Jibbajaba, on Mon Nov 23, 2009 4:58 PM, said:
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 by Herbarius, Mon Nov 23, 2009 11:45 PM.
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