- Phar Lap (company)
Infobox Company
company_name = Phar Lap Inc.
foundation = April1986
location = Cambridge, Mass.
key_people = Richard M. Smith, Robert Moote, and John M. Benfatto
industry =Computer software
products = development tools forMS-DOS /PC-DOS,DOS extender s
revenue = NA
num_employees = NAPhar Lap was a software company specializing in software development tools for the
MS-DOS /PC-DOSoperating system s. They were most noted for their software allowing developers to access memory beyond the 640KiB limit of DOS (DOS extender s) and were an author of theVCPI standard.Phar Lap Software, Inc. was founded in April
1986 by Richard M. Smith, Robert Moote, and John M. Benfatto. Their first major success, "386|DOS-Extender", a32-bit protected mode development tool, was released in November 1986.Phar Lap’s product line was expanded to include "386|VMM", a
virtual memory add-in driver, "LinkLoc", alinker -locator for embedded development; cross tools for embedded development; and "286|DOS-Extender", a DOS extender thatemulate d anOS/2 environment, complete with the OS/2API and protected mode, in contrast with Microsoft's OS/2 API emulation, which ran OS/2 applications inreal mode and only supported a subset of the OS/2 API, called the Family API. Therefore it was often bound with existing OS/2 applications, replacing Microsoft's OS/2 API emulation for those applications that needed access to extended memory in DOS. Later on the "TNT"DOS extender was created, which was a version of "386|DOS-Extender" that emulated theWin32 environment, complete with flat address space and threading. Again this DOS extender were often bound to existing Win32 applications. Unfortunately,MASM 6.1 and the 16-bit version of theVisual C++ 1.0 compiler were Win32 applications written for abeta version ofWindows NT that was bound with the "TNT DOS Extender", which means it could not run on the final version of Windows NT until Beta2Fix.exe was run, which replaced all references to NTDLL.DLL to BETA2.DLL. This was fixed in MASM 6.11 and Visual C++ 1.5. Much later theHX DOS Extender product was created that also emulates the Win32 environment on DOS, has been under heavy development from 2004 up to now (2007), and achieved a much better compatibility than any other attempt before.Phar Lap developed the
Virtual Control Program Interface (VCPI) specification in cooperation withQuarterdeck Office Systems , who produced theDesqView task-switching software. Phar Lap was also a member of the 12-firm committee that designed theDOS Protected Mode Interface (DPMI). VCPI and DPMI are industry standards allowing DOS extenders to co-exist withexpanded memory (EMS) emulators and multi-tasking environments.Phar Lap received several major PC industry awards for VCPI, "386|DOS-Extender", and "286|DOS-Extender".
Phar Lap was named for the great
New Zealand race horsePhar Lap . The horse was rather inelegant in appearance, but performed spectacularly, setting everyone on their heels until he died a mysterious death. Software allowing application programs to reach beyond the 640KB limit was a brilliant hack: it was not elegant in appearance, but it performed spectacularly, setting everyone on their heels when it worked correctly, and causing programs to die mysterious deaths when utilized by a careless programmer.There was no mystery when the market for DOS extenders died, however; they were not needed by 32-bit Windows applications which could directly address all the memory the computer
hardware would support.Phar Lap is now part of
Ardence which produces, among other products, thePhar Lap ETS real-time operating system [ [http://www.ardence.com/embedded/products.aspx?ID=71 Phar Lap ETS – Real-time Operating System] ] , used for instance onLabVIEW real-time targets.References
External links
* [http://www.dinigroup.com/product/data/pharlap/downloads/CatalogTNT-DOS.htm Phar Lap products and history]
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