this may look like a boring old beige
286 PC but the important thing about it is that it's running an operating system
which everyone else has forgotten about and which there is no trace of
existing at all on the internetit was released in 1996 and was intended
to be a competitor to Microsoft Windows but it's not OS/2 it's OS/5 and while Windows
and OS/2 came on CD-ROMs and could take up several hundred megabytes of hard drive space
when fully installed there are two versions of OS/5 known to exist and they both fit on a single
720K floppy disk and while the contemporaneous versions of Windows and OS/2 required at least
a 486 to run well OS/5 can run on any PC with at least 512K of RAM even an original IBM PC so
it runs perfectly fine on this 12 megahertz 286.the first version of it was OS/5 Desktop version
1.0 released on February 1st, 1996 the ZIP file came in was only 188K the description says
"OS/5 Desktop 1.0 is a DOS shell program which operates similar to the OS/2 or Windows desktop it
includes a file manager interface for most popular DOS commands a checkbook register simple drawing
program calculator chart and graph creator and time display" it was written by John Poole and
it was shareware with a registration fee of $23here's the original order form it was released
by John Poole software of Jacksonville Florida it cost $20 plus $2.95 for shipping and it was available on either
720K 3½" or 360K 5¼" floppy disknow let's run it you just type desktop from the
DOS prompt we see something that looks similar to the Windows logo but it is not Windows we go
to About it says "John Poole Software presents Operating System/5 desktop a DOS-based graphic
user interface" but this is not actually running in graphics mode this is running entirely in text
mode but yet it has windows that you can drag around with buttons on them you can minimize
maximize these are icons down here and that brings up a control panel it says OS/5 Windows
control panel but again this is not Windows and we can look at some of the programs
here it has a text editor version 2.0and we can start typing or we can load a file
here let's load that readme file and there it isfile information says it's 332 bytes
and we can cut copy and paste of course so I can click and drag to select
the text of the mouse and do copy and then go down here and paste it now let's
look at the next program it has click draw this is a very simple drawing program it just
draws a block wherever you click the mouse so it's a bit tedious but you
could use it to draw simple lines and illustrations and artwork and whatever
else you want to do all in text mode but because this is a multitasking interface I can minimize it
and go run something else such as the calculatorwhich can't divide by zero so I'll minimize the
calculator and go back to the drawing program in fact I'll resize the drawing program and restore the calculator now we have both on
the screen at the same time and I can even run the check manager it's not quite
Quicken but it still could be useful and I'll close that no I don't want to save
the records how about the chart programwe can graph a chart this is where it
actually does go into graphics mode but it's only CGA graphics so again this
could run perfectly well on original IBM PCand we're back to our chart program our calculatorI'll minimize the chart program minimize
the calculator and the drawing program so now we have multiple icons
we can click and drag the iconsand we go into the system here
we already saw the control panel and there it is you can change the colors
and we get different desktop backgrounds for example remember the bricks from Windows 3.1?
well we have a text mode version of bricks as wellalso have a file managerand different operations here like
copy delete edit move print rename you can go out to a DOS prompt so we're
at DOS now we can exit back to OS/5and close the file managerother DOS tools here these are shortcuts
for running the utilities that DOS came with such as ScanDisk and defrag
you can do a directory treeand there are shows our directory treeI can even minimize the tools and
we also have a clock of course you can change it to 24 hours
and add a date it has an alarmand that's about it for OS/5 version 1.0 now let's take a look at version 1.1 the second
and as far as I know final version of OS/5 that was also released in 1996 it's version 1.1
the description says "a fast and easy to use multitasking environment program for the home
and office OS/5 Desktop's user-friendly interface enables you to handle and organize your DOS
system more efficiently. Desktop has everything from a calculator to a clock and helpful tools
to assist you in your everyday computing life. Full interface program with many special features
and functions that only programs such as GeoWorks Ensemble, DeskMate, and Windows can offer"
and here it says requires DOS 3.1 or greater and it says it's shareware try before
you buy software "if you would like to continue to use OS/5 desktop after the 30-day
evaluation period you must register your copy" and this time it comes with a full
license in all caps and the order formagain the price is $20 plus shipping and John
Poole had an e-mail address through CompuServe and that's where I found OS/5 Desktop on I don't know
if it's been archived anywhere else ever since so let's run version 1.1 of OS/5again it briefly shows something
similar to the Windows logo this time the mouse cursor
is a little bit different and we have an About screen that says "John Poole
Software presents Operating System/5 Desktop version 1.1 a DOS-based graphic user interface
running in standard mode available memory 2670K"again we have some applications here instead
of an editor this time we have a notepad which is a little bit simpler of a program but it
does look a little more visually appealing and it looks like the menus are more full featured now
so let's try loading the same readme file on it and again we get cut copy paste get word wrap we
get a search function so the same basic features as we had before in the editor and this time I can
just minimize it and again it has a control panel which looks basically the same as before as an option for a three-dimensional
and window shadow which as you can see helps make it look more graphical even
though this is only running in text modego back to the editor and close out of that now we can run again the calculator
pretty much the same as beforeoops didn't want that check
manager just like beforewe also have the chart programso that's pretty much the same as
last time you can minimize thatand again we can exit to the DOS prompt and this
time it just appears right on the screen there and we can exit back into OS/5 and
system we have a file seek function now let's see what that does it just lists
the files that fit the search criteria so let me see readme.* and it just lists that one
readme file so pretty basic file search function also get a file manager this time version 1.02and it's a little bit different
this time you double click on a program and it brings up this tools menu
listing all the options you can do with it so unfortunately you can't click and drag to
select multiple files so still quite basic of a file manager we can maximize it to fit the full
screen bring it down to that size and minimize it again we have DOS tools including
a shreedder whatever that isand finally the clock which we
can also add the date and this time we can make it bigger or smaller
again we can drag it around the screenyou can minimize it to an icon
and let's see arrange iconsOK it looks like that's just opening up everythingoh that's interesting it opened up everything
it can do so we have our notepad hereclose that the chart programwe've got the clock oh the clock shows
the time in the icon so that's niceyou can even cover up one icon with another
so a very interesting concept at applying windows and icons in a text mode interface
which is something you normally only saw in Windows or OS/2 or those other programs
that mentioned like GeoWorks and DeskMate so it's a quite interesting use of the
text mode to simulate a graphical interfaceso that's OS/5 version 1.1 the only other version
of it that I know of but you may have noticed this file here which was in both versions of OS/5:
vbdrt10.exe that stands for Visual BASIC for DOS runtime version 1.0 and yes Microsoft did
actually release a version of Visual BASIC for DOS it actually came after they released the
Windows version because there was still enough demand for DOS applications back in 1992 when this
was from but they only ever made one version of it 1.0 and Visual BASIC for DOS is what provided the
windowing system used in OS/5 with these graphical elements that looks like the close button and
the minimize button and the shadows and you can rearrange the windows and resize them and have
multiple overlapping windows on the screen this is all done by Visual BASIC see even the shadow
overlaps and you can still see what's underneath it so I think it's a really neat use of DOS text
mode to make it look like a graphical interfacethere's just one thing I want to try here
first off I'll have to exit back to DOS that is what will happen if we
try to run it in 43 line EGA mode and yes it does look like it's working
and we get more screen real estate see that notepad used to take up the entire
screen now it only takes up that much so we have more room on our screen for other
windows and applications such as the control panel I can load the check manager and you can
almost fit all three here on the screen because we're now running an EGA
text mode which gives us 43 lines and I bet if I exited out of OS/5
and switch to 50 line VGA text modethat will give us even more space this
time you can see if I've run the notepad it looks even smaller although the text is
harder to read now because it's smaller text on the screen we're fitting more
content in the same visual area so just like in a graphical
interface that makes the text smaller but we do get more screens real estate
for all these different programsI just want to check one more thing I want to
see if this available memory thing is actually accurate or if it's just making it up so currently
it says 2670K available memory now I'll get back out to DOS and I'll run OS/5 from within StupenDOS
which should take up some of that available memoryso About now it's slightly less so it does
appear to be somewhat of an accurate countand I know people are going to say it's not a
complete operating system because it runs from within DOS and it can only run the limited amount
of programs they originally came with but you have to remember how small it is version 1.0 of OS/5
only took up about 330K if I look at version 1.1 that's actually smaller at 299K so that's why
both of them can fit on a single 720K floppy diskand I think John Poole was way ahead of
his time because what are people doing today with old vintage PCs like this? they're
trying to add new features and functions and capabilities to old machines and that's what he
was doing with OS/5 all the way back in 1996. so if you watch this video and you can find
some way to contact Mr. Poole if he's still around you can tell him you heard of
it through this video in the year 2023and I'll include links in the description
to download both versions of OS/5 1.0 and 1.1 although you may need an older PC
or may need to use DOSbox in order to run it because I tried running it
from within Windows XP on a Core 2 Duo machine and it just crashed it
didn't even start up but I think it's best experienced on an old computer like
this anyway to get the true experienceso this has been possibly the first time
OS/5 has ever been seen online since 1996. certainly I can't find it anywhere else
on the Internet but I think it deserves to be remembered so you can do your part by
downloading it and exploring it for yourself