PenPoint-Virtualbox

Virtualbox image with PenPoint SDK 1.0 and PenPoint OS itself

Image contents:

• FreeDOS 1.3-rc4 from freedos.org
• PenPoint SDK from Bitsavers
• PenPoint OS 1.0
• Various PenPoint Goodies

Installation

0. Download .ova file
1. Open Virtualbox
2. In Virtualbox, select File -> Import configuration
3. Select .ova file

Run

To launch PenPoint OS, simply start virtual machine and type go after it boots

Exit to DOS

To exit from PenPoint OS to DOS, press PAUSE and then q

Fun things to do

GO.BAT and different .INI files in PENPOINT\BOOT are well-documented and full of comments, so by editing them you can do a lot of fun things, like:

Boot debug version of PenPoint OS

To boot debug version of PenPoint OS, change file \PENPOINT\SDK\UTIL\DOS\GO.BAT. Comment line \penpoint\boot\ppboot \penpoint\boot and uncomment \penpoint\boot\ppboot \penpoint\boot\_pp.os \penpoint\boot\mil.os \penpoint\boot\mil.ini

Change screen orientation

To change screen orientation, go to PENPOINT\BOOT and change MIL.INI. Replace InitialScreenTop=fromBootProgram with any of the following lines:

InitialScreenTop=North 
InitialScreenTop=South 
InitialScreenTop=East 
InitialScreenTop=West 

Serial debugging

Sometimes PenPoint OS refuses to boot. You can redirect debug logs to serial. To do this, edit \PENPOINT\BOOT\MIL.INI, and uncomment SerialDebugPort=l and #LowLevelDebug=com1

Further info

To find more about how to tweak your PenPoint OS installation, read PenPoint Development Tools, chapter "Running PenPoint on a PC"