My #TandyZoomer arrived... I took a chance since *every* one on ebay couldn't power on, and sure enough it has a fiddly battery mechanism involving safety switches that nobody bothered to figure out! So it works!

Except the lower half of the screen is a bit wonky... might be a loose cable, worth a stripping and cleaning...

Anyway, it comes with #AOL. Which isn't surprising, since there was a #Geoworks version...

Gotta make a serial cable for the weird port and figure out the PCMCIA slot...

Jetzt mit 640 KB RAM habe ich es endlich geschafft auch Geoworks zu installieren. Eine moderne Motif-UI auf einer 8088er CPU mit 9.54 Mhz aus dem Jahr 1988

P.S. ich bitte um Entschuldigung für den nackigen Euro-PC im Bild

Repórter Retro 108

https://retropolis.com.br/2024/10/31/reporter-retro-108/

#ReprterRetro #68000 #68000EUmaNoites #8BitShowAndTell #AdrianBlack #AppleII #AppleIIc #BASIC #BBC #BBS #biblioteca #cartuchos #Ceefax #CERN #Commodore64 #CommodoreSX64 #CompuServe #DriveDeDisquete #elite #EUA #eZ80 #FORTRAN #Galaxian #GEOS #GeoWorks #Hackaday #HDMI #InterfaceGrfica #JecelMattosDeAssumpoJr #Livros #Macintosh #MacintoshII #MacintoshIIcx #MSDOS #namco #NES #Nintendo #PlacaDeVdeo #RC2014 #ReinoUnido #

“Before Windows became a fact of life for most computer users, a scrappy upstart named #GeoWorks tried taking Microsoft on. It failed, but it gave us the #Nokia #Communicator 9000.”

https://tedium.co/2019/06/20/geoworks-geos-history/

I'm still toying with the idea of giving a talk on #GEOS and/or a showcase of original hardware and the various GEOS/GeoWorks versions at a conference. Could be fun, now that parts of GeoWorks are going to be open source.

via @feedle

i've been posting a lot of my shareware research lately, because i've been working on a project for the past few months with a blend of Windows 3.1 & GeoWorks Ensemble used as inspiration.

Exigy is a tile-based game creation kit that lets you make windows 3.1/95-styled games, like spiderweb software's Exile or rick saada's Castle of the Winds. hell, you could remake the Microsoft Entertainment Pack if you wanted to :)

the editor is very intentionally built to work like MS Visual Basic: you can drag and drop any GUI element into the game editor window and script in your own actions with lua. it even comes with its own built-in sprite editor, so you can create your art while you work.

games are modified in real-time with no compiling. the entire thing is built in Love2D.

think of it as ZZT for windows 3.1 if that had ever existed.

The Register: #FreeDOS and #FreeBSD prove old code never dies, just gets nifty update

https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/02/freedos_30_freebsd_31/

"The classic #GEOS graphical desktop, which started out on the #Commodore 64 and later moved to the PC and was variously renamed #GeoWorks, #BreadboxEnsemble, and other names, is now #FOSS and you can get it from GitHub"

https://github.com/bluewaysw/pcgeos

For years I have been thinking about writing an article and possibly giving a talk on the evolution of GEOS.

Could PC/GEOS conceivably run in WASM? #GeoWorks https://github.com/bluewaysw/pcgeos

Oh, there seems to be a first release of #GeoWorks PC/Geos found here:
https://github.com/bluewaysw/pcgeos
I didn't tried to install it on an old machine, so your feedback is welcome. If I remember correctly you have to download the fonts from another distribution. But there are some fonts included in the archive.
#RetroComputing #FreeGEOS #Geos

fellow geoworks lovers and related operating system outcasts:

does anyone know how/where the GeoWorks 1.x/2.x *system* bitmap fonts are stored?

i'm speaking specifically about the fonts used throughout the UI, and the one used on the splash screen for "Ensemble 2.0"

i've spent hours trying to figure this out, and i'm not much closer

I'm really in a shocked love state. As promised, here are some better pictures of the #SiemensNixdorf #PCD4NL. It's a small lottery win: No scratches, no breaks, not really discolored. Looks like it's been sleeping in its pocket for the last 30 years.
And as you can see, I still have the original warranty certificate in case something breaks. I added an optical PS/2 mouse to make #GeoWorks easier to use.
#RetroComputing #Intel486 #ComputerMuseum

The Siemens-Nixdorf #PCD4NL arrived today. After a medium long evening here is the result. First try was looking for the defective floppy - belt broken. Afterwards directly to an image and this to a SD card with adapter for 2,5" IDE.
#GeoWorks and #Win311 starting like rockets, the small 486 is more than powerful enough for it. More detailled pics in better quality will follow. Enough for today.
#RetroComputing #Windows #Geos #ComputerMuseum

So I'm trying to get #GEOS #Geoworks running on the #Book8088. tldr not working yet.

10x 360k virtual disks. Extracted the files with dcfr. Won't run like that it has to be installed, almost all the files are actually compressed. The installer will ONLY install from a: or b:

fine. copied the files onto a new sd card that the #book8088 has decided to talk to, once a fat16 partition has been set up.

used SUBST to assign b: to the d:. edited geos.toc to only refer to the one disk 1/2

Dug out this late-90s-vintage Brother GeoBook from my work archive, after reading https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2023/06/o-brother-geobook-lets-get-thou-back-on.html?lr=1

We (at STNC) wrote the IP stack and web browser libraries (maybe email too?).

There's only the tiniest bit, if any, of my code on this - I did a few weeks on it when I started at STNC but then switched to the Psion Series 5 web browser.

Everyone, please follow @GeoworksFan—it’s the fediverse’s second #GeoWorks fan account, after me.

part of building my #retrocomputing time machine art exhibits involves creating box art for software that i create.

here's the box art for an operating system i've been building in Unity. think of it as all of the worst parts of OS/2, Windows 3.1, DESQview and #GeoWorks Ensemble combined.

thank you to @ThreeOhFour who added some much needed 80s pizzazz to the center graphic