GEOS (later renamed GeoWorks Ensemble, NewDeal Office, and Breadbox Ensemble) is a computer operating environment,

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inst ...

(GUI), and suite of

application software Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a ...

. Originally released as PC/GEOS, it runs on

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

-based,

IBM PC compatible IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM Personal Computer, IBM PC, IBM Personal Computer XT, XT, and IBM Personal Computer/AT, AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such ...

computers. Versions for some handheld platforms were also released and licensed to some companies. PC/GEOS was first created by Berkeley Softworks, which later became GeoWorks Corporation. Version 4.0 was developed in 2001 by Breadbox Computer Company,

limited liability company A limited liability company (LLC for short) is the US-specific form of a private limited company. It is a business structure that can combine the pass-through taxation of a partnership or sole proprietorship with the limited liability of ...

(LLC), and was renamed Breadbox Ensemble. In 2015, Frank Fischer, the CEO of Breadbox, died and efforts on the

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

stopped until later in 2017 when it was bought by blueway.Softworks. PC/GEOS should not be confused with the 8-bit GEOS product from the same company, which runs on the Commodore 64 and Apple II.

PC/GEOS

GeoWorks Ensemble

In 1990, GeoWorks released PC/GEOS for

systems. Commonly referred to as ''GeoWorks Ensemble'', it was incompatible with the earlier 8-bit versions of GEOS for

Commodore Commodore may refer to: Ranks * Commodore (rank), a naval rank ** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom ** Commodore (United States) ** Commodore (Canada) ** Commodore (Finland) ** Commodore (Germany) or ''Kommodore'' * Air commodore ...

and Apple II computers, but provided numerous enhancements, including scalable fonts and multitasking on IBM PC XT- and AT-class PC clones. GeoWorks saw a market opportunity to provide a graphical user interface for the 16 million older model PCs that were unable to run Microsoft Windows 2.x. GEOS was packaged with a suite of productivity applications. Each had a name prefixed by "Geo": GeoWrite, GeoDraw; GeoManager; GeoPlanner; GeoDex, and GeoComm. It was also bundled with many PCs at the time, but like other GUI environments for the PC platform, such as

Graphics Environment Manager GEM (for Graphics Environment Manager) is an operating environment released by Digital Research (DRI) in 1985 for use with the DOS operating system on Intel 8088 and Motorola 68000 microprocessors. GEM is known primarily as the graphical ...

(GEM), it ultimately proved less successful in the marketplace than Windows. Former CEO of GeoWorks claims that GEOS faded away "because Microsoft threatened to withdraw supply of

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

to hardware manufacturers who bundled Geoworks with their machines". In December 1992, NEC and

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...

bundled an

original equipment manufacturer An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces non-aftermarket parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. It is a common industry term recognized and used by many professional or ...

(OEM) version of GeoWorks named the CD Manager with their respective CD-ROM players that sold as retail box add-on peripherals for consumers. The NEC Bundle retailed for around $500.00 with a 1x external CD-ROM, ''Small Computer System Interface'' ( SCSI) interface controller, Labtec CD-150 amplified stereo speakers and 10 software titles. A scaled-down version of GeoWorks was used by America Online for their DOS-based AOL client software from the time of introduction on IBM compatible PCs until the late 1990s when America Online dropped development for graphical DOS in favor of Microsoft Windows. During that time, the popular single 3.5" self-booting disk that AOL was distributing could be hacked to boot the GeoWorks environment. IBM released the PC/GEOS-based EduQuest SchoolView network management tool for K-12 schools in 1994. Negotiations to make PC/GEOS an integral part of PC DOS 7.0 failed. GeoWorks attempted to get third-party developers but was unable to get much support due to expense of the developer kit, which cost $1,000 for the manuals only, and the difficult programming environment, which required a second PC networked via serial port to run the debugger. Even though PC/GEOS is referred to as an "operating system", it still requires DOS in load. GEOS and its applications were written in a mix of 8086 assembly language (Espire), an interpreted language called

IZL Irgun • Etzel , image = Irgun.svg , image_size = 200px , caption = Irgun emblem. The map shows both Mandatory Palestine and the Emirate of Transjordan, which the Irgun claimed in its entirety for a future Jewish state. The acronym "Etzel" i ...

, and C (GEOS Object C: GOC) with non-standard language extensions to support the

object-oriented Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of " objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of p ...

design. Under

DR DOS 6.0 DR-DOS (written as DR DOS, without a hyphen, in versions up to and including 6.0) is a disk operating system for IBM PC compatibles. Upon its introduction in 1988, it was the first DOS attempting to be compatible with IBM PC DOS and MS-D ...

, if TASKMAX was loaded before PC/GEOS, PC/GEOS registered as graphical menu system for TASKMAX. This still worked under the pre-emptive multitasker (

EMM386 EMM386 is the expanded memory manager of Microsoft's MS-DOS, IBM's PC DOS, Digital Research's DR-DOS, and Datalight's ROM-DOS which is used to create expanded memory using extended memory on Intel 80386 CPUs. There also is an EMM386.EXE availa ...

/MULTI + TASKMGR) provided by Novell DOS 7, OpenDOS 7.01 and DR-DOS 7.02 (and higher), allowing for multiple GEOS and DOS applications to run concurrently. (NB. NWDOSTIP.TXT is a comprehensive work on Novell DOS 7 and OpenDOS 7.01, including the description of many undocumented features and internals. It is part of the author's yet larger MPDOSTIP.ZIP collection maintained up to 2001 and distributed on many sites at the time. The provided link points to a HTML-converted older version of the NWDOSTIP.TXT file.) After release of Ensemble 2.01, GeoWorks ended support for the desktop version to focus on handhelds and smart devices. Geoworks Ensemble won the 1991 Software Publishers Association Excellence in Software Award for Best Consumer Program.

NewDeal Office

A newer version of PC/GEOS was marketed in the late 1990s as ''NewDeal Office'' from NewDeal Inc. in hopes of creating a market among owners of

i386 The Intel 386, originally released as 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistorsi486 and

Pentium Pentium is a brand used for a series of x86 architecture-compatible microprocessors produced by Intel. The original Pentium processor from which the brand took its name was first released on March 22, 1993. After that, the Pentium II and P ...

PCs that could not run

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...

Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to ...

effectively. NewDeal released 3 new versions of NewDeal Office (NewDeal Office 2.5, NewDeal Office 3/98 and NewDeal Office 2000) until it went bankrupt in 2000. NDO or NDO 2000 came with a webbrowser named Skipper or Skipper 2000, respectively.

Breadbox Ensemble

After "NewDeal Inc." went out of business, Breadbox purchased the rights in the software from GeoWorks in 2001. Their newest PC/GEOS, 4.x, is now a full productivity and internet suite, including web browser (named WebMagick) as well as email. Other essential programs such as word processing, spreadsheet, flat file database and graphics applications are integrated into this package. On 14 November 2015, Frank S. Fischer, the CEO and owner of Breadbox Ensemble LLC, died of a heart attack, some while after announcing plans to bring GEOS to Android.

Versions

* 1990: OS/90 beta version * 1990: geoDOS beta version * 1990: GeoWorks 1.0 * 1991: GeoWorks 1.2 * 1992: GeoWorks 1.2 Pro (with Borland

Quattro Pro Quattro Pro is a spreadsheet program developed by Borland and now sold by Corel, most often as part of Corel's WordPerfect Office suite. Characteristics Historically, Quattro Pro used keyboard commands close to those of Lotus 1-2-3. While i ...

for DOS with PC/GEOS "Look and Feel") * 1992: GeoWorks DTP * 1992: GeoWorks CD Manager * 1993: GeoWorks Ensemble 2.0 (new kernel PC/GEOS 2.0) * 1993: Geopublish 2.0 * 1994: Geoworks Ensemble 2.01 * 1996: NewDeal Office 2.2 * 1996: NewDeal Office 2.5 * 1996: NewDeal Publish 2.5 shareware version * 1997: NewDeal Office 97 * 1998: NewDeal Office 98 * 1999: NewDeal Office release 3 (new kernel PC/GEOS 3.0) * 1999: NewDeal Office release 3 evaluation * 1999: NewDeal Office 3.2 * 2000: NewDeal Office 3.2d (German patch) * 2000: NewDeal Office 2000 (new kernel PC/GEOS 4.0) * 2000: NewDeal Office 2000 for (for a Surf´n´Office PC from Ted Turner IV ( MyTurn, Inc.) with help from

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

) * 2001: BreadBox Ensemble beta version 4.0.1.1 * 2001: BreadBox Ensemble beta version 4.0.1.x * 2002: Breadbox Ensemble beta version 4.0.2.0 * 2005–March: Breadbox Ensemble version 4.1.0.0 * 2005–November: Breadbox Ensemble version 4.1.2.0 * 2009–August: Breadbox Ensemble version 4.1.3.0

PEN/GEOS

PEN/GEOS 1.0 was the new name for PC/GEOS 2.0 when GeoWorks released it on 9 April 1992. PEN/GEOS 1.0 was a pioneering

personal digital assistant A personal digital assistant (PDA), also known as a handheld PC, is a variety mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. PDAs have been mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of highly capable smartphones, in part ...

(PDA) technology. GEOS was also used in the low-end GeoBook laptop from

Brother Industries is a Japanese multinational electronics and electrical equipment company headquartered in Nagoya, Japan. Its products include printers, multifunction printers, desktop computers, consumer and industrial sewing machines, large machine to ...

and in several

Nokia Communicator The Nokia Communicator is a brand name for a series of business-optimized smartphones marketed by Nokia Corporation, all of which appear as normal (if large) phones on the outside, and open in clamshell format to access a QWERTY keyboard and an ...

models (GEOS 3.0 in models 9000, 9110). PEN/GEOS 2.0 was released in 1992, and version 3.0 was released in 1995.

''Zoomer'' devices; Tandy Z-PDA, AST GRiDPad 2390, Casio Z-7000 & XL 7000

PEN/GEOS 1.0 was used as the operating system for the

Tandy Corporation Tandy Corporation was an American family-owned leather goods company based in Fort Worth, Texas, United States. Tandy Leather was founded in 1919 as a leather supply store. By the end of the 1950s, under the tutelage of then-CEO Charles Tandy, ...

Z-PDA, which was introduced shortly after the first Apple Newton MessagePad. Palm Computing had been incorporated to create software for this device and shipped its first handwriting recognition software, PalmPrint,

personal information manager A personal information manager (often referred to as a PIM tool or, more simply, a PIM) is a type of application software that functions as a personal organizer. The acronym PIM is now, more commonly, used in reference to personal information manag ...

, Palm Organizer, and synchronization software, PalmConnect, on the Z-PDA. Palm Organizer included the PalmSchedule date book, PalmAddress address book, PalmNotes notebook, a dictionary, calculator, clock, forms calculator, 26 language translation dictionary, on-line help, holiday, and travel information. The device was also sold under license as the AST GRiDPad 2390 and as the Casio Z-7000 which was the best selling version. In the US, Casio sold it under the name XL-7000 without the multi-lingual interface, but added an AOL client and some USA specific help files. These devices were all named ''Zoomer'' and were the first PDAs with a connection to the online services CompuServe and AOL. This was made possible through the pre-installed dial-up software CompuServeAOL.

HP OmniGo 100 & 120

In 1993, GeoWorks released PEN/GEOS 2.0, again based on PC/GEOS 2.0. In 1995, this version of GEOS appeared (running on top of DOS) on the HP OmniGo 100. It featured

Graffiti Graffiti (plural; singular ''graffiti'' or ''graffito'', the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from s ...

handwriting recognition. The OmniGo is a flip-around clamshell handheld computer powered by a Vadem VG230 integrated PC-on-a-chip. The VG230 chip includes an Intel 80186-instruction set compatible NEC V30 core. It was soon followed by the

HP OmniGo 120 The HP 200LX Palmtop PC (F1060A, F1061A, F1216A), also known as project ''Felix'', is a personal digital assistant introduced by Hewlett-Packard in August 1994. It was often called a Palmtop PC, and it was notable that it was, with some m ...

, which added a high-contrast screen.

Brother LW-Writing System

Brother A brother is a man or boy who shares one or more parents with another; a male sibling. The female counterpart is a sister. Although the term typically refers to a familial relationship, it is sometimes used endearingly to refer to non-familia ...

LW-screen typewriters use PEN/GEOS and are the only version of the operating system that ships with vendor-provided drivers for scanner and it included a GEOS scanning application. In Germany, the Brother LW750ic system is equipped with PEN/GEOS.

Brother GeoBook

In 1997, Brother, in collaboration with IBM, brought the GeoBook series of notebooks to market. GeoBook models NB-60, NB-80C, and PN-9100GR used a modified version of PEN/GEOS using the Yago user interface. The GeoBook series was marketed mainly in education and was part of the ''IBM Eduquest School View'' strategy.

Nokia Communicator 9000(i) and 9110(i)

In 1996, the Nokia 9000 Communicator smartphone was introduced. This phone uses PEN/GEOS 3.0 and established the smartphone market. Nokia followed with Communicator models 9000i, 9110, and 9110i.

GEOS-SC

GEOS-SC was a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) CPU

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

, OS, and GUI for the Japanese cellphone market. It was released in 1997. Originally built as GeoWorks' planned future OS and codenamed 'Liberty', GEOS-SC became the basis for cellphones designed by Mitsubishi Electric Company (MELCO) of Japan.

GEOS-SE

Alongside this, GEOS-SE which was an OS designed and developed by Eden Ltd., a UK-based company acquired in 1997 by Geoworks. It became the basis of several other devices, most notably the Seiko Epson Locatio which was a multifunction device incorporating browser, PIM software, phone, GPS and Camera. It was launched in Japan in 1998.

FreeGEOS

Since 2016, the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

of PC/GEOS has been made available as FreeGEOS and can be compiled and edited freely.

References

External links

* Usenet ** **
Breadbox Computer Company
former developer and publisher of GEOS
GEOS FAQ

GEOS-InfoBase
* * blueway.Softworks {{DEFAULTSORT:Geos (16-Bit Operating System) DOS software Formerly proprietary software Graphical user interfaces Mobile operating systems Operating system APIs Software using the Apache license Assembly language software Window-based operating systems X86 operating systems 1990 software cs:GEOS