Portals 95
The Desktop of Tomorrow, Today
A MicroSoul Corp Product
Features — Everything that makes Portals 95 the most exciting software release in history
■ The Start Menu
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■

The Start Menu

Before Portals 95, launching a program meant remembering its exact path and typing it into a command line. C:\PROGRAMS\SOULEDIT\SOULEDIT.EXE. Every single time. Those days are over.

The Start Menu puts everything you need behind a single click. Programs, documents, settings, soul utilities — organized into neat folders with labels you can read. In a font. A real font, not just terminal characters.

  • All installed programs appear in the Programs submenu
  • Recently used documents tracked automatically
  • Settings panel for system configuration
  • Find command to search your entire soul drive
  • Shut Down option (your terminal finally has a graceful shutdown)
Fun fact: During internal testing, a MicroSoul Corp engineer was observed clicking the Start button 47 times in a row "just because I can." He was promoted.
📂 Portals Explorer
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📂

Portals Explorer

Browse your C: drive in a window. With a tree view on the left and file icons on the right. You can see your files as icons. You can see them as a list. You can see their properties by right-clicking. Right-clicking! With the other mouse button!

  • Tree view navigation for directory hierarchies
  • Icon view, list view, and detail view modes
  • Drag and drop file management
  • Right-click context menus on every object
  • File properties dialog with soul metadata
  • Cut, copy, and paste support (yes, for files)
💡 Tip: Double-click any file to open it in its associated program. Portals 95 knows which program to use. Dragging souls between directories is technically supported but not recommended for souls with high entropy values.
⚡ 32-bit Architecture
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⚡

True 32-bit Soul Processing

Portals 3.1 was a 16-bit environment running on top of MicroSoul DOS. Portals 95 is a complete 32-bit operating system. What does that mean for you? More bits. More power. More soul processing capability than you ever thought possible.

  • Process up to 2 souls simultaneously (pre-emptive multitasking)
  • Protected soul memory — one soul's crash does not affect others
  • Long file names up to 255 characters (goodbye 8.3 limitation)
  • 32-bit soul file system with improved entropy management
  • Full backwards compatibility with your existing 16-bit soulware
Twice the bits: Your 16-bit soulware will continue to work, but it will work inside a 32-bit environment. It will not know the difference. But you will. You will feel it. The extra bits are palpable.
🔌 Plug and Play
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🔌

Plug and Play Technology

The days of manually configuring IRQ addresses and DMA channels are numbered. Portals 95 introduces Plug and Play: connect a new soul peripheral to your terminal and the operating system detects and configures it automatically.

  • Automatic hardware detection for soul bus peripherals
  • Driver installation without manual intervention
  • IRQ and DMA conflict resolution
  • Support for all MicroSoul Corp-certified peripherals
  • Hardware detection wizard for non-standard devices
💡 Detection accuracy: In laboratory testing, Plug and Play correctly detected and configured 73% of connected peripherals on the first attempt. The remaining 27% were detected on the second attempt, the third attempt, or by the Hardware Detection Wizard (which asks you to identify the device yourself). MicroSoul Corp considers this a breakthrough.
🎨 Desktop Wallpaper
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🎨

Desktop Wallpaper

Express yourself. For the first time, your desktop can display a background image of your choosing. Portals 95 ships with 12 stunning wallpaper options, each carefully designed by MicroSoul Corp's art department.

Included wallpapers:

  • Teal (the default — it is perfect as it is)
  • Slightly Different Teal
  • Corporate Gradient (navy to teal, very professional)
  • Clouds (rendered on a 486, looks just like real clouds if you squint)
  • Setup (a plain gray — for terminals that take their work seriously)
  • Rivets (metallic texture, implies your terminal is made of metal)
  • Circles (geometric, implies you understand geometry)
  • Thatch (woven pattern, implies culture)
  • Waves (blue, soothing, for soul administrators under stress)
  • Forest (a photograph of trees, for terminals that appreciate nature)
  • Red Bricks (for terminals that appreciate masonry)
  • Soul Vortex (abstract pattern — Dr. Null designed this one and nobody asked why)
Your desktop, your way: You can also use any BMP file as a wallpaper. Your terminal. Your desktop. Your expression of self through tiled bitmap imagery. The future is personal.
🌐 Built-in Networking
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🌐

Connect to the Information Superhighway

Portals 95 includes built-in networking support. Connect your terminal to the emerging global soul network using any standard modem. Browse soul registries. Send messages via Ourlook. Download soulware from the Information Superhighway. The world is connected now, and so is your terminal.

  • Soul Dial-Up Networking with PPP protocol support
  • TCP/IP stack for soul network connectivity
  • HyperTerminal for direct terminal-to-terminal connections
  • SoulNet browsing via built-in terminal browser
  • Ourlook integration for soul messaging
  • File transfer protocol (STP) for soul data exchange
💡 Modem required: Portals 95 networking requires a 14.4 kbps or faster modem. A 28.8 kbps modem is recommended for browsing soul registries with images. At 28.8 kbps, a typical soul registry page loads in under 45 seconds. We live in remarkable times.