuMega! Their SoftICE was amazing.

mobilio• 4 years ago

I still have somewhere copy of SoftICE for DOS, W9X and NT/2K/XP.

But more interesting is here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/matt_pietrek...

stevekemp• 4 years ago

And there was always something ironic about using it to remove it's own protection - with a shout-out to +fravia (RIP).

pridkett• 4 years ago

After reading that I now have a sudden craving for 4DOS and 4OS2.

I was young at the time and had “access” to a lot of amazing software packages that I’m still learning how amazing they were. Gotta wonder how things would be different if I didn’t give up on DESQView/X and decided to download Slackware one 1.44mb floppy at a time from a local BBS.

teknolog• 4 years ago

I ran my BBS on OS/2 for a couple years. Loved 4OS2.

glonq• 4 years ago

Before Windows Embedded was a viable thing we built a product around Phar Lap ETS, which was their embedded RTOS with a Win32-compatbile API.

It was great. A productive, civilized development experience compared to many embedded environments back in those days.

xen2xen1• 4 years ago

Phar Lap Dos extender.. Now that's a name I've not heard in some time..

n2j3• 4 years ago

https://archive.ph/0JfHa

tibbydudeza• 4 years ago

Watcom C compiler or CodeWarrior for Mac

Phar Lap FrontRunner – The Winning DOS Desktop for Windows

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