Tesseract
The Tesseract (also known as the Tesseract Personal Computer), is a series of home computer systems manufactured and sold by Harrowing Software. The Tesseract computer is contained within a keyboard, similarly to older 8-bit computers. (It also comes with a mouse.) Tesseract computers are designed to be easy to set up and use. The Tesseract can be used for many of the fundamental PC tasks, including browsing the internet, playing online and offline games, running office software, and online instant messaging and electronic mail. The first model was announced in 1993 and released in 1994, in order to compete with the IBM PC compatible computers and Windows 3.1; and to provide a computer that could rival the capabilities of other new machines, while retaining the form factor and ease of use of older 8-bit home computers.
Software
The Tesseract runs Tesseract OS, a desktop operating system designed similarly to Windows 95. It comes with an internet browser, basic office suite, multimedia software, games, internet communications software (e-mail, IM), and more desktop utilities (calculator, text editor, clock, file manager, etc). Tesseract OS is designed to be easy to use. It does not contain a command line interface, as the entire OS is accessible and usable from the graphical interface. Tesseract OS is intended to run only on Tesseract hardware. Tesseract OS uses TesseractFS, a filesystem created specifically for it.
The desktop has a taskbar and desktop icons including a shortcut to the user's home directory, where all of their personal files go, and a shortcut to the My Computer view, which shows connected internal drives, CD-ROMs, and floppy disks and a shortcut to the system settings manager. The desktop also has shortcuts to connected external drives.
The Tesseract comes with Internet WebView, Harrowing Software's own internet browser, which is the default in Tesseract OS. Internet WebView also includes an e-mail client and a web-page composition tool and publishing tool.
The Tesseract also comes with a spreadsheet editor, word processor, presentation maker, and desktop publisher that all save in standard file formats.
The Tesseract computer uses a minimal boot firmware that tries to load a (usually hidden) file called "boot.elf" from a storage device formatted in TesseractFS. It tries to boot from each connected storage device in a specific order until one of them has a working copy of the file. The order is as follows: Internal Hard Drive, CD-ROM Drive, Floppy Drive, External Hard Drive. If the device it is currently trying is missing boot.elf, or boot.elf is corrupt, it moves on to the next device. The system can be forced to boot from the CD-ROM by holding "C", the floppy drive by holding "F", an external drive by holding "E", or the internal drive by holding "D". The default boot order can be changed by moving jumpers on the motherboard. By default, the system will only load a boot.elf that has been signed by Harrowing Software, which prevents custom operating systems from being loaded. The restrictions can be disabled by moving a jumper on the motherboard, allowing a custom OS to be installed.
Tesseract OS also comes with a BASIC interpreter for writing simple programs.
Additional software can be bought for the Tesseract in retail stores, in the form of boxed software on CD-ROM or floppy disk. Software designed for the Tesseract will have the computer's logo on the box, similarly to console video games.
What's in the box
All Tesseract computer models are contained within a keyboard. The system comes with a standard three-button mouse with scroll-wheel. The computer also comes with a game controller for computer games, the controller has a D-pad, start and select buttons, four face buttons, and two shoulder buttons. No monitor is included, as the Tesseract can connect to any standard VGA monitor. Tesseract models released after 2000 come with a cheaply-made pair of headphones. All Tesseract computers have speakers built-in, which switch off if external speakers or headphones are connected.
