[Offer] 3DMENU (DOS Menu GUI Shell)

[pmein1]

Hi all

New here and wanted to contribute something pretty old which I haven't to date seen anywhere else. It's essentially a retail DOS GUI menu shell from the early 1990s. It was pre-installed on my 486 PC, so I have no setup disk or box etc, but all the main files are in tact. Would that be welcomed in the FTP?


Thanks

[TheCollector1988]

I'd like to check it out Might be an alternative to DOS Shell from DOS 4.x and 5.x (and 6.x).

[pmein1]

OK I’ll put it up, though I don't think its quite suitable as a dosshell replacement, more a games/apps launcher.

[pmein1]

Whilst preparing it to go up to the FTP, I realised that my copy has a registration number which as far as I can tell is hard coded into the exe. I could probably change the registration to something else so that it's generic, but I would expect that to not be allowed in the FTP as I'll have altered the executable. If that's the case and I do manage to change the registration, I might put it up on archive.org.

However, here's some info on the program.

Name: 3DMENU Plus
Version: rel 1.0
Made by: Intellisoft
Year: 1989-1991

It has 9 entries per page and an entry itself can be a page. It all runs off batch files created through the program, except for the main executable. It looks like this, as it looked in 1993 on my 486:



Cheers

[DOS]

I found http://cd.textfiles.com/hof91/harddisk/3dmenu.lzh which after a bit of configuration I was able to make look very similar:



The difference is the title, but the readme.doc says:

3DMENU PLUS Rel. 1.0 (c) Copyright 1989 Tony Minichillo

so I guess between 1989 and 1991 Tony Minichillo decided to start selling his products as "Intellisoft"? But it looks like he didn't update the version number, which isn't very smart, if that's actually what happened.

When I hit Ctrl it shows:

Code: Select all

┌─────────────────────┐
│╔═══════════════════╗│
│║  3DMENU Plus 1.0  ║│
│╚═══════════════════╝│
│ (c) Copyright 1989  │
│   Tony Minichillo   │
│   Reg. # 10-00220   │
│ ──═══════════════── │

so if your registration number looks like that, I guess it's just the default registration number, because I doubt that Shareware CD would have been distributing registered versions of software.

[pmein1]

Wow, how on earth did you find that?! - Found out, I had previously Googled "Intellisoft" rather than "3dmenu.exe"...

Yes, it appears that my copy has the same reg number, but the .exe is about half the size and the About page contains 2 pages of ordering info instead of the one page in Tony's release. It says it's freely distributable as shareware, so I'll put mine up on the FTP just for completeness of versions.

EDIT: Just found (as you do) an earlier version than the one you found, 3DMENU v2.0 (not Plus) from 1988 (readme.doc says v1.1 though). Link: http://cd.textfiles.com/1stcanadian/shells/3dmenu20/