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VisiCorp Visi On
Screen Shots
[visionlogo2]
Visi On was the first full GUI for the IBM PC. First
demonstrated by VisiCorp at Fall Comdex 1982 and
released at the end of 1983, just prior to the Apple
Macintosh, it pre-dated the release of Microsoft
Windows by several years.
In many ways, Visi On was very advanced for its
time. It featured graphical overlapping windowing,
common user interface controls, a custom filing
system, a portable virtual machine, an integrated
office suite, and supported third party application
development.
[visionall]
In part, the demo and release of Visi On motivated a
massive response from Microsoft, promoting their
still vaporware Windows product. Between that, Apple
fanfare, and both business and technical issues on
the part of VisiCorp, Visi On failed to gain
popularity and was buried in obscurity. It was
forgotten by everyone, and seemed like the last copy
had dropped off of the face of the earth....
Until I got my hands on a copy of VisiCorp Visi On!
I finally have Transcopy images that can reproduce
workable install disks, with its ugly copy
protection in place! Writing these disk images
requires a Central Point Deluxe Option Board,
although the SuperCard Pro or Kryoflux may
eventually be able to write them. Transcopy images
are also supported by the PCE emulator.
For the sake of historic software preservation
please click the links below:
Update: Cleaned Applications Manager Disk 1 - This
resets the protection to let you select the mouse
type during install.
Kryoflux and SuperCard Pro disk dumps. These are
tested, and will create working disks from these
images.
Visi On Kryoflux Images
Visi On SCP Images
Archives with Transcopy disk images. Transcopy
images are writable with a Central Point Deluxe
Option Board and usable with the PCE emulator.
Visi On Applications Manager
Visi On Calc
Visi On Graph
Visi On Word
PCE preconfigured emulator - PCE pre-installed and
ready to run with an unmodified copy protected
installation.
An unprotected preconfigured zip file - A zip of the
installed program files and applications with an
unprotect applied so you do not need a keydisk, and
executable hacked for ATs. Just unzip these to a
FAT12 partition on a PC or PC emulator that uses a
Mouse Systems compatible mouse, and you are all set!
A Bootable 1.4 meg disk image - of Visi On with the
tutorial and the word processor (requires Mouse
Systems/PC Mouse compatible serial mouse). Includes
executable hacked for ATs.
Miscellaneous old unprotection notes and other
information sources.
CHD Hard drive image for use with MESS. - Includes
the unprotect an extra hack to work with the serial
port in MESS. Note that as of MESS 0.131 the CHD
format changed, so you must use the CHDMAN utility
to update the image. Use the "PC (CGA)" emulation
and be sure to select the "Mouse Systems" mouse
type.
mess1001_w95.zip - A custom version of MESS that is
known to work right with the above image. Also
modified to run under Windows 95.
IBMPC.ZIP PC.ZIPIBM5150.ZIP - ROM images you may
need to to run MESS.
Manuals
Visi On AM Visi On Calc Users Visi On Graph
Setup Guide.pdf Guide.pdf Users Guide.pdf
Visi On AM Visi On Calc Visi On Word
Users Guide.pdf Working In QuickStart.pdf
Visi On Calc Windows.pdf Visi On Word
QuickStart.pdf Visi On Graph Users Guide.pdf
QuickStart.pdf
Please note these important hardware requirements:
* A Mouse Systems PCMouse or compatible connected
to COM1 (not Microsoft protocol).
* A PC/XT for 100% compatibility, NOT an AT (My
1.44mb boot disk contains an executable hacked
for ATs)
* A drive with a FAT12 file system (FAT12 file
systems are 15 MEGS or less in size) and at
least 1.6 megs free. Not FAT16 or FAT32.
----------------------------------------------------
What is VisiCorp Visi On?
VisiCorp Visi On was the first full featured desktop
GUI for the IBM PC. Legend has it Bill Gates saw a
demo of this running at the 1982 comdex running on
an IBM PC. He freaked out because Microsoft didn't
have anything like this yet, ran back to Microsoft
Headquarters, and had them start work on what became
Windows.
The Visi On 1.0 files, interestingly, are dated
December of 1983, the same month the "Microsoft
Windows" article appeared in Byte Magazine. As we
know Windows 1.0 was not released until 1985. If
this was an attempt to keep people away from Visi
On, it worked. In august 1984 VisiCorp sold Visi On
to Control Data Corp, where it was apparently never
heard from again.
The Visi On product was apparently not intended for
the home user. It was designed and priced for high
end corporate workstations. The hardware it required
was quite a bit for 1983. It required a minimum of
512k of ram and a hard drive (5 megs of space).
A very interesting feature of Visi On is the way it
was designed. It was designed to be portable to
other OSes such as CP/M or Unix, or to other CPUs
besides the 8086. It did this by providing a kind of
non machine specific "virtual machine" (called the
Visi Machine) that all applications were written
for. Only the very core of Visi On (called the Visi
Host) was machine specific.
# GUIs Applications were developed in "Visi C", a fairly
# Site News restricted subset of C designed for maximum
portability. The development environment was Unix
# Xerox based and included a non-graphical version of the
# Visi On Visi-Host that let portions of Visi-On applications
# GEM be run and tested on Unix.
# Deskmate
# GEOS Sounds kind of like Java or .Net doesn't it?
# Desqview/X
# AmigaOS Unfortunately, aside from the incomplete Visi Host
# RISC OS included with the development software, Visi On was
# BeOS never ported to any other platform besides IBM PC
# QNX compatibles running MS-DOS.
# OS/2
# Apple Another unique aspect of Visi On was that outside
# Linux/Unix developers were encouraged to write applications for
# Windows Visi On. At the time many companies tried to keep
# Win Shells tight control on there development environments, but
# Misc GUIs anyone with enough money and a Unix system could
purchase a copy of the Visi On development
# GUI Timeline environment.
# GUI Sites
[spacer] The Visi On GUI:
* Mouse driven.
* Provided a consistent interface between all
applications.
* Unlike the Xerox Star or the Apple Lisa which
existed at the time, Visi On did not use icons.
* Used the IBM CGA 640*200 monochrome graphics
mode.
* Although graphical, seems to be very text
oriented.
* Can work with multiple applications at the same
time.
* Visi On applications can share data between each
other.
* Built in help.
* Built in installer.
[visionboot]
The Visi On Boot screen. With modern mice
calibration is not necessary, all that is needed
here is to just move the mouse. Original Mouse
Systems mice had to be moved in circles several
times to "calibrate" the sensitivity before they
could be used.
A few technical notes about getting Visi On to run:
To properly run VisiCorp Visi On you must have a PC/
XT with at least 512k of ram, MS-DOS 2.00 (or
higher), A hard drive (or other large disk)
formatted with the FAT12 file system, and the Visi
On model S1, model M1 or other Mouse Systems
compatible mouse.
Visi On will not run properly on a PC/AT (286) or
later because Visi On revectors several software
interrupts that are used by IRQ 8-15 on these
machines. I disabled the revectoring and made the
"VISIONAT.EXE" version of the executable that will
run on later machines, however these interrupts are
required by applications such as Visi On Graph. As a
result Graph can not run at all on newer machines
but at least now the rest of the software can more
or less run.
Visi On requires a Mouse System compatible mouse.
Mouse Systems mice were the first mice available for
IBM PC. When Microsoft introduced their mouse, they
used their own communications protocol. At the end
of 1983, Microsoft mice were still fairly new and
uncommon. The documentation refers to a "Visi On"
mouse, which is just a VisiCorp OEM rebranded Mouse
Systems mouse.
The Visi On software has its own built in mouse
driver, and can not make use of DOS mouse drivers.
However, in some cases Visi On may fail to properly
initialize clone serial ports or mice, and loading
the Mouse Systems DOS driver first may help work
around this problem.
Microsoft serial mice, PS/2 mice, and USB mice are
not Mouse Systems compatible. Some generic 3-button
serial mice from the 1990s include Mouse Systems
(also called PC Mouse) compatibility. Some have a
switch on the bottom that you can just flip to
switch between Microsoft and Mouse System protocols.
Others can be placed in Mouse Systems mode by
holding down the first mouse button when the
computer is powered on and/or during mouse
initialization. Some other serial mice (especially
cheap ones) used the same hardware but left out the
switch, these can be set to Mouse Systems
compatibility mode by connecting pin 3 to pin 8 of
the IC chip if you know what your are doing. Some
are also switchable using software but the methods
for doing so can vary.
Also, Visi On bypasses the DOS file system for some
operations. As such it requires a FAT12 partition.
This was the only type available under DOS 2.x when
Visi On was released.
The original disks are heavily copy protected, and
can not be duplicated without special hardware. At
startup Visi On requires that you have the key disk
in drive A:. The zip archives above include a
partial unprotect that removes this requirement.
[visionmain2]
This is the Visi On Application Manager. The
Application Manager includes the GUI and the core of
the Visi On system. Without the Application Manager
you can not run the other Visi On applications.
The entire Visi On suite consists of:
Visi On Application Manager (the GUI)
Visi On Accessories (bundled with Application
Manager)
Visi On Graph (Graphing program)
Visi On Word (Word processing program)
Visi On Calc (Spreadsheet program)
When Visi On starts, it displays the Services
window. This windows lists all installed programs,
and provides facilities for installing and removing
software as well as configuring printers and
managing drives. This window also has the "Exit"
option to exit Visi On, however this is hidden by
the default size of this window. To use it you must
either resize the window, scroll the menu with the
right mouse button, or use the keyboard to activate
it.
When you first Install the Visi On Application
Manager the only installed program is the "Archives"
utility. All others are installed separately.
[visionresize]
In Visi On there are no windowing controls on the
windows. Instead windowing functions are controlled
by the menu at the bottom of the screen.
HELP - Launches the built in help program and
displays the help for whatever object is selected.
CLOSE - Minimizes the size of a window and places it
in the upper right of the screen.
OPEN - Restores a "closed" window.
FULL - Makes a window take up the entire screen.
FRAME - Resizes the selected window.
OPTIONS - Displays any preferences or options for
the program.
TRANSFER - Used to transfer information between
applications.
STOP - Cancels a menu action if it has not been
completed.
This example shows a window being resized. This is
done by clicking "Frame" then selecting the window
to resize, selecting the upper left corner of the
new window location, then selecting the lower right
corner.
[visionscroll]
There are no scroll bars in Visi On. Instead, text
is dragged using the right mouse button. Scrolling
on modern systems can be too fast, but on slower
systems you may get a nice "smooth scrolling"
effect.
Interestingly long menus like the one on the service
windows can be scrolled horizontally using the right
mouse button.
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