Looking for MS-DOS "PrimeMenu" shareware/freeware

[Herbarius]

Well, it was in the mid-90s when I had a very neat "menu" program on my PC called PrimeMenu. It gave you a graphical menu of your programs to start with the click of the mouse, of couse you first had to configure it. You could set up something like up to 8 pages with a total of up to 16 programs per page. May have been 10 pages an/or 24 programs per page. It had a lot of icons included, and also a converter that could convert Windows ICO files into the PrimeMenu format, and an editor to make your own. You could setup all the programs inside the GUI, there was no need to edit any INI files or something like that.

 

To run it, you would usually type "pm" - while usually I had it in the autoexec.bat. Even when I later got Windows 95, I set it up in a way it would not automatically start Windows itself, but only the DOS 7.0, and then I would start Windows 95 from PrimeMenu only if I needed it...

 

A simple calculator and I think calendar were included as well. It could also do some "fancy" stuff, like assigning individual config files (autoexec.bat, config.sys) to a program and if you would start that, it would reboot the machine with those, run the game, then restore your original autoexec/config and reboot again. (Much like what Windows 9x did with it's so called "MS-DOS mode".)

 

As far as I reacall the program was freeware, while the PrimeCopy floppy copier program which came on the same disk was shareware.

 

 

I searched the Web, but came up with nothing. So I ask you, does anyone still know that program or maybe even has it and could upload it?

Edited November 10, 2009 by Herbarius

[CGQuarterly]

I posted this over at the Vintage Computer Forums a couple of days ago. No responses yet. Sounds like a neat program though.

 

Chris

[Herbarius]

I posted this over at the Vintage Computer Forums a couple of days ago. No responses yet. Sounds like a neat program though.

 

Chris

Thanks!

[Herbarius]

I did a screen mockup, I think it looks very much like the actual program. Of course I've taken some leeways, you don't really expect me to remember everything

 

I don't know if it helps to spark anyone's memorys.

 

 

 

 

Feel free to post this image at the Vintage Computing Forum, Jibbajaba.

[CGQuarterly]

Done!

 

That looks cool. Are you *SURE* it was called primemenu?

 

Chris

[Herbarius]

I am 100% sure it was called pm / pmenu for short, and like 99% sure it was called "PrimeMenu"...

[CGQuarterly]

It even had those little icons? Are you sure it wasn't a Windows 3.11 application? Where did the program even get those icons from?

 

Chris

[tremoloman2006]

I couldn't find the one you were talking about, but here's a potential replacement:

 

DosStart - I also found some other nice ones here.

 

I thought I was the only guy still using MS/PC/NDOS these days.

Edited November 24, 2009 by tremoloman2006

[CGQuarterly]

I thought I was the only guy still using MS/PC/NDOS these days.

 

Heck no, dude. I love MS-DOS. The only thing I like better about Windows is the multitasking. I miss DOS, but messing around with Linux can provide the same sense of adventure.

 

Chris

[tremoloman2006]

I thought I was the only guy still using MS/PC/NDOS these days.

 

Heck no, dude. I love MS-DOS. The only thing I like better about Windows is the multitasking. I miss DOS, but messing around with Linux can provide the same sense of adventure.

 

Chris

 

 

Well you could multitask with DESQview... I used it for my BBS back in the day and it was pretty stable. I've wanted to get into Linux but there are so many flavors I don't know which one to use.

 

 

[CGQuarterly]

Ubuntu, my friend. I use it at work and I love it.

 

Chris

[Herbarius]

It even had those little icons? Are you sure it wasn't a Windows 3.11 application? Where did the program even get those icons from?

 

Chris

 

No it was NOT a Win3.1 application, although it kinda imitated the looks of Windows 3.1.

In fact that was kind of the whole beauty of it, Windows would take forever to load, and if you tried to run your DOS games from Windows you'd run into memory and compatibility problems, so that was out of the question.

In contrast, PrimeMenu would load and operate very fast while not being very demanding (system requirements were something like "386, VGA card, mouse") and also it wouldn't use any memory while running the games because it actually exits PM and technically runs a BAT which first runs the game, and after you've quit that, start PM again (using some command line argument to take you back to the same page you were on).

 

Of course those aren't the exact same icons, I just chose some that go in the same general style as those available back then. As I said, there were a bunch of icons already included. One of them was actually really a Commander-Keen head. Most were some general purpose icons, like floppy disks, common items, cars, ... Also there was a Icon editor included in the GUI to make your own.

 

But most importantly there was an Icon Converter included (unlike the Icon editor this was not inside the GUI but as a seperate EXE), which could convert any number of Windows 3.1 ICO files into the native format of Prime Menu (but not the other way), so I would take one of those "1000+ icons for Windows" collections from back then and convert them all, so I'd have a massive selection of icons to choose from.

 

 

Thanks for the links you provided to alternatives. I actually already found some of those, but in my opinion they either don't quite match up with Prime Menu or they take a different approach and try to give you more of a full-boasted pseudo-Win95 environment. And, to be honest, I think most of them are kinda ugly. They just don't match the overall very clean, functional and yet asthetic interface of PrimeMenu. Also I've yet to find another one that has that "reboot with different config files" feature.

 

I'll try them anyway, but I'll keep looking for the best of the best

 

If I'd realized back then how awesome it actually is (instead of taking it for granted) I sure would have taken efforts to conserve it, at least I think I would have... I never abandonen something easily, thinking "I would never need it again"... I know I had it on a floppy for a long time, somehow thinking one floppy is enough

 

I've some faint memory of finding the disk and trying to install or copy it (quite some time after I stopped using it regularly, which was when I got my 200 MHz Pentium and switched over to Windows 95 "for real") but discovering the disk had gone bad, but I'm not quite sure if it's a proper memory or just some imagination... What supports that theory is that a lot of disks from that same time, having the same type of self-made labels, some still working, some faulty, but not that one disk. And I've tried all the unlabeled disks in case the label has fallen off, but all of those were either empty or had something else on it (mostly much more recent stuff, from when I already had a dial-up internet connection, but USB sticks weren't around yet)

Edited November 24, 2009 by Herbarius

[CGQuarterly]

This one certainly seems extremely similar, and has been around since 1989.

 

http://surf.to/AccessDosMenu

 

Chris