 DESQview was a text mode multitasking program developed by Quarterdeck Office Systems which enjoyed modest popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Running on top of DOS, it allowed users to run multiple DOS programs concurrently in Windows. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (600x726, 198 KB) Desqview 386 manual cover: used to describe this product. ...
A text mode program communicates with the user by only displaying text and possibly a limited set of predefined semi-graphical characters, which allow the drawing of rudimentary boxes around portions of text, either to highlight the content or to simulate widget or control interface objects found in GUI programs. ...
In computing, multitasking is a method by which multiple tasks, also known as processes, share common processing resources such as a CPU. In the case of a computer with a single CPU, only one task is said to be running at any point in time, meaning that the CPU is...
Quarterdeck Office Systems, later Quarterdeck Corporation, was an American computer software company. ...
The 1980s refers to the years of 1980 to 1989. ...
Germans dancing on the Berlin Wall in late 1989, the symbol of the cold war divide falls down as the world unites in the 1990s. ...
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An example of a graphical user interface in Windows XP, with the My Music window displayed In computing, a window is a visual area, usually rectangular in shape, containing some kind of user interface, displaying the output of and allowing input for one of a number of simultaneously running computer...
DESQ
Quarterdeck's predecessor to DESQview was a task switching product called DESQ which allowed users to switch between running programs. It was not very popular, and the task-switching market was primarily dominated by Software Carousel, a product with limited windowing capabilities. Quarterdeck revamped its package, bringing multitasking in, and adding TopView compatibility; it was renamed DESQview. A context switch is the computing process of storing and restoring the state (context) of a CPU such that multiple processes can share a single CPU resource. ...
Software Carousel was a task-switching program for MS-DOS-based computers. ...
DESQview DESQview was released in July 1985, four months before Microsoft introduced the first version of Windows. It was widely thought to be the first program to bring multitasking and windowing capabilities to DOS, but in fact there was a predecessor, IBM's failed TopView, released in 1984, from which DESQview inherited the popup menu. 1985 (MCMLXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44. ...
Microsoft Windows is the name of several families of proprietary operating systems by Microsoft. ...
Big Blue redirects here. ...
TopView was a text-mode MS-DOS multitasker written by IBM and released in 1984, together with their new PC AT computer. ...
1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Under DESQview, well-behaved DOS programs could be run concurrently in resizable, overlapping windows (something the first version of Windows could not do). A simple hidable menu allowed cutting and pasting between programs. DESQview provided for simple editable macros as well. Quarterdeck also developed a set of optional utilties for DESQview, including a notepad and dialer. Later versions allowed graphics mode programs to be loaded as well, but only run in full screen mode.
DESQview was not a full-fledged GUI operating system; it was a quasi-GUI shell that ran in real mode on top of DOS. Although it could be configured to run on an Intel 80286-based PC AT with two megabytes of memory, it really came into its own on Intel 80386 machines which were better at utilizing memory above DOS's limit of 640 KB. However, in either case, it ran in real mode rather than protected mode, meaning that a misbehaving program could still crash the system. GUI can refer to the following: GUI is short for graphical user interface, a term used to describe a type of interface in computing. ...
An operating system (OS) is a computer program that manages the hardware and software resources of a computer. ...
Real mode (also called real address mode in Intels manuals) is an operating mode of 80286 and later x86-compatible CPUs. ...
An Intel 80286 Microprocessor AMD 80286 with 12 Mhz. ...
The Intel 80386 is a microprocessor which was used as the central processing unit (CPU) of many personal computers from 1986 until 1994 and later. ...
Protected mode is an operational mode of x86-compatible CPUs of the 80286 series or later. ...
DESQview and QEMM To make maximum use of extended memory on Intel 80386 processors, by transforming it into expanded memory and upper memory blocks (UMBs) accessible to DESQview and other real-mode programs, Quarterdeck developed a sophisticated memory manager. Owing to the foresight of its marketing manager, Quarterdeck marketed it as a separate product, QEMM-386 (Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager 386). It became more popular than DESQview itself, and sold steadily for many years, generating over US$150 million in sales from 1987 through 1994. After the release of the Intel Pentium processor, the 386 in QEMM was dropped. The combination package of DESQview and QEMM-386 was called DESQview 386. Extended memory refers to memory above the first megabyte of address space in an IBM PC with an 80286 or later processor. ...
The Intel 80386 is a microprocessor which was used as the central processing unit (CPU) of many personal computers from 1986 until 1994 and later. ...
Expanded Memory was a trick invented around 1984 that provided more memory to byte-hungry, business-oriented MS-DOS programs. ...
The Upper Memory Area (UMA) is a feature of the design of IBM PC-compatible x86 computers. ...
A memory manager is a part of a computer program which accepts requests from the program to allocate and deallocate chunks of memory. ...
QEMM, the Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager by Quarterdeck, was the most popular memory manager for the DOS operating system. ...
1987 (MCMLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal by United Nations. ...
Pentium MMX - top view The Pentium is a fifth-generation x86 architecture microprocessor by Intel which first shipped on March 22, 1993. ...
With the introduction of the 80386, the memory management features were enhanced to allow the system to be shifted into protected mode but also allowing the addresses to be configured in a virtual 8086 mode so that the extended memory could be mapped into addressing frames and accessible to real-mode programs such as MS-DOS. This allowed a 386 to implement the LIM (Lotus, Intel, Microsoft) EMS (expanded memory specification). In the 80386 and later, Virtual 8086 mode, also called virtual real mode, allows the execution of real mode applications that violated the rules mentioned here under the control of a protected mode operating system. ...
Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) is an American software company with its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ...
Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC, SEHK: 4335), founded in 1968 as Integrated Electronics Corporation, is an American multinational corporation that is best known for designing and manufacturing microprocessors and specialized integrated circuits. ...
Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44. ...
EMS or Expanded Memory Specification is an IBM PC memory paging scheme enabling access to memory other than conventional memory in real mode, through the use of an add-on peripheral holding the additional memory. ...
DESQview was able to use QEMM's features far beyond just the LIM EMS API, mapping most of the "conventional" address space (below 640 KB) into multiple extended memory blocks such that each could execute transparently during its context. The main copy of DOS and any device and networking drivers had to be loaded before DESQview. The resulting space was the largest single program that could run, but DESQview under QEMM could run as many instances of those programs as the EMS would allow. So an 8 MB system could generally have a dozen full-sized MS-DOS programs running concurrently; a 16 MB system could run over twenty, and so on.
DESQview usage DESQview was noteworthy in that it supported all common DOS-compatible programs and achieved a degree of performance and stability that was remarkable, given the constraints of its host operating system. It also had a clever interface that was generally unobtrusive while being quickly available and very easy to learn.
All normal PCs include a keyboard with three "shift" or "modifier" keys: Control, Alt, and the normal Shift keys. These keys are normally held down in combination with other keys. DESQview, by default, monitored the Alt key for isolated presses (not in combination). Pressing the Alt key by itself would bring up the DESQview menu allowing access to the program's features: start new tasks, switch among them, mark text on the screen, paste text as input into the current task, resize or move the text windows, configure new menu items, etc. In addition a Shift+Alt combination would cause DESQview to learn a set of keys as a macro. This allowed DESQview to run other programs without interfering with any of the "keybindings" they might be using.
DESQview was critically acclaimed and won many fans, but it never met with mass appeal, despite Quarterdeck's sustained efforts to win people over. Reportedly it intrigued many people at Microsoft, including Bill Gates, who by some accounts based his first version of Windows on DESQview and two other early GUIs, Visi On and GEM. This article is about the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. ...
VisiCorp Visi On was a short-lived but influential graphical user interface-based operating environment program for IBM PC compatible personal computers running early versions of MS-DOS. Although Visi On was never popular (as it had steep minimum system requirements for its day), it was a notable influence on...
GEM (Graphical Environment Manager) was a windowing system created by Digital Research, Inc. ...
In one area, however, DESQview was a lasting success: many multiuser bulletin board systems were based on it, thanks to its modest hardware requirements, robust multitasking, and superlative handling of multiple communication ports. Most free or inexpensive BBS software of the time ran as a single-node, single-tasking DOS program. Normally, only one copy of the BBS software could run at once, limiting the host PC to running one node. DESQview allowed multiple copies of these single-task programs to run at once on the same computer, allowing anyone with even unimpressive hardware to run a large, powerful, multiuser BBS out of their home. ИнтереÑтные знакомÑтав! Заходим и знакомимÑÑ! <a href=http://poiu. ...
Decline of DESQview DESQview did not provide a graphical user interface (GUI). While Quarterdeck did provide suites of programming libraries and utilities to support the development of software to use its features these never became widely popular. (DESQview's ability to run most software with no modification and the cost of "run-time" licenses, combined with the costs of the development suites themselves made this an unreasonable combination for commercial shrink-wrapped software publishers and vendors.) GUI can refer to the following: GUI is short for graphical user interface, a term used to describe a type of interface in computing. ...
Microsoft released Microsoft Windows version 3.0 with its own memory management and multitasking features. While DESQview was far faster, smaller, and more stable, it was more expensive and didn't include support for the graphical features of MS Windows. Microsoft exerted considerable pressure on ISVs (independent software vendors) to release GUI software for Windows and hardware wholesalers (among others) to bundle MS Windows with MS-DOS on all systems that they sold (providing a broader market for the applications developed by the ISVs). Microsoft Windows is the name of several families of proprietary operating systems by Microsoft. ...
The decline of QEMM started with the bundling of a memory manager in Digital Research's DR-DOS 5.0, released in 1990. To catch on, Microsoft included its own EMM386 in MS-DOS 5.0, while previously the memory management functionality was only available with Windows. QEMM could still be used instead, notably with Windows 3.1x, but it only provided incremental benefits. Sales of QEMM declined. In August 1994, after three quarters of losses, the company laid off 25% of their employees and the CEO, president, and founder Terry Myers resigned. Digital Research, Inc. ...
DR-DOS is a PC DOS-compatible operating system for IBM PC-compatible personal computers, originally developed by Gary Kildalls Digital Research and derived from CP/M-86. ...
This article is about the year. ...
EMM386 was Microsofts expanded memory manager, which created expanded memory using extended memory on Intel 80386 CPUs. ...
Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ...
The Windows 3. ...
1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal by United Nations. ...
As users moved from DESQview to other platforms, notably Windows 3.x and OS/2, third party utility authors wrote utility programs that emulated some DESQview API functions to allow suitably equipped DOS programs to co-operate with these OS. The most notable were TAME (for Windows), and OS/2SPEED (for OS/2)
DESQview/X Quarterdeck eventually also released a product named DESQview/X, which was an X Window System server running under MS-DOS and DESQview and thus provided a GUI to which X software (mostly Unix) could be ported. However, by the time this was released there were far too many applications available for MS Windows, software for UNIX was generally free (non-commercial) or very expensive, and PCs in general were still under-powered compared to graphical Unix workstations. GNU/Linux was also becoming available, and eventually provided a robust operating system, X server, and a UNIX-compatible API. In other words, DESQview/X was in far too small a niche. KDE 3. ...
Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX) is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ...
Linux, or GNU/Linux, refers to any Unix-like computer operating system which uses the Linux kernel. ...
DESQview/X had three window managers that it launched with, X/Motif, OpenLook, and twm. The default package contained only twm, the others were optional. Mosaic was ported to DVX. Screenshot of an application that uses the Open Motif toolkit Motif (or capitalized MOTIF) is a graphical widget toolkit for building graphical user interfaces under the X Window System on Unix and other POSIX-compliant systems. ...
OPEN LOOK or OpenLook was an early graphical user interface (GUI) specification developed by Sun Microsystems and AT&T in the early 1990s for UNIX workstations. ...
In computing, twm (Toms Window Manager or Tab Window Manager) is the standard window manager for the X Window System, version X11R4 onwards. ...
Mosaic is considered by scholars to be the first important World Wide Web browser and Gopher client, and was the first browser which ran on Windows (rather than UNIX), which opened the web up to the general public [1]. It was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA...
DVX itself could serve MS-DOS and Windows 3.0 programs across the network as X programs, which made it useful for those who wished to run MS-DOS and MS Windows programs from their Unix workstations. The same functionality was once available with NCD Wincenter. Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ...
Windows 3. ...
NCD is a TLA which could mean National Council on Disability National Church Development Naval Combat Dress, a uniform of the Canadian Forces Network Computing Devices, a company Non Crystalline Diffraction Non-convergent discourse Non-communicable disease National Coverage Determinations, which help the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services define...
DESQview after X DESQview development continued in parallel with DESQview/X. After ceasing development on DESQview/X, another version of DESQview was released. QEMM was still developed after the discontinuation of DESQview, and a version compatible with Windows 98 was released. Windows 98 (codenamed Memphis) is a graphical operating system released on June 25, 1998 by Microsoft and the successor to Windows 95. ...
In the mid 1990s, Quarterdeck tried to recast itself as an Internet company, releasing a version of the Mosaic web browser. Eventually, the company was acquired by Symantec. Symantec Corporation NASDAQ: SYMC, founded in 1982, is an international corporation which sells computer software, particularly in the realms of security and information management. ...
Free public release The DESQview packages have been available for download on the Internet for a few years on at least one stable site (listed below) with no trace of complaint, however neither the host site CharterSoft nor Symantec's corporate counsel will clarify copyright status on direct request. Symantec Corporation NASDAQ: SYMC, founded in 1982, is an international corporation which sells computer software, particularly in the realms of security and information management. ...
Quarterdeck's shrinkwrap licence for DESQview, QEMM and their other products was unusual in being time-limited, giving permission to use the product for only twenty to thirty years.
Claims that the software is "public domain" are unsubstantiated and appear to be based solely on an editor statement at Slashdot. Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters (often abbreviated as /.) is a technology-related news website which features user-submitted and editor-evaluated current affairs news with a nerdy slant. ...
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