A Sealed Mystery From 1984 - The IBM PC Graphical File System | #DOSCember
2,714What happened when you go searching through eBay and find a strange and mysterious IBM branded package? Well, you go out, buy it, dump it, and then spend the better part of a month researching it. Obviously this is a lesson to be more careful on my eBay purchases!
To be honest, the name itself is interesting, after all, just what is a 'Graphical File System', and what are these ANSI Metafiles the box talks about? Here in 2020, we're going to crack the shrinkwrap of this 36 year old mystery, and unbox it live on camera. Inside that box that has sat sealed for over 30 years, I found a few floppy disks, and more than a few questions.
As it would turn out, I would end up end up following a rabbit hole that went back years upon years to ANSI's original efforts to standard computer graphics in the form of Graphical Kernel System, but with a nearly useless manual, lost software, and a rare add-on that I only knew about by watching one of LGR's videos, I knew I was going to have a tough time ahead of me.
There's little information on IBM's Professional Graphics System, or the Professional Graphics Controller, so
In truth, this video has been the works since early November, and it took me that long to put everything together
NCommander Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FOSSfirefighter
Discord: https://discord.gg/V8esNah
Blog: https://casadevall.pro/
Music is from http://www.epidemicsound.com, with the following tracks used in order:
- The Mole - Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen
- Infiltrator - Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen
- Perjury - Dream Cave
- A Travelers' Gloom - Dew Of Light
- Tragedy Unfolds - Dream Cave
- What We Discovered - Philip Ayers
- Cryptic Secrecy - Dream Cave
- Person of Interest - Dream Cave
- Rescue Mission - Lupus Nocte
Although this video was released before I was aware of #DOSCember, I've retroactively added that hash tag since it does indeed fall under the subject! It's great that so many people are coming together to help celebrate the legacy of DOS, so here's my own part of that!