Windows

Quikmenu 3 is what I use. Supports windows 16-color icons, very light memory footprint and has some fairly flexible scripting options too 😀

there is nothing like workbench on DOS (except.... windows) but you could take a look at QuickMenu III , see some shots of it here: 486DX2 build

edit: 🤣 DK 😊

🤣

I should update that thread one day, I've chopped and changed that system so much that it doesn't really exist any more... new motherboard and case, now its a DX4-100 with a VLB ET4000 and a YMF719, I've even upgraded the hard drive... but it still runs quikmenu 😀

In that thread I talk about using a batch file with CHOICE to launch games with seperate episodes. I've discovered a much more graceful way of doing it with Quikmenu.

In the 'Command' box for a program icon simply add a space after the filename and then [q,What would you like to choose?|option1|option2|option3]

This will bring up a dialog box with the options you specify, for the user to click on. The option will be passed to the command as an argument.
So you can have a batch file like this:

1@echo off
2if %1 == option1 goto game1
3if %1 == option2 goto game2
4if %1 == option3 goto game3
5exit
6
7:game1
8cd game1
9game1.exe
10exit
11
12:game2
13cd game2
14game2.exe
15exit
16
17:game3
18cd game3
19game3.exe
20exit

Oh, now with quickmenu does it have a rightclick context menu approach? Or will I still have to open console and type "copy c:/dos/dos_games/lol.txt c:/dos/document"?

Also, to clairify I meant no suggesting "uh...windows 3.1" or something stupid like that.

Quckmenu is more of a launcher gui.... don't expect it to do file management or have it's own apis...

Okay, also where am I supposed to procure a license for an almost 20 year old program that the company no longer even acknowledges it exists?!

dosquest wrote:

Oh, now with quickmenu does it have a rightclick context menu approach? Or will I still have to open console and type "copy c:/dos/dos_games/lol.txt c:/dos/document"?

Quikmenu doesn't do anything if you right click. But if you click the FILES button up the top it gives you a basic mouse driven file manager. However, for DOS file management you can't go past XTree Gold (although its a textmode application and predominantly keyboard based, but very powerful).

Okay, also where am I supposed to procure a license for an almost 20 year old program that the company no longer even acknowledges it exists?!

The same place everyone else gets their 'abandonware' (not here 😉 )

Not quite a GUI, but I used to use the DOS Shell program with MSDOS 4.01. It simplified a lot of functions that would have required a lot of typing on a command line.

Maybe not exactly a GUI, but Norton Commander or MS-DOS 6.2 Dosshell will do the job.

Procyon wrote:

MS-DOS 6.2 Dosshell will do the job.

MS-DOS 6.2 actually didn't include the MS-DOS 5 dosshell; it had to be added separately. (You can get it from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/135315 via olddos.exe .)

Aside from Norton Commander, Norton Desktop for DOS is pretty nice.

Wikipedia calls Norton Commander clones "orthodox file managers"; there's a list of them at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Orthodox_file_managers , but it doesn't say which ones are for DOS.

And there's SEAL, which hasn't been updated in a long time. The Wikipedia page links to FreeGEM and QubeOS. For that matter, there's GEOS, now Breadbox, but I'm not sure if that's free.

Jorpho wrote:

MS-DOS 6.2 actually didn't include the MS-DOS 5 dosshell; it had to be added separately.

I wasn't sure if it was 6.2, had to recall it from memory. 😉

MS-DOS 6.2 actually didn't include the MS-DOS 5 dosshell; it had to be added separately. (You can get it from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/135315 via olddos.exe .)

That doesn't seem to be the case. olddos.exe provides...
-Append.exe
-Graphics.com
-Help.com
-Interlnk.exe
-Intersrv.exe
-Loadfix.com
-Memmaker.exe
-Print.exe
-Replace.exe
-Sizer.exe
-Tree.com
-Undelete.exe
...but doesn't seem to include DOS Shell.

What does have it is the MS-DOS 6.22 supplemental disk...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/117600

Graphic Vision File Manager, looks a bit like windows but without much of an installation procedure:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gvision/gv/download.htm

Some Listings of GUI's / File Managers for DOS:
http://www.unet.univie.ac.at/~a0503736/php/dr … in.FileManagers

http://www.resoo.org/docs/dos/free_software/01index.htm

@gerwin I looked at the ntlworld stuff and I looked into the unet one, I might checkout the software available on resoo.

What about Central Point Software's PC Tools? I just couldn't tell you which version is best since I haven't seen it since 1992.

Personally, I like(d) versions 6 and 7 of PCShell best.

In the early 90's I used PC Shell v5.5 a lot. But it is kinda unusable since: It fails when there is a FAT32 partition present on the system.